Diary of a Gen Z student: Kamala Harris has much better things to offer than 'brat'

Maybe all publicity is good publicity. Picture: Barry Cronin

So, it’s ‘brat’ summer. Charlie XCX declared it with her latest album. And it feels like the entirety of the internet is jumping on the bandwagon.

The ‘brat’ aesthetic is difficult to articulate. It’s a state of being: Sleeping with your make-up on, going braless, having messy hair, living by your vagaries, not worrying about what people are saying about you. These are all things ‘brat’. Everyone on my Instagram feed is having a ‘brat’ summer, including Kamala Harris.

When Charlie XCX tweeted that ‘Kamala IS brat’, it was no surprise that Harris’s campaign leaned into that image. Her campaign has been mimicking Charlie XCX’s ‘brat’ album cover in posts online. And Harris has been lauded for appealing to Gen Z with her ‘brat’ renaissance. But I’m not convinced that this appeal is having the impact on young people that her campaign hopes. A lot of discourse frames Harris as a sort of demi-god among young people, because she speaks ‘our language’ so well. But I’m not sold.

Even before Harris became the democratic presidential candidate, she was all over TikTok and Instagram. The audio from her ‘coconut tree’ speech in 2023 is everywhere. But that’s not necessarily a good thing.

The part of that speech that has become embedded in Gen Z pop culture, ‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you’, is comedy gold for Gen Z. The use of the audio on TikTok really just derides Harris’s speech, mocking her attempt at philosophy.

Her tone becomes so serious at the very moment that the profound point she tries to make fails to land.

Maybe all publicity is good publicity.

But I’m not sure that Harris’s image online is being taken as seriously by Gen Z as people think.

Don’t get me wrong. Many things about her appeal to young voters, much more than being ‘brat’. Her stance on reproductive rights, for example: She is clear about her absolute belief in a woman’s bodily autonomy. She wants stronger controls around access to guns. She wants healthcare to be more accessible.

She takes climate change seriously. That she’s not Donald Trump, is also a major selling point. This is where I find myself coming to the same conclusion: Her campaign is doing itself a disservice by leaning too heavily into what it thinks Gen Z want. Young people don’t want a meme.

I cringe a bit at how Harris is oftentimes depicted on social media. She was described as ‘brat’ for how she dealt with Trump following his claim that Harris had ‘turned black’, when he spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists.

But her handling of Trump was more than ‘brat’. She carefully described Trump as performing ‘the same old show’, exhibiting ‘divisiveness and disrespect’.

Her handling of Trump’s racism was not like sleeping with your make-up on. She was powerful. And it feels a bit flippant to describe Harris as ‘brat’ for that.

I understand why her campaign is embracing the ‘brat’ image. It’s making Gen Z pay attention. Her campaign is being spoken in ‘our language’.

But if I’m honest, when she tries to connect to Gen Z through an album she has probably not listened to, I’m a bit disappointed. It feels like she’s trying to fit into something for the sake of it. It’s an awkward performance.

Young voters are used to being dismissed as apathetic to politics. But that’s not the case. Right now, her campaign is trying to become fluent in Gen Z.

And speaking as a member of Gen Z, it’s the moments where her campaign tries to ‘get on our level’ that it appeals to me least. I think most young people would prefer if she tried to appeal to Gen Z by speaking as if we can understand more than just TikTok.

Because we can.

What Gen Z would really like to see is more attention to meaningful issues in the lives of voters, and less to fleeting Tik Tok trends.

Especially because Harris has much better things to offer than ‘brat’.