The ‘Sad Girl’ and ‘Brat Girl Summer’ Phenomena: Femininity, Rebellion, and Identity Formation in Contemporary Digital Culture

The ‘sad girl’ phenomenon first gained momentum in the early 2010s on Tumblr, a microblogging platform that fosters niche, subculture-driven communities. Portraying an emotionally raw and introspective side of femininity, the trend became synonymous with the music of American artist Lana Del Rey, whose lyrics and imagery blended soft glamour with melancholy and existential yearning. For many young women, this aesthetic created a world where vulnerability was not only permissible but resonated with their identity.

As social media continued to evolve, so did its aesthetics. By 2021, TikTok introduced ‘clean girl’, a trend characterised by slicked-back hair, clear skin, and a minimalist wardrobe. The clean girl represented control, restraint, and an illusion of effortless perfection — a curated image seemingly untouched by the messiness of real life. While she became a symbol of aspiration, she also embodied an ideal that felt polished to the point of being unattainable.

This unattainability was partly the impetus for the ‘brat girl’, a persona that emerged in the summer of 2024. If the clean girl symbolised restraint and order, the brat girl was her antithesis. The inspiration behind the phenomenon was British pop artist Charli XCX’s experimental Brat (2024), her sixth studio album.

In a TikTok interview in July 2024, Charli XCX described the brat persona as ‘messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.’¹ Kelley Heyer, a New York-based actor and content creator, started off the viral ‘apple dance’ on TikTok.² Set to Charli XCX’s ‘Apple’ song, the trend crystallises the brat-girl aesthetic with users lip-syncing to the song and performing an easily reproducible dance routine featuring an imaginary apple. Messy hair and bold makeup also dominate #bratgirl feeds. As one TikTok user sums it up: ‘Being a brat girl is about embracing all the messy parts of yourself and turning them into something fun and fearless. It’s about being unapologetically you — whether you’re dancing in your room or just living your truth.’

In Charli XCX’s music, the brat-girl persona is epitomised in tracks like ‘Club Classics’, a high-energy anthem sketching the euphoria of the party scene, where she longs to ‘dance all night’ and be ‘blinded by the lights’. Yet, even amid this hedonism, an undercurrent of emotional complexity emerges. In ‘So I’, Charli sings, ‘When I'm on stage, sometimes I lie / Say that I love singin’ these songs you left behind / (And I know you always said) ‘It's okay to cry’ / So, I know I can cry, I can cry, so I cry.’

These lyrics reveal deeper struggles with brat-girl identity, highlighting a shared vulnerability between the sad girl and brat girl. Both allow space for vulnerability, but they express it in strikingly different ways. The sad girl turns inward, seeking solace in introspection, while the brat girl is loud, brash, and unapologetic.

The rise of these personas may reflect a broader exhaustion with the relentless hustle culture that permeates social media. Despite their surface differences, both personas share a core rejection of societal norms, a refusal to conform to traditional beauty standards. The pressure to appear polished had become overwhelming, and in this landscape, these personas provide the necessary release. As one TikToker notes, ‘Owning your bratty side is like owning every part of you — your quirks, your contradictions, and everything society tells you to hide.’

Although they express themselves differently, both the sad girl and brat girl emerge as reactions to the same cultural forces: a world that demands women to be perfect in appearance, behaviour, and emotional restraint — a sanitised perfection in short.

As Charli XCX prepares to release a remixed Brat album, it is clear that amid the cycle of fleeting trends, certain personas endure — and the brat girl is proving its staying power. The sad girl and brat girl remind us that rebellion is not merely about breaking rules; it is about embracing the full spectrum of human experience. Femininity, like identity itself, is not a monolith but fluid and resistant to simple categorisation.