If you’ve hopped onto social media in the days following the announcement of Kamala Harris becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, you were probably greeted with Harris rambling about falling out of a coconut tree. You also were probably bombarded with hues of blinding chartreuse and people talking about Charli XCX tweeting “kamala IS brat.”
Edits, memes and official posts from Kamala HQ have resulted in the vice president achieving viral status within 24 hours of becoming the unofficial nominee.
But why coconut trees? Why green? What does “brat” even mean?
The answer is found in various pop culture references and phenomena, specifically in queer and Gen Z spaces.
The phrase being “brat” comes from Charli xcx’s sixth studio album with the same title. According to the singer, “brat” is to be “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party … Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown … is very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile.”
The memes of Harris with the distinct “brat branding” — which include bright chartreuse, black text and music from Charli XCX’s album — had been circulating the internet in the weeks prior to Harris’s nomination. However, it wasn’t until Charli XCX herself endorsed the idea of “kamala IS brat” that the posts really started to hit the mainstream.
Harris’s campaign has taken the “brat” aesthetic and turned it into their branding — with all social media pages having “kamalahq” written in the style of the album cover as the profiles’ cover image.
The coconut and palm tree emojis, however, are in reference to a speech Harris gave at the White House last year. She quoted her mother speaking about younger generations, where she said: “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.”
Some online users have taken the liberty to create remixes of video game music as well as pop music, including “365” by Charli XCX and even “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift.
Harris’s campaign has even gotten in on the viral action — the social media page has continued to post their own original edits of the vice president. From using clips of her saying she’d “wipe the floor” with Trump in a Jimmy Fallon interview to her shutting down Mike Pence with the phrase “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” the campaign is using this online momentum in hopes of electing the country’s first female president.