To Glow or Not to Glow: What Changed This Summer?

This article references data collected by The Spectator from Stuyvesant students in an anonymous Google Form.

Every year, students return to school with hundreds of questions on their minds: Who are my teachers? Who’s in my classes? Do I have a good locker? Among these inquiries, there is one big one that has nothing to do with academics. As students prepare for their first day back at school with their peers, many can’t help but wonder: Who had a summer glow-up?

First things first, what exactly is a summer glow-up? Junior Jasmine Liang said, “[It’s] when you feel like a better person, both inside and out. Glow-ups are more defined as an outside glow-up, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you feel better on the inside.” 

Junior Katherine Burns agreed with the perspective that a glow-up is on a deeper level. “I guess it has to be both physical and mental, at least for me, because you can look great but still have a bad outlook on life, and still have just a bad attitude with everything. I think both need to change for it to be a successful glow-up,” she said.

Let’s break it down. What are the factors of a glow-up? Liang said, “It’s a lot to do with your health and your mental, emotional state. I think that everything reflects from the inside. If you are just a mess on the inside, your mind, your emotions, and your mental health is bad, you’re not really gonna look better on the outside, no matter how much you try.” 

In contrast, Burns said, “The things that I associate with it are clearer skin and just looking more overall put together.” Glow-ups have both aesthetic and emotional aspects, and these two go hand-in-hand to help someone better themself over the summer.

Given that glow-ups are such a present thing in our culture, with beauty and skincare products, hair hacks, and gym routines infecting our social media, why are they so associated with summer? Perhaps it's the warm weather that motivates people to be their best or the fact that Stuyvesant students tend to be more focused on academics during the school year, so they choose the summertime to focus on themselves. Burns supposed, “It's always been a trope of a ton of movies, you know, those movies where it's like, everyone comes back for the new school year and ‘Oh, my God, this person got really hot over the summer.’ I feel like that's a big part of why it's associated with summer because also you're given so much free time to work on yourself. That's why so many of them happen when they do.” 

Liang elaborated on the reasons why summer is an ideal time to glow up. “Growth happens the most when you're alone, or essentially in an environment where you can focus. I think summer is more like a reset season, where you're not constantly on a schedule, where you're in a rush and people are around you and you're stressed,” she said. “You have time to spend with yourself, to do things you wouldn't normally do, and to just get away from the busyness of life that you would have been wrapped up in.”

A Pennsylvania State University freshman brought up a recent TikTok trend, which is all about people making “summer wishlists.” He has seen people putting things like tan lines, weight loss, hair growth, and other appearance-related items on their “summer wishlists.” This is an example of how the concept of summer glow-ups manifests itself in media, even if we don’t realize it.

He said, “I feel like there are two factors to a glow-up. There are physical glow-ups and confidence glow-ups. Like if someone starts going to the gym a lot and gets more fit, they’re probably going to become happier and more confident as a result. If someone goes from being depressed all the time to being more confident in their own skin, I’d consider that a glow-up.” However, there isn’t always a correlation between physical appearance and confidence. “Confidence and hotness are both factors to a glow-up, but you can have one without the other,” he later added.

Of the 44 responses to a Google Form survey, 64% said they put in effort to look better over the summer, but only 40.9% said they believed they had a summer glow-up this past summer. The survey respondents consisted of high school students from a variety of states in the U.S., such as New York, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. 72.7% said they also pay attention to people’s appearances when the school year begins. People added that factors of glow-ups can be looking better, getting in shape, and becoming a better person. An anonymous respondent also listed a better diet, being more active, makeup style, hair, and fashion.

Overall, it seems that the majority of students utilize their summer break to better themselves, whether that’s exclusively physically, exclusively mentally, or a healthy mix of both. The summer provides an ideal opportunity for self-improvement and perhaps self-evaluation. The concept of a summer glow-up is becoming more and more present in current culture and social media, and it might be just the thing to prompt teenagers to better themselves and gain confidence, happiness, and a certain glow.