Kim Kardashian, MacKenzie Bezos, and Melinda Gates form the Holy Trinity of 2021 'hot girl summer'
The year 2021 has been touted as a time where "nature is healing" from the wreckage brought by 2020. But amidst all the drama and heartbreaking realities aside from the pandemic, pop culture has managed to find faith in the shared realities of an odd trio: Kim Kardashian West, MacKenzie Scott Bezos, and Melinda French Gates.
With the pressure of reclaiming the summer hanging high over everybody's heads after a whole year of lockdown, the Internet seems to have anointed Kardashian, Scott, and French as the queens of hot girl summer. The reason? All (almost) freshly divorced from ex-husbands who have managed to become woke culture's biggest enemies.
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What is hot girl summer?
For those wondering just what this new addition to the ever-increasing pile of internet trends might be - are you okay? After a year of being locked up, privileged are those whose lives haven't been consumed by pop culture trends popping every now and then. Some people are scared and/or embarrassed to admit they don't know a certain trend whose inception lies in the painful deprivation of a Summer 2020, and if one looks deeper into the intertwined knots of the webs, there's pretty sure a support group somewhere for those people.
But there's nothing to be ashamed of if the concept of hot girl summer has eluded you. Megan thee Stallion has a song featuring Nicki Minaj, 'Hot Girl Summer', which simply means owning oneself in the wilderness of sunshine and heat regardless of what anybody tells you. If you're a girl, and if it's summer, nothing and no one should be able to stop you from embracing your hot girl summer avatar - which doesn't always necessitates leaving the house to have a gala time. It doesn't even have to be associated with any particular setting or idea of fun because the internet's latest icons of the concept are newly divorced ladies earning millions from their divorce.
Kim Kardashian vs Kanye West
For Kardashian, being the face of a new trend is pretty much how she makes a living. The reality star turned entrepreneur and make-up mogul might be one of the most controversial persons ever, but one cannot deny that she's following her mother's footsteps in working harder than the devil. But alongside raising a make up, skincare, and fashion empire, Kardashian has also flourished as a mom-of-four. So when her partner of almost a decade broke into Twitter slander against her and her family, the Internet didn't have a hard time picking sides.
Kardashian's estranged husband Kanye West made headlines when he unironically announced his run for office against Donald Trump, Joe Biden and others in 2020. In his bid to garner the support of his fans, West got a bit too brash and brazen during his campaign and blamed the Kardashian family of holding him captive and not letting him live his life freely. He also shared to the public how he had insisted on Kardashian not giving birth to their first child North despite a difficult pregnancy, in his lieu to share anti-abortion propaganda as part of his campaign. And of course the Internet had enough of his bulls**t.
Social media was beyond thrilled when Kardashian finally filed for divorce this year and didn't take time at all before making public appearances without her wedding ring. She reclaimed her single mom life with the same ease with which she fit into the glass shoes of everybody's beloved princess of hot girl summer. The world might have a heap of issues with Kim, but her singlehood was surely not one of them. Surprisingly enough, however, Kardashian wasn't the first person to get such gigantic fan support in the wake of her divorce. It had actually started with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, who won over the internet when she finally announced she was divorcing her alleged cheating husband back in 2019.
MacKenzie Scott started it all
Much like the Kardashian-West divorce, Scott and Bezos have welcomed co-parenting since their split two years ago. But the aftermath of their divorce was nasty even though Scott herself had nothing bitter to say about her ex-husband. While Scott was announcing she was giving away her shares in Washington Post, Blue Origin, as well as her share of Amazon stock to her ex, the National Enquirer had a field day with Bezos's alleged infidelity. The outlet teased stories about his affair with TV anchor Lauren Sanchez and exposed what they claimed was a saga of lewd messages the Amazon founder had sent to her.
The internet was, once again, furious. Not only was Bezos the world's richest man at the time, but in the eyes of social media, he consistently avoids doing all in his capacity to end world crises. Bezos also eventually failed to match up to his wife's philanthropic endeavors. Add to that the formidable title of unfaithful husband. So when Scott emerged to bag the title of world's third-richest woman thanks to her divorce settlement, it was pretty much owning hot girl summer all the way. Publicly, Scott didn't seem to have any hard feelings against her ex-husband, whom she was married to for 25 years. But to the internet, she was Nicole Kidman raising her arms with fists balled up, almost as if screaming Hallelujah as she stepped out of the courthouse after her divorce with Tom Cruise was finalized.
Melinda French dodged THAT bullet
History seemed to repeat itself with the dissolution of the Gates-French marriage. On May 4, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda French announced they were calling their 27-year-long marriage off. Their eldest child wrote on social media how challenging this time had been for them as a family as news outlets reported the Gates-French children would each be inheriting 'just' a million off their parent's properties. Difficult times indeed, but what became absolutely unputdownable in the aftermath of this divorce announcement were allegations of Gates consistently asking women out and his alleged philandering ways during the course of his marriage to French.
Gates, much like Bezos, has been highly criticized on social media for not doing enough for society even though he and his ex-wife have their own charity organization called the Gates Foundation. While Gates has recently been embroiled in the Covid-19 vaccine narrative and many have alluded that was the last straw for French, tabloids have been busy pulling up the multi billionaire's past alliances with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, while old Microsoft employees have alleged the company's blind eye towards alleged sexual misconduct and discrimination towards women. To highlight Gates' philandering ways, it has also been reported that he would allegedly spend a week vacationing every year with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad. Need we list anything further to explain the internet's fury towards this rich man?
It's raining billions for the golden trio
Kardashian, Scott, and French are not just virtually united in terms of their exes chastened by the internet, but also when it comes to how expensive their divorces have been. It is estimated that the Kardashian-West divorce, although amicable, will become the most expensive in celebrity history as their joint net worth totals up to $2.7 billion. Kardashian is expected to get $6 million from Kanye, along with a whopping $60 million mansion and $6.5 million worth of jewelry and gifts. Scott, whose net worth was at a dazzling $68 billion itself, also received a quarter of Amazon shares as part of her divorce settlement from Bezos. This bagged her a total of four percent stake in the company worth more than US$35 billion at the time and a rise to the world's 12th richest person. And although the French-Gates divorce settlement hasn't been reported in media so far, their joint net worth of close to $200 billion is quite telling of what she will walk away with from their almost three-decade-long marriage. And the internet cannot keep calm.
Raising the golden trio to the ranks of the recently single Queen Elizabeth II, social media has erupted in a frenzy when it comes to Kardashian, Bezos, and Gates owning their hot girl summers. The words of a Twitter user claiming "Melinda Gates, MacKenzie Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Queen Elizabeth become friends and have themselves a hot girl summer" doesn't seem all that impossible in the massive support that these ladies have drawn by getting divorced from men the internet cannot seem to stand.
Melinda Gates, MacKenzie Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Queen Elizabeth become friends and have themselves a hot girl summer: pic.twitter.com/6CA36DKsYJ
— Brandon Sodani (@brandonsodani) May 3, 2021