How has your week been? Have you been “very demure, very mindful” in your daily undertakings? Or are you still ensconced in your “brat summer” era? If reading that paragraph made about as much sense as watching Olympic breakdancing (still living rent-free in my head a fortnight later), then worry not: I have spent hours perusing Google and scrolling social media to glean the necessary information, so you don’t have to. Every so often I go down a rabbit hole like this where I try to get a grasp on what is fashionable. Is there any more potent reminder of getting older than the fact there was once a time when you simply knew all of these things effortlessly, as if by osmosis, but alas, no more? Despite my struggles to stay hip (or “mad lit” as my extensive Googling has taught me is possibly the correct contemporary parlance), I can’t help but find it endlessly fascinating how on one level pop culture is evolutionary, yet on another, it is basically money for old rope.
Take “brat summer”. Inspired by the chart-topping singer Charli XCX and her recently released album Brat, the trend is said to be about embracing your chaotic, messy and wild side. Or, in other words, what we Gen Xers simply refer to as “life”.
Read more Susan Swarbrick We all have a favourite comfort food - here's what it says about you All creatures great and small - my summer of insect-themed drama I got a nosebleed, fell in a bush and ran through a swarm of bees So-called “brats” as.