Kamala Harris is embracing 'brat summer.' It could be cool or cringe. It's a fine line.
The memes started flooding in weeks ago. Before President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee, coconut trees, "brat summer" and Venn diagrams had already become synonymous with the Harris' campaign − even before there was a true Harris campaign.
If you're unsure why "kamala IS brat," or what that even means, you're not alone. We can explain it all. But even among voters who are fully clued in on these viral moments, there are those warning Harris not to lean too deep into the memes. There’s a fine line between "cool" and "cringe" and for a woman, that line may be even finer.
"There is the stereotype that women are not inherently funny people," explains Leora Tanenbaum, author of "I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet." Plus, she cautions, "you can so easily be accused of trying too hard to be likable, which is what 'cringe' is."
'Kamala IS brat,' Charli XCX declared, and Harris heard loud-and-clear
So what's going on?
On July 3, a "von dutch brat coconut tree edit" was posted to X, formerly Twitter. The clip was comprised of some of Harris' most quoted moments with lime-green flashes and the word "brat" interspersed, in reference to Charli XCX's "BRAT" album, which is having a moment mostly thanks to Gen Z fans who have turned it into an aesthetic. The original post of the clip earned a staggering 3.6 million views and subsequent tweets and shares have earned millions more.
On Sunday, Charli herself solidified Harris' "brat status" with a simple tweet: "kamala IS brat."
In a nod to young voters, Kamala HQ leaned into the meme and rebranded on X with a new header − a neon green background reading “kamala hq” in the style of the “BRAT” album cover.
The Harris campaign profile also updated its bio to read “providing context,” a reference an oft-quoted moment from remarks she made in May 2023. (While speaking about how “everything is in context,” she shared a quote from her mother, "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.")
Another viral moment for Harris stemmed from her love of Venn diagrams, and on Sunday night, Kamala HQ posted an illustration of their own. The Venn diagram shows Biden HQ in one circle, Harris HQ in another, and "holding Trump accountable" overlapping between the circles in the middle.
In another nod to Gen Z, on TikTok Monday, the Harris campaign account called for a "femininomenon," using Chappell Roan's viral song of the same name.
Kamala Harris' gets a warning: 'Don't be like Hillary'
For the most part, the Harris campaign's posts on the Kamala HQ account are being praised and well-received. Young voters appreciate that she gets it and is seemingly laughing with them, but plenty are also warning her not to go too far with the joke. Among the good-natured responses, some cautioned: "Don't be like Hillary."
During her bid for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, in an effort to reach millennial women, appeared on a 2016 episode of the sit-com "Broad City" making a short, slow motion cameo in which co-creators Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer look to her in awe before freaking out. The episode, which Jacobson later claimed was not meant to make a political statement, was mocked by viewers and media outlets.
One user surmised in a tweet, "brat is best when fun and mean (Julia Fox! Emma Chamberlain!). This is dangerously close to Hillary on Broad City. We must pull back before it's too late."
Harris first attempted to connect with young voters by swapping heels for Converse and Timbs during the 2020 presidential election. "Laced up and ready to win," she wrote in a September 2020 Instagram post with a video of her stepping off a plane in her chucks. The pushback was swift. "I had some issues with Kamala’s record, but then I saw that she wears chucks so now I know she's super chill," one commenter quipped.
But the recent memes have come with little input from Harris up until this point, and that's a good thing. They're essentially serving as "free PR" for her campaign.
Yet some caution that once she gets in on the joke, young people may start to find it lame. Others have expressed that having her team join in on the memes takes away from the fun — as if a bunch of people sat in a room asking "what gets the young people going?" without a young person in sight.
Tanenbaum says there may also be a bit of sexism in some of the reactions, even if it's unintentional. We don't often see examples of women in prominent positions of power joking around and by doing so Harris is going against "this dominant sexist stereotype of being a humorless woman."
When it comes to joking about Kamala Harris, language matters
Throughout former President Donald Trump's presidency and current campaign, clips from his rallies, speeches and debates have often been taken out of context and laughed at online. Following the assassination attempt, there were a slew of inappropriate memes about Trump. Still, the jokes rarely, if ever, mention his gender.
Meanwhile, amid the rush of support for Harris' campaign, misogyny has crept through. One tweet from Sunday afternoon, with more than 1.3 million views, reads, "Kamala sucks don’t get me wrong but I do think it would be good for the first female president to be a wacky b----." And that's far from the only tweet of its ilk.
Comedy can serve as a distraction when the current reality seems "grim." However, the language we use, even when making a joke, matters, according to Tanenbaum.
When a women is called crazy, it is often irrespective to her traits or actions, but reflective of a broader culture that categorizes women as overreactive and irrational. Trump, while on the campaign trail, has referred to Harris as "crazy" and "nuts."
Research on the "double-bind dilemma" for women in leadership found that women can be seen as competent or likable — but not both. Women therefore spend additional time proving their competency and compensating for stereotypical male leadership traits.
"When I hear a woman in leadership, somebody who might be the next President of the United States, called a 'wacky b----,' my alarms (go) off," Tanenbaum says. "That is the signal that she is being denigrated as a not serious person. The word b---- has been reclaimed in many spaces, (but) it is not universally reclaimed, and it still is an insult."
In Harris' case, the people are laughing with her now, but the jokes can turn at any point. While she may hold the coveted "brat" status with young voters in this moment, it is too soon to tell if the memefication of her campaign will last and continue to be well-received.
Her next steps are crucial. She may want to tread lightly in those Converse.