Brat summer isn’t just about cigs and cocaine – it’s whatever you want it to be

It’s hard to remember a time when summer was just a season. For the past few years, the balmy months have been more of a branding exercise than anything else. First came “Hot Girl Summer”, the title of a Megan Thee Stallion track from 2019 that soon became a pithy, catch-all label given to the first summer after lockdown restrictions were lifted in 2021.

Like most things that go viral on the internet, the phrase didn’t actually mean much. It was more of, shall we say, a “vibe”. One that you could just as easily define with a scenic photograph or a bell hooks quote as a bikini selfie or a series of tongue emojis.

Then it was time for “feral girl summer”, which also amounted to very little beyond telling women it was okay not to be perfectly manicured and presentable at all times. It was OK, the great online oracles assured us, to be a little messy and imperfect. A similar set of ideas applied to “rat girl summer” – think feral but with the added pizazz of rodents. The newest seasonal iteration is born from these same ideologies. Introducing “brat summer”, an era for grubby party girls who dance till 8am and sleep in their shoes. It’s the most ubiquitous one yet.

On TikTok, videos explaining “symptoms of a brat summer” have garnered more than 16.3 million views. There are long, detailed tutorials on how to have a brat summer, what to wear in order to make this happen, which lipstick to use, what car to drive, what to drink, how to speak… and so on.

Like “hot girl summer”, the phenomenon came from a musician: the inimitable Charli XCX. The 31-year-old released her sixth studio album, Brat, in June and ever since has been dominating the digital discourse. Maybe it was the sickly green shade of its cover art, adorned only with the word “brat” written in lowercase. It might’ve also been the font; “brat” is written out in the kind of text you might’ve seen flashing up on a computer screen in the early Noughties. Cue nostalgia from a sea of millennials who remember using MSN Messenger. Or perhaps it was just the songs, the majority of which have spawned their own viral memes (“365”), dance videos (“Apple”), and think pieces (“Girl, so confusing”). Confessional, visceral and fully embracing of feminine capriciousness, the album has resonated deeply both within and beyond Charli’s fanbase, all of which adds to brat summer’s stronghold.

Unlike its predecessors, though, all of which existed primarily among those who are extremely online, brat summer has filtered into the mainstream. You can barely spend two minutes on any social media platform without seeing or hearing something about it. Celebrities including Normal People’s Daisy Edgar Jones and Twin Peaks star turned oddly Gen-Z-baiting Kyle MacLachlan have publicly endorsed it. The Green Party even satirised Brat’s album art to encourage voters in the run-up to the general election.

As for what it means, it’s best to start by going to the woman herself. “You’re that girl who is a bit messy and loves to party and maybe says dumb things sometimes,” Charli told TikTok series Off the Record. “She’s honest, blunt, and a little bit volatile. That’s brat.” She went on to tell the BBC’s Nick Grimshaw that, from an aesthetic point of view, the brat summer starter pack would involve “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”. Stalwarts of the era besides Charli herself include actors Julia Fox, Chloë Sevigny, and Rachel Sennott, all of whom starred in the music video for “360”. But the Brat It-girls are a diverse pack, with multiple body types, genders, races, and sexualities represented. Among them are non-binary model Richie Shazam and actor Hari Nef, who in 2015 became the first transgender woman to sign with IMG Models.

Brat summer is old-school hedonism. It’s not caring what anyone else thinks. It’s speaking your mind. It’s late nights. It’s hangovers. It’s leaving social norms at the door. It’s smoking cigarettes as opposed to vapes. In short, it’s just having a lot of fun. That also makes it the antithesis to other summer trends – think “clean girl summer” – that encourage women to spend a lot of money improving their appearance by investing in makeup and hygiene products. Brat summer is about stripping things back to your organic, unfiltered self. And that’s deeply reassuring.

Of course, there are those who don’t agree. Some have argued that this breed of bacchanalia is only available to the young, while others have rolled their eyes at Brat’s endorsement of drug-taking – the lyrics for “365” include “Should we do a little key? Should we have a little line?”

But those people are missing the point. Because having a brat summer isn’t about getting f***ed up, even though that might be how some choose to define it. For starters, the tag “brat sober summer” has more than 6.3 million views on TikTok, and mostly includes videos of people performing dance routines as opposed to drinking and partying. Even the Amish have got involved, for goodness sakes. Then there’s the fact that many of Charli’s self-endorsed Brats don’t really drink themselves. Fox, for example, is a recovering addict and has previously told The Guardian that she’ll “have a glass of wine” if she goes out but that “it’s very rare”.

Another star of the inclusive “360” music video, influencer Emma Chamberlain, has been open about her own nicotine addiction. “It’s not something I ever want to promote,” she said on a recent episode of her Anything Goes podcast. “I was always ashamed of [it].”

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It’s also worth pointing out that Brat is a deeply vulnerable album. Beyond tapping into the cultural zeitgeist, it examines the complexities of womanhood, tapping into subjects such as body dysmorphia, societal pressure, and internalised misogyny. The fact it does so with a sense of relatable chaos makes it all the more powerful as a piece of art. The album – and the brat summer modus operandi – is defined by its verisimilitude. The song that speaks to this more than any other is, of course, “Girl, so confusing”, in which Charli unpicks the rumoured feud between herself and Lorde, who then featured on a remix of the track; cue “let’s work it out on the remix” becoming a viral refrain.

To dismiss brat summer as a partying trend, then, would be myopic. It’s less about getting drunk than it is about rejecting the mundanity of our daily lives and being free. Of course, what that looks like will be different for everyone, because brat summer is nothing if not a celebration of individuality. That makes it something to be embraced. And if you’re turning your nose up at it because you think it doesn’t apply to you, well, you’re completely missing the point. And frankly, you’re also just missing out.