Festivals: Season or Lifestyle

April through October: Typically thought of as sweltering summer months, a slight reprieve from school, or for a select few it is known as festival season. For those that are uninvolved in this subculture, “festival season” is merely a strange distraction from normal summer life. It completely overtakes shopping trends, Instagram feeds get flooded with festival-proof makeup tips, and coating bodies in glitter is seen as normal. This is the time of year that any basic, trend-obsessed female digs out their flower crown and paisley pants and embodies their inner Woodstock loving, hippie-trippy mentality. For these poor souls, festival season really is just a season. Festival hopping, headliner chasing hopefuls flock from far and wide just to push up to the front row of the year’s trending artists to capture the perfect Insta-worthy shot. These are the ones who see this time of year as festival season.

The festival lifestylers are the subspecies of human who wait with bated breath as they refresh webpages waiting for lineups to be announced and ticket sales to start. They are the ones who can be spotted any given day sporting a t-shirt, wristband, or bumper sticker of their most recent concert conquest. The ones who bring trends like glitter parts and (adult) light up shoes to their campuses, only to be immediately be taken over by trendy srat stars. These are the ones who live and breathe the festival mentality. Pushing and shoving through herds of people in sweltering heat is not exhausting, it is exciting. To them, festival-ing is about more than Pinteresting outfit ideas from Urban Outfitters, more than recreating Jenner sisters’ hipster trends, and having a fire post-festival Insta game is just an added perk, not a sought after goal. Standing front row of a multi-platinum artist’s concert can easily be described as a near religious experience, their ultimate form of natural Ecstasy.

Festival season is more than an annual string of jealousy inducing concerts. It is a place that turns strangers into family, where sharing a sip of water is equivalent to breaking bread at the Holy Table. No compliment will be more genuine than the girl standing in front of you commending you on the lasting power of your face paint and three-barrel hair crimps. No man will be more chivalrous than the one helping to fend