The American Obsession with Europe: Why the "Euro Summer" Myth Needs to End
Culture22 September 2026
AuthorFaraday Gamble
The "Euro summer" trend might look dreamy on Instagram, but it's fuelling a harmful fetishisation of Europe that's damaging local communities and reducing real lives to an aesthetic.
T
hree years ago (or thereabouts). A hot June day in Switzerland, a little stretch of the Danube shimmering in the sun, a book at my side and the last few days of my 'euro summer' closing in.
I'm just about to graduate university, my exams ended in mid-May and two days later I was boarding a plane to Germany with about 7 weeks worth of clothes, ready to travel around some of Western Europe's biggest cities and hidden gems. I've been house sitting and looking after various pets, jumping (via day-long coach journeys) from country to country, Airbnb to Airbnb. I'm buoyed by a line from Mamma Mia: the world is wide and I want to make some memories - and listening to a dedicated playlist that still reminds me of that summer now. I spend my days exploring new towns and cities, rising when I please, eating dinner alone over sunset canals and lying in the sun for hours on end. It's a freeing and magical time, full of books and cultures and a swirl of different languages. I loved it, and yet I can't understand the American obsession with Europe…
Recently, an article sprung up on the popular writing site SubStack, titled "Why Don't European Women Hate Their Bodies", which explored a supposed phenomenon the writer had observed on an unnamed beach in Europe, of women being totally confident and free in their bodies. Suffice to say, it received a litany of backlash, especially with an opening like: "Here's how you tell an American woman from a European woman on vacation in Europe: An American woman will wear a one-piece or a sports bra, and shorts, and the European woman will have an actual triangle covering only her butt crack."
To Americans, Europe and its population seem to exist in some sort of mythical realm, a perfected and polished world. They coined the idea of the "Euro summer", a term now synonymous with this carefree, picturesque and idyllic spend of time, and wax lyrical to anyone who will listen about just how much their time in Europe changed them. They reference a transformative experience just being amongst Europeans, as if we are majestic and mythical creatures.
This idealised version of picturesque coastlines and culture-stuffed cities are far from the reality so many Europeans experience everyday. So vast is the chasm and so fed up with tourists, Barcelona's inhabitants have taken to protest and cruelty to help stifle the choking tourism the city sees each year.
Furthermore, the obsession borders on fetish, belittling the lives people live to an aesthetic or photo dump: The trend of 'nonna-maxxing' a prime example of the pastiche and parody of people's lives, the diluting of our everyday experiences and the mockery of our cultures. It's a dilution of Europe into a single aesthetic, an Instagrammable background as opposed to people's livelihoods and a conflation of everything that makes every village, city or county unique, into one reductive and incorrect stereotype.
Whilst this may not seem harmful to some, this rhetoric is dangerous to so many people's livelihoods and the availability of housing for locals, it drives this consumptionist idea of travelling and suffocates local economies as they fluctuate heavily and grind to a halt with tourism. And this is only for Americans to get home, get on TikTok and create videos in which Europeans are spoken about as if they are another planet entirely.
The lack of free water is bemoaned (despite Britain and many other places in Europe offering this as standard), the people labelled rude and cultures disrespected. In turn, this creates a sense of entitlement, whilst poking fun at our way of life: dangerous for such a large country to do as their lawmakers strip away women's rights that European women still, for the most part, enjoy, taking no lessons in possibly how these differences actually make Europe a great place to live.
Arguably, this mythicising exists as a result of such an expensive travel industry in America, a society that seems to leave the boundaries of the continent less and less. But ultimately, this doesn't just birth stereotypes around Europe, but enforces the entitled and loud stereotype of the American tourist, creates a loathing and a sense of rivalry between cultures; harming everyone in the making.
Europe, however pretty and cultural, is not a utopia to be fetishised or a continent to be conflated and grossly misrepresented.
