Salon.com
f you’re someone who likes to read and frequents places both online and IRL where other people who like to read tend to congregate, the phrase “Hot Girls Read” has probably been on your radar at some point in the last couple of decades. It’s existed at least since the late 2000s. I’ve seen it on many products, in many different presentations — pink-glitter bubble letters on a sticker, loopy black cursive on a tote bag, industrial embroidery on a hat. “Hot Girls Read” isn’t a catchphrase from a movie or show. The designation “Hot Girl” does, however, have a widely acknowledged point of origin. Megan Thee Stallion made it a thing with her 2019 hit “Hot Girl Summer,” and in the wake of the song’s ubiquity, the cultural vernacular was inundated with activities or concepts rizzed up with the addition of “Hot Girl”: “Hot Girl Brunch,” “Hot Girl Yoga,” “Hot Girls Compost,” “Hot Girls Stay Hydrated,” “Hot Girls for Cuomo.”
A growing number of self-described creatives wield legal protections, legitimate and non, as a cudgel against others.
As people began riffing on and iterating it (“Hot Girls Summer is Out. Rot Girl Winter is In,” “Hot Girls Have IBS”), “Hot Girls Read” went from tongue-in-cheek to earnestly empowering; not unlike “Nevertheless, She Persisted” and “Nasty Woman” did. Searching the phrase on Etsy today yields thousands of products bearing the phrase, from T-shirts to window decals to letter-bead bracelets. (The even more specific “Hot Girls Read Books” is presumably for those who don’t want to be mistaken for reading tea leaves or reading the room or reading someone to filth.) So when Allie Rose Co., a small online business selling reading-related products like Kindle covers and bookmarks, announced in a June 2026 Instagram post that it had acquired the trademark for “Hot Girls Read,” it wasn’t well received by the sprawling online community that self-describes as “bookish.”
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https://www.salon.com/2026/07/07/the-trademark-wars-of-influencer-culture/
