Over the last several weeks I have only been thinking about two things. First, microhistory, with my book releasing in a couple of days (read here); second, for “recreation”, the show The Summer I Turned Pretty, which has led me to (mentally) analyse its gendered reception among women in their 30s (also me; also as an academic, I can’t help the constant critique).

So here are the two lines of thought spilling into one another, forming a stream of absurdity.

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The slowness we crave

One of the most illuminating things about microhistory is its ability to interpret life slowly. In other words, to linger over feelings, gestures, contradictions, and silences that grand historical narratives often erase. As one microhistorian explains:

‘Slowness’ calls for creativity: sensitive, imaginative contemplation of phenomena concerned with people’s everyday lives. Slow is the watchword of a range of movements in the arts, architecture, spatial consciousness and studies of time, reflecting individual and collective awareness of the quality of life: how to resist that perception of reality which demands quick responses — glib and shallow statements, generally based on some momentary instinct: a straight line from A to B, consumption that prioritizes speed (‘fast food’) and maximum calories in the minimum time, spaces providing low-maintenance comfort and convenience, looks that hide people’s soft spots.

Therefore, slowness values what unfolds over time: the hesitant steps, the unfinished thoughts, the longing that doesn’t resolve into action but lingers like a scent, a memory, a regret. This slowness is a way of honoring lives that are too easily dismissed as ordinary, indulgent, or emotionally complicated.

That is why I find myself turning to TSIP, not only as a show (and a novel) about adolescent longing, but as an archive of female desire; and a site where many women, particularly those in their 30s, are finding an unexpected refuge. Watching it feels like hitting pause in the fast-moving scroll of digital life. It is a world that moves at the pace of emotion, not productivity. It is one where someone sits quietly, blushes, overthinks, stares at a summer horizon, and lets life unfurl without performance metrics.

In that sense, it is no coincidence that women who are juggling careers, relationships, and the relentless pace of social media, not to mention the society at large, are gravitating toward this show and its narrative as their most esteemed “guilty pleasure” (more on this “guilt” below).

In a world where urgency is rewarded and introspection is a luxury, a show that allows for dreamy longing, awkward silences, and emotional meandering becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a space where women are allowed to feel without immediately having to fix, solve, or move on.

For many women in their 30s, watching TSIP has become a way of reclaiming that slowness. It is a reminder that desire doesn’t have to be resolved quickly, that confusion doesn’t have to be corrected immediately, that joy can exist without ambition attached to it. It requires watching with affection, not critique (though clearly I have failed at it).

The nuances of female desire

Additionally, what is most rare—and therefore most meaningful—is how the show ‘lingers on’ complicated female desire. The protagonist, Belly, is not a simplified “good girl” nor a rebellious “bad girl”. She is confused, torn, guilty, and yet unapologetically alive in her desire for two brothers at once. If you do not watch the show, yes, you read that right.

That emotional complexity, which is so often flattened or moralised in mainstream narratives, is what makes the story feel authentic to viewers who have lived such contradictions.

Women’s desire is rarely treated with the same nuance. I am in no way generalising but in most media, women are brought under scrutiny for wanting pleasure beyond normative expectations—with themes of marital duty, motherhood, career success, and now romanticised single-hood, looming large. The quiet ache for companionship, self-worth, or simple joy—of eating peaches by the roadside; the watchers know what I mean—is often dismissed as frivolous.

And it is here that microhistory, as a frame of reference, with its focus on the textures of everyday life, too reminds us that these desires are not incidental, but they are central to understanding how people live, love, and survive in larger worlds; in contemporary times, the patriarchal and capitalist worlds.

On supposed “guilty-pleasure”

What struck me most, as I watched the show and saw people’s reaction to it on the internet, is how women in their 30s are calling watching this coming-of-age show a “guilty pleasure”. Why guilty? Why is it that women feel entitled to pleasures only when they cloak them in guilt? The guilt is not about the show, I am sure, but about enjoying something that asks nothing of them. It is about allowing oneself to revel in emotion without productivity as proof of worth.

I wonder: do men have guilty pleasures? Perhaps not in the same way. Men’s pleasures, such as sports, are rarely framed as indulgent. They are framed as earned, deserved, or—brace your hearts—natural. When a man watches a game for hours, it is not called a guilty pleasure; it is called passion or fandom. But when a woman watches a teen romance series, she has it ingrained in her that she should be doing something more “meaningful”. Unfair!

The pleasures women seek are policed because they are seen as extravagant, unnecessary, or excessive. The very fact that we name something a guilty pleasure signals how little entitlement we feel toward our own joy.

What is more, this distinction is also mirrored in Belly’s internal guilt. She is torn between desire and restraint, between what she feels and what she believes she ought to feel. The fact that her longing (and Conrad’s now infamous yearning, of course) is narrated with such tenderness is what makes the story feel so close to real life; and why so many female viewers feel seen, even when that seeing is couched in supposed guilt.

A microhistory of feeling seen

Let us reflect a bit more on how watching TSIP has become, for many women, a way of feeling seen. I want to go so far as to say that the show is an ‘archive’ (historian, at work) of tender, messy, contradictory emotions; and in comparison, microhistory too teaches us that the small, the hesitant, the unproductive are not signs of weakness but are clues to how people live in the world. It is in the pauses, the blushes, the quiet confusion, and the longing for something beyond ambition where life (and history of everyday life) hides its softest truths.

The show’s popularity among women in their 30s is, therefore, not accidental. It is a slow invitation to inhabit desire without apology. It is an acknowledgment that love isn’t linear, that longing isn’t shameful, and that pleasure is not a prize but a right.

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In this sense, let me be unapologetically absurd and say, that watching TSIP is not trivial—it is historical. It is an act of reclaiming time, feeling, and the right to desire without any guilt whatsoever.