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\u201cPeople are now realizing there\u2019s a lot of value in affinity groups and doing volunteer-led initiatives like this,\u201d 25-year-old Cait Camelia,<\/strong> one of the founders of Hot Girls for Zohran, tells Vanity Fair.<\/em> \u201cThe Hot Girl brand has become a little bit of a blueprint.\u201d<\/p>\n Camelia, who explained this wasn\u2019t initially intended to become an organization, was inspired by Hot Girls for Bernie, a hashtag turned grassroots campaign that began trending<\/a> in 2020 when supporters of the Vermont senator rallied online in the lead-up to the Democratic primaries. \u201cBernie Sanders<\/strong> is hot and so am I,\u201d one Twitter user said<\/a> at the time; \u201c#hotgirlsforbernie is a state of mind and a state of being,\u201d wrote<\/a> another.<\/p>\n This blueprint\u2014since adapted and perfected for Mamdani\u2014perhaps even dates back to \u201cCrush on Obama,\u201d the viral 2007 YouTube video featuring a young woman singing about her love for then US senator Barack Obama<\/strong> who called herself an \u201cObama Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Karya Schanilec\/Courtesy of Hot Girls 4 Zohran.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cMore stuff like this will be popping up all the time,\u201d Obama told The Des Moines Register<\/em><\/a> at the time, and he wasn\u2019t wrong. The playbook inspired 24-year-old conservative influencer and journalist Emily Austin,<\/strong> who, after interviewing 67-year-old former governor Cuomo for the debut episode of her new podcast<\/a>, The Emily Austin Show,<\/em> last week, launched a Hot Girls offshoot in his honor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n