"kamala IS brat," tweeted singer Charli XCX on Sunday, following Vice President Kamala Harris' ascension to the presidential nominee slot left vacant by President Joe Biden. Despite Charli XCX's own advanced age of 31, she was speaking in slang immediately obvious to anyone under 30, especially the girls and the gays: brat is the album of the summer, with a distinctive neon green cover, full of references to Dimes Square podcaster-provocateurs, Julia Fox, party-girling hard, and—somehow, simultaneously—the lady anxiety that sets in when you're on the wrong side of your twenties and have not yet had a child.
Harris' team eagerly turned what they believed to be a pop star endorsement into a branding strategy; the X account "Kamala HQ" (1.1 million followers) adopted the distinctive color, font, and lowercase style Charli XCX's brat to craft their own banner image, reading "kamala hq." Meanwhile, the gay guys of New York City, who received the news of Biden pulling out whilst in their natural habit (Fire Island), quickly made crop tops in the exact same style of brat. A mashup cut of one of Harris' cringiest lines—some anecdote about coconut trees—was set to Charli XCX's song "Von dutch." It has received over 4 million views.
