Summer is no longer just a season... it's a cultural trend

Olivia Petter on the influence of Charli XCX's viral album

It's hard to remember a time when summer was just a season.

For the past few years, the balmy months have been more of a branding exercise than anything else. First came "Hot Girl Summer", the title of a Megan Thee Stallion track from 2019 that soon became a pithy, catch-all label given to the first summer after lockdown restrictions were lifted in 2021.

Like most things that go viral on the internet, the phrase didn't actually mean much. It was more of, shall we say, a "vibe". One that you could just as easily define with a scenic photograph or a bell hooks quote as a bikini selfie or a series of tongue emojis.

Then it was time for "feral girl summer", which also amounted to very little beyond telling women it was okay not to be perfectly manicured and presentable at all times. It was OK, the great online oracles assured us, to be a little messy and imperfect. A similar set of ideas applied to "rat girl summer" - think feral but with the added pizazz of rodents. The newest seasonal iteration is born from these same ideologies. Introducing "brat summer", an era for grubby party girls who dance till 8am and sleep in their shoes. It's the most ubiquitous one yet.

On TikTok, videos explaining "symptoms of a brat summer" have garnered more than 16.3 million views. There are long, detailed tutorials on how to have a brat summer, what to wear in order to make this happen, which lipstick to use, what car to drive, what to drink, how to speak... and so on.