This summer, we’ve found ourselves in an unprecedented era of Brat. Perhaps your daughter is using it as an excuse to drop out of college and start a “choker empire,” or your father is leaving his marriage because your mother doesn’t “try it, bite it, lick it, spit it, pull it to the side and get all up in it.” But how do you characterize a movement that is represented only by the color “pale slime” and now extends to the White House? Soon enough it will be Demure Autumn, but, in the meantime, this guide seeks to answer the question: What is Brat?
Brat is walking down the street with headphones on and eyes closed, knocking over passersby and refusing to say you’re sorry.
Brat is being lazy until 10 P.M., at which point you construct a château using discarded scraps of pleather, finish it by morning, and immediately win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
It’s the Cynthia doll from “Rugrats.”
Brat is a fifteen-year-old writing a best-selling memoir about how she overcame her love-and-fantasy addiction.
It’s hot pants on a cold night and snow pants on a hot night.
It’s checking into a Motel 6 and not leaving until you run a Fortune 500 company.
It’s a real-estate agent in a model condo flat-ironing her extensions until they light on fire, along with the entire building.
Brat is the feeling you get when you wrench open the train doors using a Hulk-like strength you didn’t even know you possessed.
It’s praying to Janeane Garofalo to keep you free from harm.
It’s the way your partner looks at you when you tell them, “I’m not sure I’m capable of love.”
It’s the powerful high that overtakes you when you consume too much Vitamin B.
Brat is using denim as your carpet and carpet as your denim.
It’s starting a rivalry with Angela Merkel—who has no idea who you are and never will—and, every time you see a photo of her, hissing, “Bitch just wants to be me.”
It’s modelling your sex face after Kramer from “Seinfeld.”
It’s moving into a tent in the Fox back lot and refusing to leave until you’re cast in the Britney Spears bio-pic—as Christina Aguilera.
Brat is not going to work for a month and a half, then asking your boss why they seem kind of mad.
It’s the divine awakening that comes with knowing that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
It’s sitting in traffic court for an unpaid speeding ticket and, when told to state your full name, asking the judge whether he’s ever been in a “situationship.”
Brat is what happens when you drop a necklace given to you by the cheating member of your throuple down the garbage disposal.
It’s telling the salesgirl at Chanel, “I deserve this,” before absconding with a single ballet flat that’s not even your size.
Brat is a cat, and maybe a rat, but it is never a dog.
Brat is a toddler being served her dinner and responding, “I didn’t ask to be born.”
It’s calling your brother to tell him about a family tragedy and starting the conversation with, “Look, I’m about to run out of battery, so don’t be freaked out if my phone dies.”
Brat is lying on your deathbed, at a hundred and eight, surrounded by grieving loved ones, and saying, “I’m too young to die.”
Brat is getting to the gates of Heaven, looking around at the cherubs with harps lounging on puffy white clouds, scrunching up your nose, and saying, “It’s giving Hilton Garden Inn, babes.” ♦
