Better late than never, right? It’s the sentiment which lies at the heart of every tutorial essay, every near-sprint to a looming lecture or class (maybe even this article). Oxford time is a tin of treacle which seems to weigh down every step taken or word written, until you’re gasping for breath at the knife-edge of the essay deadline. It’s the 5th week of term, and you don’t want to run out of steam, but there isn’t much left in the tank.
So you keep your mind fixed on sunny Trinity days, clubcard G&T, and Pimms on the grass, which you may or may not have been told to ‘keep off’ during the winter terms. Exams or no exams, it doesn’t matter when nights out no longer require queuing at the cloakroom, and when your skin is finally soaking up the first baby sunbeams of what we like to call a ‘heatwave.’ Wavering like a mirage on the horizon is Hot Girl Summer, Hilary’s bronzed, carefree counterpart. Or, maybe you think about the end of term: back into the family fold, or not – back into bed at least, temporarily leaving behind the days where it feels as if you’re waking up as soon as your head hits the pillow.
But don’t get ahead of yourself. Hot girls in Hilary pace themselves; they know it’s a marathon, not a sprint. They’re taking it day by day; they’ve got their planners, Notion databases and Google calendars, and are colour-coding their way to time-management heaven. Despite this planning, though, they know that the best approach to surviving this term is seeing the present, not the future, as the time which should be made the happiest, the most productive: deadlines may come and go, but at the end of the day, you can’t get a moment back.
Hot girls in Hilary take what most people think of as the bleakest term of the year and give it a makeover: for them, it’s not just cosy winter ‘fits (read: not pyjamas in the library) and clean-girl makeup, but filling up their free hours with social activities they actually want to do, and meeting up with the people who make life flow just a little easier. They seek out wholesome parts of Oxford – the communities within each college and society, the little thrill of knowing there are actually other people out there who enjoy yapping about funk music or board games or bread (though, Bread Society, you’ve been rather quiet lately). They exercise – not in a toxic way, but actually for fun, and balance it out with karaoke and cheap college cocktails.
Yet, they know their boundaries. Some nights are meant for Netflix and face masks, or phoning a friend. They’re not always aesthetic, either – sometimes it seems as though bubble baths are all too often swapped for the bubble of Oxford, with all its quirks and oddities, which can turn into a mire of social politics you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. But hot girls bounce back. And when they do get their reading done and their bop outfit sorted, it’s a glorious thing to behold.
But here’s the twist. The Hot Girl Hilary herself doesn’t exist. She is a figment of all our imaginations – the girl we curate, often in the middle of the night, when planning to turn our lives around. We want to be her, be friends with her, even date her (or maybe all three). But perhaps it’s enough to simply smile when she passes by, knowing that, deep down, you’re just as hot as she is.
