Because it’s sooooo relatable to do a little key, have a little line, and then send off bombs to genocidal leaders. Throw your hair up into a messy bun, eat last night’s cold chippy, maybe have a bit of a melt down – and then crack on with more austerity cuts.
The Beginnings of Brat Summer
Have you had a brat summer? What started out as frankly genius marketing for an incredible album by Charli XCX has now spiralled out of control. Being brat is cool, sleazy, trendy and fun, and I’m not talking about the album of the same name, I’m talking about the Brat campaign. The Brat album itself is an entire other topic – it perfectly sums up life as a woman. Some days are indeed ‘so confusing’ and other days we do feel bratty; we feel good and we feel inspired. But this album means more than that. Brat has taken off as a movement, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community and for women. It’s a safe space online, and in real life, for people who don’t fit the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic to feel good. It allows women to celebrate their authentic selves and party. But this is beginning to change.
What began as a relatively niche online community of fans has spread globally to be one of the most well known marketing ploys in recent years. With a remarkably basic album cover and simple content marketing tactics, the brat green is now noticable everywhere. But that is the point, and that has always been the point. Now brat is everywhere, and even as a huge Charli xcx fan, I don’t think all of this is a good thing.
Politics and Music
Brat has been picked up by politicians globally as a campaign tactic in order to win over young voters. Dear Politicians: you are not ‘brat’ unless your policies and political values benefit us, the young people, in particular minority groups. As discussed, Brat is a movement started primarily by the LGBTQ+ community, so how dare centrist/right wing politicians who, have no intentions of improving the lives of the young, use this as a marketing tactic for their own gain. Whilst it is incredibly important to get younger people interested in politics, using music trends to seem cool is not the way to go about it. To get young people on your side, scrapping university tuition fees, abolishing the two-child cap, and investing and improving state education is a better way to do it. Having liberal democrat MPs quoting song lyrics on television is not the way to go about this.
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An unfortunate poll by IPSOS found that the UK public thought that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is ‘the UK’s most Brat politician’, followed by Reform leader Nigel Farage. Taking a fierce, feminist album and comparing it to debatably two of parliament’s sexist politicians is frankly an insult. Politicians who have done nothing but ridicule and otherise minority groups including the LGBTQ community, who are behind the Brat movement. Dear Politicians: you are not ‘brat’ unless your policies and political values benefit us, the young people, in particular minority groups. Applying the term to politics simply makes no sense, especially considering Boris Johnson is definitely the least Brat person alive. In his 2001 book “Friends, Voters, Countrymen,” Johnson compared gay marriage to bestiality, writing that “If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.”
You cannot manufacture a likeable persona for politicians who have been openly homophobic – by using a term popularised by the LGBTQ community. Leave good music far, far away from unlikable politicians, and focus on getting young people on your side through writing manifestos and implementing policies which appeal to us.