For the terminally online, the word of the summer was brat. Forever open to a dose of free-spirited rebellion, the interwebs could not get enough of gen Z’s latest term for a brash and confident woman with a carefree attitude who enjoys partying and expressing her opinions and sexuality.
The word brat spiked on social media at the start of the summer when the British hyperpop star Charli XCX released her album of the same name. Not long after the album hit number two in the UK charts and number three in the United States, Kamala Harris was named the Democratic candidate in the upcoming US presidential election. At 1.29am on 22nd July, the popstar posted on X that “kamala IS brat”. The message immediately went viral, gaining nine million views within four hours. To date it has more than 55m.
Harris’s campaign team was quick to piggyback on the popstar’s global success, and a new form of “popitics” was born. Her social media accounts were immediately rebranded in the style of Charli XCX’s album cover, with “kamala hq” appearing in the same pixelated typeface on a background of “brat green” (think slime green, or Billie Eilish’s hair colour five years ago). The whole brat discourse left Donald Trump uncharacteristically speechless.
So how did a word for a spoilt child end up being a term of female empowerment? In the 1980s, brat referred to an adult who enjoyed a rowdy, fun-loving lifestyle (remember the Hollywood Brat Pack). At the turn of the 21st century the term was used by MGA Entertainment to market Bratz, a brand of sexualised dolls, as a competitor to Mattel’s Barbie. This 2024 Brat Summer might just be a reaction against last year’s Barbiecore Summer, with its pink, playful style, and clean girls espousing a healthy lifestyle of journalling and yoga.
As a specifically negative term for women, however, brat most likely entered mainstream language the same way much of today’s slang does: via pornography. Brat has been adopted into the world of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) to describe a badly behaved submissive who enjoys being dominated and punished. It has since spawned an entire subgenre of “brat porn” videos. When the word re-entered mainstream slang, it was reclaimed by young women in a more positive light.
But is Kamala Harris really brat? On so many levels, she fails the brat aesthetic. She doesn’t have a sleazy indie style. She’s not dishevelled, chaotic or even slightly unhinged. No one could imagine Harris donning the brat summer essentials, as described by Charli XCX: “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra. That’s all you need.” A brat is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then who also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of like parties through it. She’s very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile, does dumb things, but is brat, you’re brat. That’s Brat!”
At the beginning of September, Charli XCX posted “goodbye forever brat summer”, but she knows that brat goes deeper than fashion. The brat vibe is brazen. It urges women to embrace and proudly express their authentic selves, celebrating their insecurities as well as their confidence. It encourages them, as gen Z puts it, to do it for the plot—to give something a try because you only live once. That captures bratcore and a brat future that might just live longer than a single summer.
