Mourning The Loss of The Fezzy Romance This Hot Girl Summer
TW: sex, drugs, alcohol use
Despite the ever-present pandemic looming over us like a contagious cloud, ‘Hot Girl Summer’ remains the phrase on every twenty-something’s lips. Loosely defined, it encourages a season of fun, freedom, and potentially sexual promiscuity (exercised responsibly, ofc). It supports everything from being single and ready to mingle, to working hard and making those P’s – the only prerequisite being that you commit to embodying the hottest and most self-assured version of yourself throughout any and all of these activities.
Hot Girl Summer, as demonstrated so casually by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock-up, is therefore very much alive and well for 2021, but there’s one normally guaranteed event in every Hot Girl’s calendar that looks to be postponed for yet another year: the Fezzy Romance. A colder, wetter and much less sexy sister of the Holiday Romance, the Fezzy Romance is nevertheless a highly reliable occasion that gets wheeled up year upon year. Even in times of drought, even in years of bad break-ups or dodgy fringes, the Fezzy Fling will never let you down in its consistency or ease of procurement. As it looks more and more unlikely that most UK-based festivals will go ahead, their absence is one small loss for dance culture, one big loss for Hot Girls and their to-do lists everywhere.
What makes the Fezzy Romance so special? Aside from the obvious combination of alcohol and narcotics graciously lowering everyone’s standards so that they’ll happily do the dirty (quite literally) with strangers who haven’t washed in three days, festivals hold a certain magic not only reliant on mushrooms. The moment you breeze through security and begin the trek through the campsite, you shed your worldly responsibilities like a skin. The first drink is a baptism of freedom, the first dance a restoration to your animalistic ancestors. Where else is passion more likely to burn than in a forest under some stars, soundtracked by a distant house beat and to choruses of ‘oi fuck off’?
If rolling around a field in the moonlight as waves of euphoria crash over you sounds enjoyable, then you would be correct. But don’t assume all encounters are created equally. The takeaway might be very good (VIP wristband for rest of the weekend) or less good (chlamydia). There’s also the small but significant issue of sex in a tent, which might have you feeling like a piece of IKEA flatpack furniture someone’s desperately trying to unpack and assemble. In the dark. With no instructions. And with only a hammer.
The thing with the Fezzy Fling, and why it’s so well suited to the Summer of Love, is that it’s perfect in its impermanence. It’s a moment in time, a blink of hedonism in your otherwise (relatively) well-behaved existence. The festival bubble bursts very quickly after its creation, somewhere between packing up your tent and the Burger King at Leigh Delamere, and you’d be foolish – misguided – to think your new-found love will make it with you beyond the end of your weeklong comedown. Anything promised with wide-eyes and sweaty palms past Day 1 should be immediately disregarded - after all, he was wearing a pirate hat and a cape made of rainbows. Always remember - a fezzy boyfriend is not for life, he’s just for the weekend.
If you’re one of the fortunate few who do make it to a festival this year – go forth and blessed be thy Fezzy Romance; make very questionable life choices that earn you a nickname for the next 5-10 years. For the rest of us, the fezzy part may be off the cards, but Hot Girl Summer lives on. I encourage you to live your truth, be your best and most viciously attractive self, and remember that if actual Matt Shamcock can get him some, then you are more than worthy of cleaning up at Box Park. Stay strong, my fezzy lovers, and believe we’ll be back folded up in the corner of a tent very soon.
by Lizzie Perman (Staff Love & Relationships Writer)
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