Single: So what? What if you could be yourself this summer?
I write so many columns each year about the beauty of balmy summer evenings that the other seasons start to get worse, but here we are, in the middle of beach month. Our designer sunglasses are long gone, a dog-eared paperback is fluttering around, and any attempt at a reasonably healthy diet has something to do with coconuts. This isn’t actually meant to be a summer column on summer columns, but there’s a reason I spend so much time googling synonyms for “sun” in August. Because this silly little season yields very little other real news. As we follow the herds to Ibiza, Mykonos or Italy, hot topics melt like ice cream in the sun (Learning: there are virtually no synonyms for this).
In light of this, celebrity couples seem to focus on themselves and suddenly feel the need to end their sometimes long-term relationships. Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello recently filed for divorce after seven years of marriage. Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied are “finis”. And Ariana Grande would have said to her husband Dalton Gomez: “Thank you, Come on”. And if these women are back on the market, it’s probably official: this summer is the summer of singles.
And if you’re just single or have been single for a long time, the single girl buzzer raises a lot of “what if” questions. What if you let your tired holiday romance be a tired holiday romance? What if you threw your emotional baggage in the pool and stopped looking for potential relationship candidates on the beach? Forget the handsome pilot, forget the airport man with the monogrammed handkerchief and forget the beach volleyball player in these seriously skintight Speedos. Forget the piercing-eyed waitress, forget the left-to-right swipe, the minced meat tetris, and the fucking boys. She forgets questions like: “What are we really?” Or, “Am I ready for something serious?” Or, “What does that comma mean in that sentence from your DM?”
What if… we only focus on ourselves?
I know it’s a tough question, but what if you stopped looking for a potential marriage candidate (especially since the idea of having to flirt in this heat is truly awful)? You don’t have to give up mascara altogether, but ask yourself one thing before you apply it: Is this mascara for me or for someone else? What if that post-breakup “revenge body” or “revenge look” didn’t exist (sorry, Princess Diana)? What if you chose outfits that were less about self-confidence and more about downtime that lasted the entire time you were away from home? (Or is it just me?)
So: sip Shirley Temples alone in the hotel bar. You dine alone and order whatever is the opposite of this weird “girl dinner” trend on TikTok. Read a book you were ashamed to open and tell everyone how good it is. Jump headlong into the pool and pee in the sea. Be loud, don’t shave your legs. Take a nap on the deck chair until the evening hours. Forget – even if only for a season – the perpetual self-improvement that comes with new novels and just be yourself. This is His Single girl buzzer. You don’t need anyone else for this. AND Self Do you still want a partner (great if!), then look it up in the September topic.
This article originally appeared on Vogue.com
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