“No, I never go home, don’t sleep, don’t eat, just do it on repeat, keep (bumpin’ that)”: Charli XCX’s song of the summer, “365”, blasts through my AirPods in the brief intervals between drinks, dates, nights out and birthday parties. I move sluggishly through three-day hangovers and self-imposed sleep deprivation. But I persist; the show must go on.
By the end of every summer, I’m running on fumes. All that’s left in the tank are dregs of lager, half-munched Morley’s chicken burgers and the three to four hours of sleep I treat my body to after a long hard day of partying. My gums bleed from all the nicotine I’ve inhaled, my feet are blistered from sweating into my heels, my legs blossom with bruises of unknown origins, and my bank account… I simply can’t bear to think about it.
Every year, I make the same mistake. Every year, I succumb to summer and oversubscribe myself to parties, drinks, “casual” catch-ups that go on until 3am—and whatever else happens in the London social calendar.
Summer 2024 was made especially challenging by the emergence of “brat summer”—an evolution of the vapid “hot girl summer” (which promoted the pursuit of happiness above all else) of 2019 and the less mainstream (but still feral) “rat summer” of 2022.
Inspired by Charli XCX’s slime-green treatise on modern womanhood, “brat summer” is “dirty, hedonistic, happy and bra-less.” Charli pays tribute to the messy, uninhibited party girl with lyrics like “should we do a little key, should we have a little line?” (“365”) and “You wanna guess the colour of my underwear” (“Guess”). It all feels reminiscent of the 1990s and early 2000s “It girl” culture—think Paris Hilton and paparazzi shots of Lindsay Lohan. It’s messy and feminine, but minus the aggressive diet culture and rampant misogyny.
At first, I was thrilled that the “clean girl” had been superseded by a messier trope. “Brat” is a heathen whose agenda has nothing to do with self-betterment and everything to do with having as much fun as possible. Brat doesn’t “detox” with hot yoga—she sweats out her problems in the club. The only breathwork Brat does involves the inhalation and exhalation of cigarette smoke. And that’s an agenda I found myself getting behind.
That was, until I contracted Brat burnout. I became exhausted by the revolving door of work, pub, football, femme-only sex parties, work, pub—ad infinitum. Marching through these events one after the other, with a lit cigarette in my mouth and mascara running down my face, my last reserves of energy and sanity have been depleted. Brat summer is too much.
With autumn drawing in—and my 25th birthday creeping nearer—I’m somewhat relieved that summer is nearly over. The “365 party girl” lifestyle isn’t sustainable. Particularly for those of us who work 224 days of the year. No one’s writing songs about “141 party girls”. And why should they?
Both the Brat and clean girl archetypes occupy extremes; both are, for the average person, unattainable and unsustainable. Total isolation “to focus on the self” is bad for the soul and Sephora skincare products are bad for the bank balance. Likewise, total, boundless immersion in the world will wear on the soul and partying is terrible for the bank balance (especially at £7 a pint).
I cannot drink consistently without the beer fear creeping in. I’ll fade in and out of days, without regular meals to punctuate the passage of time. My chest will tighten and my brain will unfurl endless to-do lists, spiralling from the dishes to working out to my neglected familial responsibilities to what I want to be when I grow up and what on earth am I doing to get myself there? Huffing poppers never landed anyone a publishing deal, after all.
In short, brat summer is inherently unproductive. It’s hard to make peace with overindulgence as a lifestyle choice when we’re expected to covet self-improvement above all else. Progress, progress, progress. Everywhere I look, people are thrusting themselves into careers or relationships or meticulous self-improvement regimes. Anything to evade the threat of stagnation or—worse–regression. But brat summer is exactly that: living in the moment, seizing the day (and night). I think we were owed a little respite, now and then, from the pressure of modern life. That said, next summer, I’ll try not to take it quite so far. I do want to get that book written!
