An almost epochal shift away from “Hot Girl Summer”, “It Girl”, “That Girl”, “Clean Girl”, and “Coquette” — we are now embracing “Brat Summer”, and I am all too grateful for it.
Charli xcx, singer of the album BRAT describes her vision of a brat as a “girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes,” someone who has “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.”
First, a step back: The internet keeps crafting elaborate idealistic personalities for women to mould themselves into, disguised in desirable aesthetics, turning into popular culture that many women internalise. And I am way, way too tired. It’s ironic how every couple of months, a distinctly new, curated and superficial personality tells you it’s the road to you becoming the most fun, confident and authentic version of yourself, with a hashtag and a “trend”.
The “Hot Girl” wears sexy clothes and attends parties and concerts; the “It Girl” dresses posh and chic; “That Girl” meal-preps, goes to the gym and pilates, journals, eats healthy. But sometimes, I just want to binge on a pizza. And a tub of ice cream right after. And I’m too bloated to wear a mini bodycon dress, so I’ll put on a comfortable pair of sweats.
Off late, wanting to be a “Coquette”, Lana-Del-Rey-core girlie made me invest in pearls, florals, laces, bows and pastels. That’s not enough though. One also needs to visit art galleries, museums and cute cafes to truly embody the aesthetic. If only there were time in this intensely-competitive, capitalistic rat race to indulge in such elaborate leisure everyday.
And I could never even strive to be a “Clean Girl”. My acne-prone skin and curly — often deemed unkempt — hair, weren’t cut out for Hailey Bieber’s dewy makeup and neat slick-back buns.
No matter what personality or era, the women embodying these trends all seemed so flawless and put together, and it always felt as if my disordered life couldn’t fit in any of the boxes. Enter “Brat Summer”, allowing me to be the most real, trashy, unapologetic version of myself. There’s so much solace to be found in Charli’s admittance that she’s “a f*****g mess” too. Brat Summer acknowledges the fact that life isn’t always a bed of roses and that one chooses to have fun regardless.
In ‘I think about it all the time’, Charli expresses her anxieties and apprehensions about the future, particularly motherhood, and on the track ‘Club classics’, she says she’s “gonna dance all night” — a perfectly balanced, realistic but hedonistic ideology that resonates deeply with me.
The beauty of being a brat lies in the freedom it embodies: All we know is that she parties and faces existential dread. The rest of her story is yours to create. This aesthetic is unique because it adapts to you, rather than you adapting to it. As Charli eloquently put it, “If you love it, if you hate it/I don’t fucking care what you think”.
What bothered me so much about these ever-changing digital archetypes, even more than the overconsumption they necessitated, was that they felt terribly performative. Almost as though I was in my very own Truman Show; the camera was watching me the entire time, and I had to put up a good act. It Girl and That Girl in their very names imply that the premise of this persona is to be the centre of attraction and be talked about. More disturbingly, the performance caters to and satisfies not just anyone but an entity in particular: The male gaze.
The Hot Girl is a sex symbol, the It Girl is unique and better than everyone else, That Girl has the dream body what with all her fitness, the Clean Girl wears minimal, natural makeup because men don’t like women being heavily made-up, and the Coquette (literally defined as “a flirtatious woman”) girlie has the virginal naivete men treasure ever so dearly. While all these personalities too have been heavily influenced by the music industry and vice versa (‘Hot Girl Summer’ by Megan Thee Stallion and ‘IT GIRL’ by Aliyah’s Interlude to name a few), BRAT, for the first time, introduces a trope far removed from men and sex — a breath of fresh air that, as The Guardian points out, passes the Bechdel test (when two women have a conversation about anything but men).
The emergence of “brat summer” has coincided with, in both time and concept, a trend towards ugly fashion: Varied aesthetics and disparate elements coming together to design intentionally unappealing outfits.
So I know that I could pair my long white skirt from my coquette era, with the shirts from my “it girl” phase, and my outfit would slap today. Perhaps, this swing towards ugly fashion may be popular precisely because it defies traditional beauty standards, embraces comfort and confidence in rejecting conventional attractiveness, and provides a respite from the dreadfully unsettling male gaze.
This is a reduction of women’s identities to marketable commodities — a problem inherent to the trope-ification of women to begin with, to which Brat Summer is no exception. By promoting a singular narrative, the internet diminishes women’s individuality dismissing the wide spectrum of experiences and expressions they embody, leading to pitifully shallow representations of women in media and online spaces.
The “brat” trope, with its focus on partying and rebellion, may not resonate with and be accessible to everyone, perpetuating a sense of liberation that is exclusive. This is why it’s imperative that a trope remain married only to the idea and spirit, and none of its paraphernalia.
If Truman could tell that his life and identity were being dictated by a gaze, so can we. Brat summer is how I escape the relentless tide of waking up as another unauthentic perfect person to please the male gaze yet another way. For the first time in a long time, I’m choosing to be “a little bit crazy, a little bit wild, a little bit free.”
The writer is a student of political science at Ashoka University and is currently interning at The Indian Express
