Call it brat summer or a “femininomenon.” Girls are having their moment.
After the June 7 release of her latest album, “brat,” the 32-year-old English dance-pop star Charli XCX started what has become known as “brat summer.”
The indifference of the album artwork expresses the very nature of what it means to be brat: It’s not a big deal to be nonconforming. A brat is someone who’s a little grunge, a little bit feral. She’s chaotic and cool. The cover features a garish lime-green behind a blurred sans serif font spelling out “brat.”
(The New York Times) "Brat" green, aka hex #8ACE00. The color used in the branding for "brat," the album released by the British pop provocateur Charli XCX won over the internet, and then the summer, and then, at a pivotal moment, an entire presidential campaign.
She’s probably wearing sunglasses and an oversize leather jacket, likely smoking cigarettes or sipping a Diet Coke. Her eyeliner is probably smudged in a way that looks intentional but effortless at the same time.
Deeper, being a brat means embracing your imperfections and being unapologetic for who you are and what you desire. You live your life free of shame. You can hold multiplicity in what you desire. You can be soft and selfish, enjoy life for yourself while also thinking deeply about meaning, feminism and motherhood. Brat culture very intentionally steps away from the male gaze, helping you reclaim parts of yourself only for yourself.
The Bible’s Eve is the original brat. She took a bite of the forbidden fruit and things were never the same again. Contributed to the mortality of all humanity? That’s brat. Unlocked the awareness of good and evil? That’s so brat. She’s the scorned one, but she embraced her imperfections and helped create and redeem our messy humanity. She carried her shortcomings with her and became the mother of all living things.
The album’s cut “Apple” even evokes that apple — the one that Eve tasted that introduced messiness and imperfection into humankind. I imagine Eve of the Bible listening to the lyrics of Charli XCX’s song “Apple,” which feels evocative of the weightiness of Genesis 2 and 3:
“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core
From all the things passed down
From all the apples coming before
I split the apple down symmetrical lines
And what I find is kinda scary
Makes me just wanna drive.”
Historically, Eve has been blamed for any feminine shortcomings. We’re told that because of Eve’s sin, we can never fully trust ourselves because women are sinful and seductive, and we should be fundamentally ashamed. For many women, their shame stems from the ways biblical passages have been misinterpreted, often by male authorities, to keep women in low places.
(Jingyu Lin/The New York Times) Charli XCX in New York on Dec. 23, 2021.
“It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl,” Charli XCX sings in one of her new songs.
Last summer, the release of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie set off what quickly became known as the “Year of the Girl,” when girls embraced the vastness of girlhood and girl culture. They wore lace and ruffles and ribbons and leaned into softness.
Now at last, girls are unapologetically girls. They can be girly or bratty or both. They wear bows in their hair and embrace all the things that they’ve been told to be embarrassed about: softness, sensuality and hyper-femininity among others. These facets of womanhood are often considered frivolous and silly, yet the idea of brat summer helps women feel unashamed. Free of judgment, they can explore the wildness of what it means to be a girl. Alongside Charli XCX, pop culture figures like Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter are unapologetically expressing their deepest desires to be sensual, playful and a little mischievous, for their own sakes.
Rather than viewing Eve as a low character in the Old Testament for eating the forbidden fruit, I want to reclaim her and bring her into the brat fold. Some people want Eve, and all women as collateral, to feel perpetual shame for eating the forbidden fruit. But what if Eve moved forward instead?
Charli XCX has described a brat as “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of, like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things.”
This is the heart of being a brat. Women make mistakes but are able to own up to them and continue to enjoy their lives. Eve needs to be celebrated for her complex and beautiful story because she helped to create our story. We are sure to make mistakes, but we don’t need to be weighed down by them. Our mistakes aren’t our whole story. Eve deserves the same grace.
In the middle of her party girl hits, Charli XCX contemplates the possibility of becoming a mother in the song, “I think about it all the time.”
“’Cause maybe one day I might
If I don’t run out of time
Would it give my life a new purpose?
I think about it all the time.”
She touches on women’s complex and seemingly conflicting desires, acknowledging her fear of missing out on motherhood and that her career feels “so small in the existential scheme of it all.” At no point does she contemplate under the male gaze. Instead, women get to desire multiplicity for themselves, which brings us back to Eve.
Brat summer’s truest message is that women and girls are wonderfully messy, and we can create life. Women have permission to have flaws, to receive redemption, create new life and, like Eve, help redeem others.
(The views expressed in this opinion piece do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)