The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom

Goodbye forever, brat summer. Thanks to you, slime green has joined the viral-color pantheon alongside minion yellow and millennial pink. When our fairy bratmother, the pop star Charli XCX, named her sixth album “brat,” she inaugurated a season of performative abandon and luxe, hedonistic trashiness. “Seeming a little immature, a little selfish, a little nasty, has taken on an air of glamor,” the critic Spencer Kornhaber observed in June. Charli XCX characterized the vibe as “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra.”