Quote of the Day (Lena Dunham, Defining ‘Brat’)

“Brat is walking down the street with headphones on and eyes closed, knocking over passersby and refusing to say you're sorry.”— American writer and director Lena Dunham, “Shouts and Murmurs: A Guide to Brat Summer,” The New Yorker, Sept. 2, 2024

When I was a youngster, if I heard my father refer to me as a “brat,” the last thing I would do was revel in the term.

But this year—and specifically, around mid-to-late summer—“brat” had acquired far different connotations than that of a rotten little kid who needed discipline.

Now, according to Russell Falcon of the Los Angeles TV station KTLA, a “brat summer” “encourages enjoying life as much as you can in spite of the struggles you’re facing.” Or, put another way, according to another online dictionary site: It means “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.”

Heck, in the groundswell of euphoria following Kamala Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, the Veep was being described as “brat.”

Well, baby boomers are likely to react to this new bit of slang with the same impatience voiced by Regina George to one of her breathless hangers-on in Mean Girls: “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”

“Brat” has been hard-wired into boomer consciousness for so long that dislodging it is probably out of the question now. Maybe that is partly why the 50-64 and 65+ age cohorts are also the most immune to the candidacy of Ms. Harris.

I’m afraid for many of these older voters, “brat” is going to fall as flat as “phat.”

(The image accompanying this post, of Lena Dunham at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of The Russian Winter, was taken Apr. 20, 2012, by David Shankbone.)