Most people in Australia will have at least one of these items in their kitchen. Welcome to the Hot Girl Food club.
Check your pantries and fridges immediately: You may just be in possession of Hot Girl Food.
Admit it. The thought thrills you.
Not hot? Maybe you’re not even a girl. Doesn’t matter. You can still play.
If you don’t quite understand what Hot Girl Food is, pull out your notepad and slap on your monocle as we briefly trace its origins. Hot Girl Food is really just an extension of the phrase “hot girl sh*t” — a term made famous by American rapper Megan Thee Stallion — that then evolved into the 2019 hit Hot Girl Summer. This would be so much easier to explain if I could share my PowerPoint presentation and graphs.
Anyway, the singer translated the “hot girl” concept in an interview with The Root.
“It’s just basically about women — and men — just being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up your friends, doing you, not giving a damn about what nobody got to say about it. You definitely have to be a person that can be the life of the party, and, y’know, just a bad b*tch,” she said.
The pop culture phenomenon is similar to the unforgettable rise of Big D*ck Energy in 2018. To possess BDE, one does not need to possess a D. BDE is simply an attitude and a vibe. A presence. It cannot be manufactured. You have to be born with it.
Being a Hot Girl is not about physical appearance or even being a girl. It’s a state of mind.
Fans have now taken the phrase and put their own spin on it. Which brings us to Hot Girl Food.
The phrase really came into popularity a few months ago when the internet decided that tinned fish was a Hot Girl Food. Entire think pieces were dedicated to the philosophy. Experts were interviewed about the subject just to get to the bottom of it.
“People want to embody that European ideal of minimalist, simple, casual elegance,” Becca Millstein, co-founder of the tinned fish company Fishwife, told Nylon about why a smelly can of tuna was a Hot Girl Food.
Is there a yellow tin of Sirena sitting in your pantry right now? Welcome to the Hot Girl Food club.
It’s not just tinned fish that qualifies as Hot Girl Food. An article on New York magazine’s food and restaurant website Grub Street made noise this week with a headline declaring, “Whole Milk Mounts Its Triumphant Comeback: Hot girls are ditching the alternatives and are going back to basics”.
The news was huge. Joyous and emotional. For years, we’ve been having oat milk and almond milk and hemp milk and macadamia milk and soy milk crammed down our throats. It had gone too far. Things were getting milked that never should be milked. Enough was enough.
It was a long fight but, in the end, evil lost and the cream rose to the top. If John Lennon were alive he’d totally write a song about it.
In hindsight, it’s unbelievable how badly people trashed the reputation of normal milk over the years. If it were a celebrity, it would sue for defamation. Something definitely needs to be done to restore normal milk’s public image. Maybe it can employ the same publicist who represents pork and avocados. It could rebrand with a nice zingy catchphrase like “get some pork on ya fork!” and “‘ave an avo today!”. Maybe even a jingle.
Normal milk’s revival has all the hallmarks of a great story. It’s a classic fall-from-grace tale about an icon hitting rock bottom before finding the strength within itself to claw its way back to the top against all odds. So inspirational. Normal milk should get its own biopic.
The best part about the announcement of normal milk’s comeback is it paves the way for other foods. Not sure what qualifies as a Hot Girl Food? While the literature doesn’t provide specific criteria, one marker of Hot Girl Food is a back to basics approach. Maybe with a touch of irony. Anything that’ll make passers-by do a double take. Also, extra points if it breaks the rules of everything Goop tells us.
“I hope the white dinner roll makes its comeback next,” a friend said this week in response to normal milk’s resurrection.
The white dinner roll is absolutely a Hot Girl Food. All white bread in general should make a comeback. We’ve been tolerating gluten-free alternatives and healthy variations for far too long. Throw out anything with weird seeds in it. The time has come: Tip Top white bread is back in fashion. Prepare for the summer of Tip Top.
We’ll also piggyback on milk’s renaissance with other dairy products. Forget about that unflavoured Greek yoghurt we all pretend to love. It’s the year of YoGos.
Same with fancy cheese. Bega Stringers are now the official Hot Girl Cheese. Or, if you’re having guests over and you wanna class it up a bit, rip open a box of Le Snacks. Just like tinned fish, Le Snacks possess a minimalist, simple, casual elegance.
Anything that’s trying too hard to be healthy is not Hot Girl Food. Plant-based meat? No thank you. But the $11 pack of beef sausages from Coles? Certified Hot Girl Food.
Next, we gotta swing the axe through overpriced boutique muesli. From now on, it’s all about Fruit Loops, Coco Pops and Frosted Flakes.
Of course, the ripple effects of Hot Girl Food shouldn’t be underestimated. With the sudden decline of alt-milks and other annoyingly healthy products, Byron Bay is about to be wiped off the map.
That’s where the town has shot itself in the foot. It’s a Hot Girl mecca but the community is not equipped to handle the resurgence of normal milk and Tip Top and Fruit Loops.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Everyone just needs to ditch Byron and migrate north to the Gold Coast. That’s the new Hot Girl City. At least it has white bread and an airport.
Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir