Feral Girl Summer sticker with raccoon in beach chair and retro sunset design

Feral Girl Summer

2019Slang / lifestyle trendsemi-active

Published March 10, 2026 · Updated March 18, 2026

Also known as: Feral Summer · Feral Rat Summer

Feral Girl Summer is a slang term and lifestyle trend celebrating a chaotic, carefree approach to summer where girls party hard, act unhinged, and reject the pressure to be polished or optimized. Coined on Twitter in 2019 as a counterpoint to Megan Thee Stallion's "Hot Girl Summer," the phrase blew up on TikTok in early 2022 and crossed into mainstream media when Rebel Wilson and the hosts of the Today show championed it on air1.

summer trend memes era format memes female solidarity memes countertrend memes lifestyle motto memes

Overview

Feral Girl Summer describes a mindset where the goal is to abandon self-optimization and go a little wild, usually through partying, drinking vodka sodas, staying up until 4am and generally acting like what one popular TikTok called a 'feral party rat'1. The label is deliberately positioned against Hot Girl Summer, which centered on looking polished while having fun, so the aesthetic here is messier and often uses rodent or raccoon imagery to signal chaos2.

Videos in the format usually pair a shot of someone dancing, drinking or crawling around a club floor with a voiceover explaining the philosophy. A widely quoted line from an early TikTok summed it up as 'My body is a temple on the weekdays, and a watering hole for vodka sodas on the weekends'1. Vice framed it as part of a lineage of Hot Girl Summer spin-offs that already included Hot Girl Walks and Christian Girl Autumn2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (coinage), TikTok (viral spread)
Key People
@CU22PBBY, @__mull
Date
2019

The earliest known use of the phrase appeared on Twitter on July 6, 2019, when user @CU22PBBY posted "hot girl summer is over and feral girl summer is just beginning"2. The tweet riffed directly on Megan Thee Stallion's "Hot Girl Summer," which had dominated online discourse that year. Vice picked up on the term in June 2021, publishing an article titled "The Freedom of 'Feral Girl Summer'" and linking to an August 2019 tweet that also used the phrase2.

But the term stayed relatively niche until early 2022, when TikTok gave it rocket fuel.

How It Spread

On January 10, 2022, TikToker @__mull posted a video judging people who refuse to act like a "feral rodent" on weekends, picking up over 65,000 views2. She kept posting feral girl content through the winter and spring, including a March 6 upload that pulled 612,000 views and a March 16 video predicting Summer 2022 would officially be "feral girl summer," which hit 300,000 views2.

Other TikTokers piled on. On February 23, @horrible.glitter posted a feral girl summer video that reached 189,000 views2. By April, the trend was everywhere on the platform. TikToker @kirakosarin posted about it on April 19, gaining 291,000 views, and @russhmagazine shared feral girl summer icons on the same day2.

The mainstream media crossover came on May 5, 2022, when Rebel Wilson appeared on the Today show and was asked about Hot Girl Summer. Wilson pivoted: "I heard this thing called feral girl summer. It's when you don't care"1. The clip was posted to TikTok and pulled another 30,000 views2.

Later that month, Today hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager fully embraced the trend. At a red carpet event, Jenna told Entertainment Tonight: "It's a feral girl summer and we're leading the charge!" They later discussed it on a segment called "Trend or Pretend," where Jenna described it as speaking to "the wild child that lives inside all of us"1. The Today show published a full explainer article on May 241.

On the same day, the official Twitter account for The Office posted an image of Kelly Kapoor with the caption "Kelly Kapoor: The feral girl summer inspo," picking up over 1,600 likes2.

Platforms

TikTokRedditTwitter

Timeline

2023-01-01

Meme still see steady use

2024-01-01

Feral Girl Summer reached mainstream popularity and media coverage

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

The format is typically a short TikTok or tweet where a young woman explains, in a proud tone, some behavior that violates clean-girl or wellness expectations. Common conventions include drinking Diet Coke first thing in the morning, going down 4am Reddit holes, or partying instead of doing Friday cardio, often illustrated with rat or raccoon imagery1. To use the phrase in a caption, pair a chaotic photo or video with the line 'it's a feral girl summer' or a variation that names your specific vice.

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Frequently Asked Questions