Somehow, summer 2021 has come to a close (hello, sad girl fall!), so we’re going to take a look back at all the major things that happened this summer that you probably already forgot about, because this summer went by way too fast.
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The return of Bennifer
Who would have thought, after more than a decade of dating (and marrying) other people, the “it” couple of the early 2000s, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, would get back together and stir up the exact same kind of media storm they did back in the day?
It was the summer’s most unexpected re-coupling, and it somehow turned out to be the re-coupling that we all needed.
Thank you, Bennifer.
We said ‘goodbye’ to ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’
OK, not really, since the Kardashians are getting a new show on Hulu, but we did say goodbye to the show that introduced us to Kim K and her family: “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
It was the show that started it all. We saw the marriages, the divorces, the babies and, most importantly, the memes that were created.
Where would we be as a society if Kim Kardashian never menacingly said “it’s what she deserves” all those years ago?
It truly felt like the end of an era, and it will go down in reality TV history.
We tried freeing Britney
The Free Britney movement has been chugging along during almost all of 2021, but things really came to a head when Britney Spears finally testified to a judge about the conservatorship she’s been under for more than a decade.
The details were truly horrifying, but you couldn’t go anywhere without people talking about freeing Britney. From social media to the news, it seemed like almost everybody was supporting the pop star.
In early August, Spears’ father, Jamie Spears, announced that he was going to step down as Britney’s conservator. While it is a step in the right direction, Spears has a few more legal battles to go until she is fully free of her conservatorship.
‘Friends’ reunited
It’s the one where they reunited!
And by the way, we’re talking about the cast of “Friends.” We didn’t get a reunion episode with updates about the beloved character’s lives, but the cast got together on a recreation of the show’s set and reminisced about the good ole days.
Was it everything that diehard “Friends” fans have been wishing and asking for, for years? No.
But it was sweet, cute, fun and just what we all needed.
Simone Biles reminded us that she’s not superhuman after all
As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (even though, yes, it’s 2021) got started, it was all eyes on Simone Biles. The gymnast was expected to become the most decorated Olympic gymnast ever.
Turns out, when you put that much pressure on an insanely talented athlete to be nothing short of perfect, they can sometimes crumble -- and physically cannot compete. As we all saw, that’s what happened to Biles.
Biles had to pull out of most of her events at the Olympics because she was experiencing the “twisties,” a thing where she can’t twist her body while performing a stunt because of stress and anxiety.
While it was devastating to see Biles in this position, we were reminded as a society that perhaps we put too much pressure on individuals to be their absolute best.
