My daughter started High School this past Monday and, asking her which kids have changed, who looks different, etc, she said “And everybody says I glowed up this summer.”
“Glow up?”
“Yeah, that’s when you come back to school, looking different, more mature…” waves her hand around her face… “Glowing up.”
I love the phrase. Wonder why it took mankind all these years to come up with it. So my question is: is this a new idiom or have I somehow missed it these past 49 years?
Not heard it but assume it’s a creative/poetic derivative of ‘growing up’, so could reasonably have originated in rap lyrics.
Fwiw, Google shows it has rap connections - a Japanese youtube vid has 1.2 million views.
I guess it ties in with Romeo and Juliet / that teenage ardent / fertility state of … chaos.
Agree, a nice phrase.
I have a long running project I’ve discussed here and there that involves eliminating all the unnecessary pilot lights, standby indicators and generally useless illumination around my house, so that dark means dark and not “bridge of the Enterprise at night.”
I call it the Glow to Hell project.
I have heard ‘glow’ associated with maturing young women. Forgive me for suggesting this, it sometimes refers to a young woman becoming sexually active.
… or demonstrably fertile.
It’s funny, I actually listen to KOHH despite not knowing japanese (the song mentioned by up_the_junction ) and I initially assumed it was a reference to the glow at the end of a joint when you inhale. I’d never heard it anywhere else, but I’m also not a kid on the edge of new slang so…
Anyway, urban dictionary tells me that it’s a slang term that came into play sometime in the summer of last year (the hip hop video came out months later) and is exactly what’s described: the maturation of a person into someone “fine”. However, I see plenty of examples that include a photo comparison of a boy looking kind of dorky and then looking all-put-together, with a nice shirt, a nice haircut, and a matured jawline. So I don’t think it’s only about girls.
ETA: The actor Matthew Lewis in Harry Potter is probably the most obvious example of a boy “glowing up”
No offense taken, TriPolar. We talked a bit about this phrase - I mentioned “glowing” in terms of health and pregnancy, which Sophia knew already. Her and her mom remember the phrase being pretty recent to them, buttressing Macca26’s reference.
Wow! Reading the above makes the exchange seem so tranquil.
Sophia is 14 so the conversation was more like this:
“I don’t think I heard that phrase before.”
“Really, dad? It’s been around since forever.”
“OK… what is ‘forever’ in this reference?”
“We were saying this last year!”
“OK, I just never heard of it. I’ve heard of ‘glowing’, meaning ‘good health’ or ‘really really pregnant’, but I like …”
“Dad! Do we have to talk about this?!? Do you have any idea how distracting it is to study Latin while your father is discussing pregnancy?”
Good times. 
Mention to her that the latin-oid word for “pregnant” is “gravid.”
'Cos that’s the DAD thing to do…
Her description makes it sound like it just means “grown up.” But Urban Dictionary suggests it means “grown up and become pretty/attractive/hot.”
I say suggests because there’s not really a straightforward definition. They’re more generic and indirect than the example sentences.
I’m impressed that the term doesn’t bother you. Most guys I know freak out when their daughters are first thought of in this way.
The Glow to Hell Project is a fantasy novel title waiting to happen.
Well ya’ know, years ago women were said to glow, which was a euphemism for sweating(a must UN-ladylike thing to do). Logical outcome? Extension? Projection?
Naw, it’s no big deal. Sophia is in the “boy band and cute YouTube stars” stage of her life. She’s had a few boys interested in her, which is a complication (her word) she doesn’t want right now.
As her father, it’s probably better for her development and ego (not to mention social status) to know that boys her age find her attractive then it is for her to think I’m going to fly into some idiotic, stereotypical rage because some 15yo boy thinks she’s cute.
Good on ya. But I do want to clarify I didn’t mean that when I referred to the other guys I knew. I don’t know anyone who goes into a rage. They’re just pensive and uncomfortable for a while.
This is so refreshing to hear, John. What a glown-up dad you are.
Here in San Antonio there there is a lot of “…anybody looks at my daughter and I’m going to shoot them” comments from the other fathers of my daughters friends. And the difference between expectations between girls and boys, especially in the Hispanic culture, is quite striking. For example, Sophia has a number of friends who still aren’t allowed to go on sleepovers, even though their younger brothers are. This results in a LOT of discussion in our house about differing expectations between men and women, and Sophia has definitely entered the stage in her life where she is going to notice ANYTHING that smacks of “anti-girl.”
That’s what I meant by “stereotypical rage” exhibited by fathers. It is something I do see here and it’s like being in an 80s sitcom at times.
I’ve only ever heard “glow” as applied to pregnant women and as a euphemism for sweating women, which is apparently a bad thing in some groups.
I bet she thinks (as much as teenagers can) that you rock. And I’m in east Texas, so it’s pretty rampant and annoying here as well. I never could stand being treated like some special snowflake that needed protecting and I certainly wouldn’t have been happy about any obvious double standards like that. Yeesh.
Perhaps it just means “grow up” as someone posted above, while another poster mentioned a possible Japanese connection.
From my experience, many Japanese have trouble distinguishing the difference in pronunciation between “r” and “l”. Wikipedia explains:
I’m channeling MilliCal, my now 19-year-old daughter, on this. She says this is recent phrase, maybe not all that well-known, and means a girl who has grown up to be very attractive. You wouldn’t use this for a guy.
Me, 60 and not tied into the community, I haven’t heard this. Nor has Pepper Mill, who teaches Middle school, but has been off al summer.
As for her Dad, she has always been beautiful. 
Good to know her girlfriends think so too.