Not With a Fizzle but with a Brat

To commemorate and memorialize the death of ‘brat girl summer’ a cultural phenomenon killed by Fox & Friends, heatwaves, and inaccurate fast fashion size charts, I can think of only one Brat that reigns supreme.

Charli XCX’s newest album Brat hit the twenty-somethings girls and gays of New York City like an emergency stop chord during rush hour traffic. Despite my more mellow tastes, I’m a self-admitted indie sad girl purist, the radioactive green phenomenon has been a toxic sludge through my veins; in short, we’re bumpin’ that.

(As a side note, I wonder how many small-town artists filming TikToks in their cars died when Charli’s album dropped, crushing their dreams to have the ‘song of the summer’ or whatever that means.)

This proclaimed Brat Girl Summer has been a twisted haze of sweaty dancefloors, laughter, and being caught in the rain. But as the schools begin to open, the forecasts lower the temperature, and Mariah Carey announces her Christmas tour for November, we just aren’t bumpin’ that like we used to. It would be easy to blame these on the latter summer months ending or the recent announcement of Kamala Harris’s campaign utilizing the Brat motifs, but if we’re being honest, brat summer was a perfect moment encapsulated, unburdened by what has come before.

And while the height of the summer passes, so does some of the cool-girl-mystique of the EDM album. While Glenn Powell splits that apple right down the core, Billie Eilish buys underwear in Tokyo, and Lorde works it out on the remix, the it-gay crowd is subtly looking around for the next thing. It’s like the chart from How I Met Your Mother (an unfortunate intersection of misogyny and an unchecked male perspective), wherein they have a ‘hot-crazy scale’. It’s the Popular-Cool scale, and the more popular something is, the less likely the ‘cool crowd’ will continue to make it cool. Granted, Charli XCX doesn't need a bunch of college students in The East Village or Lesbians in Bushwick to think her album is cool for it to be cool, she’s cool, but the creative machine of Tik Tok clips, Twitter stan accounts, and Spotify charts are beginning to churn with creative control.

So, as we mourn the potential death of the brat summer, we can all look to those in our lives who truly encapsulate the brat lifestyle, and for me, there’s only one. My dog Maggie. Okay, so here’s the thing, I can fundamentally understand the cringe of calling my dog a brat girl, and how that might be the very antithesis of the brat girl aesthetic. However, what is a brat girl? What does brat girl summer mean? Charli herself says a brat means “you’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party… and like does dumb things.”

In an effort of full transparency, I was not going to label my elderly childhood dog a brat, but the more I thought about the specific label- also the cultural implication of the movement as a whole, I couldn’t stop myself. A brat is someone messy, a party animal, someone who’s maybe a little volatile, but the unspoken thread is that a brat is someone who is an effervescent floodlight of carefree grit. A girl’s girl and a gay’s gay if you will, the expression of reality and delusion perfectly combined into one, a Julia Fox type, which I genuinely think might perfectly be found living in the soul of my thirteen-year-old white lab, aptly named Maggie.

Here's the thing about Maggie, she thinks she’s a human. She was the product of an eleven-year-old begging every day for half a year to get ‘a girl dog’ so I could finally have a sister. To this day I don’t know how it worked, although it probably has to do more with the fact that our older dog was turning nine, had health problems, and my father’s inability to live without a pet in the house.

When we got Maggie most of her socialization was with other eleven-year-old girls who fawned over her, played with her, and devoted every ounce of energy to ensuring she was happy. Summers spent teaching her how to swim, throwing balls in the yard, and when it got late gossiping the night away. Maggie caught on quickly to the ritualistic joy of pre-teen girl sleepovers and no one thought anything. When a friend came over, Maggie followed up the stairs and if someone was in the backyard playing Maggie was tagged in. To this day, if three girls show up and sit around a fire, Maggie takes the 4th spot. So, she’s no ordinary elderly lab, she’s actually in her Sex and the City era (definitely a Carrie).

Even now, when I visit people from my childhood, one of the first questions, usually with some trepidation because of her age- is about Maggie. So, for those of you stumbling out of the blue, she’s living her best brat life. She’s this mythical humanoid of so many girl boss origin stories, a blip of neon green running across an otherwise pastel upbringing, she’s so Julia. The perfect intersection of girlish joy, the dance of camaraderie, and a full-on line of coke.

The reality of being a full-time brat doesn’t come without its challenges, an outlandish 365 party girl lifestyle is about being messy, living life with wild abandon. She embraces that challenge freely, chasing after her wants like a luminescent tennis ball dropped from the sky and into a pool, no impulse spared by the chains of normal society. The dogs stop to stare to walk her walk (like a bitch) her brat collar reflecting the sun, blinding everyone who sees her.

If my introspection has proven anything, it’s that a bond between a girl and her childhood dog is an unshakable force of nature, outlasted by no one except potentially Chornobyl radiation. An insufferable relationship in the honeymoon phase, both disgusting and inspiring jealousy from everyone who crosses their path. Maggie is my eternal brat, a messy, brash party girl who inspires unending energy and joy for everyone around to see.

As the summer sun sets on the movement connect back to the brats in your life. The sweet embrace of the stark reality of life for what it is, and not what it can be. The fulfillment despite the fantasy. For me, Brat girl summer calls to the pre-teen saccharine nights spent prank calling your crush, talking shit, and watching R-rated movies intertwined with the concept of a payphone in a club bathroom.