The Brat-ification of Kamala Harris

Charli XCX’s Brat is technically a collection of nightclub bangers celebrating female hedonism, but since the album’s release last month, it’s also become something of a lifestyle, at least for the chronically online. To be a brat, in XCX’s view, is to be aggressive and cheeky and wholly unexpected, like the lime-green color of her album’s cover. A brat should exude the je ne sais quoi of the famous-but-not-A-list women—Julia Fox, Rachel Sennott, Chloë Sevigny—she features in the music video for her song “360.” It is, as XCX explained in a TikTok:

That girl who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it. It’s very honest; it’s very blunt—a little bit volatile, does dumb things, but, like, it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.

None of that may sound like an appropriate description of Kamala Harris, but on Sunday, XCX posted on X that the vice president “IS brat.” And of all the endorsements Harris has received so far for her presidential campaign since Joe Biden announced that he’s dropping out of the race, this one, courtesy of a British pop star, seems to have ignited Harris’s supporters online the most. The candidate’s campaign has adopted the Brat aesthetic on social-media profile pages, and the internet is practically overrun with Brat-soundtracked edited videos of Harris. It’s not unusual for a White House hopeful’s team to try to tap into the parlance of younger voters, but as my colleague Charlie Warzel observed, the deluge of memes, many of them awash in Brat’s chartreuse shade, has fueled a remarkable grassroots-like enthusiasm for Harris. I’ve encountered what feels like an endless parade of Brat-Harris remixes on X, Instagram, and TikTok; I’ve seen the video of her talking about falling out of a coconut tree more times than I can count.

Still: Is Harris “brat”? As a person and politician, not really. The potential Democratic Party nominee is not a “3-6-5 party girl” with a “city sewer slut’s” vibe, which means the sudden rise in Brat-related Harris memes is in part just the internet doing what the internet always does: combining what’s trending for maximum impact. But in some ways, the answer to that question doesn’t matter. The essence of “brat” is not defining people as such; it’s being simultaneously provocative and vulnerable—a quality that XCX perhaps sees in Harris and her campaign.

Take the most surprising part of Brat, the album: Despite its club-ready beats and confrontational attitude, many of the songs perform a sleight of hand, their lyrics earnestly delving into XCX’s worries even as her voice conveys total confidence. She sings about how she can’t help but compare herself with another artist in “Girl, So Confusing.” She contemplates whether she can ever start a family, given her career, in “I Think About It All the Time.” She’s jealous of and paranoid about other people’s success in “Sympathy Is a Knife.” Female swagger, to XCX, comes with insecurity, because no matter how much bravado she displays, she must navigate overwhelming societal standards and expectations for her behavior. Brat, then, is about how hard it is to be a brat—to project untouchability and ambition in a world that relentlessly questions successful women.

Harris certainly fits that mold; female politicians in particular are scrutinized not only for their ability to lead but also for their so-called likability and family values. In 2020, my colleague Megan Garber predicted that Harris would have to “contend with media that still doesn’t know what to make of a woman who aspires to power and refuses to apologize for the aspiration.” Though it’s not a political record, XCX’s Brat captures that conundrum perfectly.

[Read: The ‘Espresso’ theory of gender relations]

But what’s been particularly fascinating to watch is the rapid embrace of Harris as Brat-coded. Rather than reject a political campaign’s transparent attempt to connect with younger voters—the typical response when corporations or government officials attempt to jump on a meme bandwagon—the target demographic appears to be happily creating more memes, helping maintain Harris’s online visibility while the candidate works to establish her platform ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention. Crucially, XCX herself sparked the connection, while Harris has not acknowledged the memes directly, publicly interacted with XCX, or tried to incorporate Brat language into her talking points. Instead, Harris’s campaign has leaned into Brat for her, a move that would be considered cringeworthy if dorkiness weren’t seen as an asset these days. Harris is the punch line and appears to be in on the joke. She can be seen as trying too hard and being too casual about the social-media chatter. The effect is a strategy that feels just uncool enough to be cool, obviously calculated but also creative—and genuinely funny. (See also: the “Hello Senator Bennet” video.)

In other words, this is not another instance of “Pokémon Go to the polls” or a scripted skit with a Hollywood actor. That pundits on CNN are having trouble explaining the phenomenon, that the brat-ification of Harris is confusing anyone not suffering from online brain rot, that the resurfacing of Harris’s own gaffes is involved in the meme-making process—all of it is injecting a youthful energy into an election cycle that, until last weekend, was dramatically lacking in youthfulness. Of course, virality is no guarantee of victory, and no meme can capture the stakes of this presidential race or deliver the nuance needed to explain policy—yet Harris’s team has made the risky choice to indulge a niche pop-culture obsession anyway. Doing so reflects the chaotic nature of this election and, for better or worse, simply could not be more brat.