How Kamala Became Brat and Mother

The presidential hopeful is harnessing the power of pop princesses Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, not to mention Gen Z internet culture. The result? An intergenerational femininomenon.

@bonerjamzincKamala is Mother #coconuttree

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For the first three and a half years of her vice presidency, Kamala Harris was a hazy figure, a shrug emoji of a politician. Though she was touted during the 2020 campaign as an heir apparent to President Joe Biden, as a president-in-training, Biden announced his plans to run for re-election as early as 2021, and Harris receded mostly to the background of his administration. She only occasionally popped up in the news, most forcefully while advocating for reproductive rights.

Oh, and there was also that coconut-tree meme, a story she told last year in a speech about how her mother used to tell her children, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” It was an anecdote about historical context that made kind-of a good point, but the internet found it delightfully kooky and made it famous, or at least as famous as Chick-Fil-A girl or Mariah Carey’s “I don’t know her” moment.

This would, it turned out, be the meme that could change history.

Just months ago, I listened to a New York Times’ Matter of Opinion podcast episode (title: “Why Do We Hate Kamala Harris? Do We?”) in which the hosts debated whether she was a major weakness for Biden as he ran for re-election. And on July 21, when Biden announced that he would not seek re-election and would endorse Harris’ run, I was nervous as I thought back on that: What if we do hate Kamala Harris? 

Now, we can barely remember that Biden is still president amid the the deafening hype around Harris. We are all coconut-pilled. Kamala is brat. Kamala is mother. 

There has been a hope explosion on the left, after years of feeling like politics was an endless slog to constantly, repeatedly, defeat a tireless and terrifying Donald Trump. And that hope is largely fueled by a surprising … strategy? Happy happenstance? Maybe a little bit of both? It has been fueled, in any case, by various forces, mostly very online forces, making presidential candidate Kamala Harris into a Pop Star Goddess. In what is perhaps the most pop-culture-fueled U.S. presidential race ever, celebrities could make a major difference. A new Harvard study shows that celebrity involvement truly moves the needle when it comes to voter engagement, from Billie Eilish getting folks to sign up as poll workers to Taylor Swift driving voter registration to a significant degree. So this could really work.

How do you beat a reality TV star at his own game? Make like Taylor and Beyoncé.

But how did we get to the point where pop stars are as powerful as Super PACs?

As soon as Harris announced her run, her social media accounts at @KamalaHQ exploded, a moment that has already become legend and will likely be analyzed by political operatives for election cycles to come. By popularizing memes made by regular folks—most effectively mashing up Harris’ coconut tree speech with songs from Charli XCX’s album-of-the summer, brat—the accounts made news at all levels. This culminated in Charli XCX herself issuing an endorsement of sorts: “kamala IS brat.” (She’s British, but we’ll take it.) @KamalaHQ changed its background to the brat cover’s distinctive lime green. Suddenly cable news pundits were forced to have painfully unhip discussions trying to understand that “kamala IS brat” was good. One of my favorite meme classes to come out of this is parody videos that imagine the Gen Z-ers who must be behind Harris’ energizing social strategy. The joke: Older generations barely understand the way these people are talking. (Shouldn’t it be “Kamala is a mother?” No, it’s “Kamala is mother.” More on that one in a bit.) Any generation loves to be seen; when the campaign speaks their specific language, after years of Biden (Silent Generation) and Trump (the oldest of the Boomers), they’re bound to perk up.

Since then, pop girls have continued to power the #Kamalamentum. Harris’ clearing of Beyoncé’s rousing song “Freedom” for official campaign use caused a collective cheer online among the BeyHive. The ascendant new pop sensation Chappell Roan, a proudly queer woman, has been in the mix with her maniacally catchy female-power anthem “Femininomenon.” Everyone is waiting for the Taylor Swift endorsement, while Swifties for Kamala are organizing without the express consent of their queen. (BTW, Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, is a certified Swiftie.) Their official tagline, playing on a Swift lyric: “Kamala’s a relaxing thought.” Harris has even acquired a fandom name: #KHive.

This overwhelming outpouring of pop-fueled enthusiasm shows how desperate we are for hope and joy, and how desperately young women, in particular, are craving the chance to see someone a little more like them at the highest levels of power. Even before the switch from Biden to Harris, one of Trump’s biggest fixations was apparently the possibility of Swift endorsing Biden, since she did so in 2020 and her power has only grown since then. The other obvious big get, Beyoncé, is a good bet, since she has endorsed both Hillary Clinton and the Biden-Harris ticket in the past, but we’re all breathlessly awaiting the official word.

It actually makes sense that female pop stars have become a major force in this effort to elect the first female U.S. president. Women have gained immense power in pop music over the last two decades, wielding unprecedented influence because of the rise of internet fandom. The fans’ shared interest gives them an identity—complete with those fandom names—and the internet allows them to organize quickly for any cause of their choosing, as Swifties for Kamala demonstrates. Some of this pop noise has even begun to translate into real action: Swifties for Kamala has already launched plans to register voters at upcoming Eras Tour dates in Florida, Louisiana, and Indiana, all of which are solidly red states, and have planned a nationwide Zoom call for more strategizing. 

Feminism and pop stardom have also become increasingly intertwined in the 21^st century: Remember the watershed moment that was Beyoncé giving over extensive real estate in her song “Flawless” to Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s speech defining the world “feminism”? Then she even performed at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards with the word “FEMINIST” on a giant screen behind her, causing celebration among fans and activists alike. Feminist anthems have become standard, nearly required, for female pop stars: Please see Swift’s “The Man,” Janelle Monae’s “Q.U.E.E.N.,” M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls,” and, hey, maybe even Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s hilariously filthy “WAP.” (Though let’s keep that one out of the campaign, shall we?)

Why didn’t the pop goddesses play a bigger role the last time we came close to electing our first female president, a long eight years ago? Among the apparently endless small bits of bad luck that sunk Hillary Clinton’s run was the fact that TikTok didn’t yet exist, and it’s a largely music-driven platform that allows users to easily edit together their disparate enthusiasms, like a presidential candidate and the song of the moment. It might also have something to do with age and demeanor. It’s harder to imagine declaring Hillary “brat.” (Remember the whole “Pokémon Go to the polls” debacle?)

We also have a whole new crop of pop stars now, a generation raised to be more politically outspoken. Beyoncé and Taylor have become elder stateswomen of the pop establishment at this point. While they certainly have young fans, they don’t belong exclusively to Gen Z. Much of the Harris excitement has come from younger stars who symbolize something unique to the youngest eligible voters and play well on TikTok. Enter Charli XCX, who has been around for a decade or so but happens to be reaching a new peak this summer with her brat philosophy; she’s described the term as a “girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.” But I liked Brittany Allen’s summation at LitHub more: “This album shows that we can grow up and get over ourselves even as we stay hungry, rebellious, rude. And the moment we have something substantive to say, let us sing too loud about it! Overlords and age be damned.” Picture Harris’ grilling of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

@lostqrs#PROJECTCOCONUT ; wakanda FOREVER💜 || i don’t follow politics pls || #kamalaharris #kamalaharrisedit #coconuttree #brat #charlixcx #democrats #joebiden #donaldtrump #fyp #chappellroan #femininomenon

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Chappell Roan, on the other hand, burst onto the pop scene this year channeling a canny combination of queer culture, sexy lyrics, and cheerleader-style chanting that invites crowd participation and gets you hyped like nothing else. (The videos of her performing “HOT TO GO” to a rapturous, singing-along Lollapalooza audience is a major serotonin boost, and an audition tape for leading a rousing presidential candidate rally.) Roan’s electrifying “Feminimenon” feels built for exactly this moment, a potential first female president who could topple her opponent, who is not only a notorious racist and sexist, but was also found liable for rape. If you listen carefully, the subtext only makes it better: It’s not just a yay-women song, it’s a song about how women make better lovers to other women. (Only women can “hit it like rom-pom-pom-pom, make it hot like Papa John, make a bitch go on and on.”) Roan also sings here and elsewhere about how compulsory heterosexuality often leads women to subordinate themselves to men (“stuck in the suburbs, you’re folding his laundry”), and she draws from drag culture for fashion inspiration. She is celebrating only the divine feminine, from all angles. Men are useless here. She is the ultimate Republican nightmare, the antidote to vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s cheerleading for a Handmaid’s Tale future.

Harris’ pop-style power is also evident with the declaration that “Kamala is mother,” a term of high respect that derives from drag culture—if you’ve watched Pose, you know about the “houses” headed by “mothers” that compete in ballroom shows as teams. I’ve loved seeing this term used to express admiration for pop stars like Swift, Beyoncé, and Madonna. It denotes an appreciation for older, wiser women who command their space. 

Even better? The way this slang term of the moment happened to coincide with Vance’s infamous haranguing of the Democratic Party, and specifically Harris, as “childless cat ladies.” Suddenly, people calling Harris “mother,” regardless of whether she’s had biological children or not, takes on a new dimension. Incidentally, do you know who else is a childless cat lady? Taylor Swift.

A post from TikTok user Emma D sums up why all the memes and pop songs are more than just good fun: “The memification of Kamala’s campaign is going to win her the election bc she’s the first candidate in years (ever?) to treat young ppl as a serious and important voting demographic. Incorporating gen Z culture into her marketing campaign is not only very brat, it also validates the importance of young voters as a population worth marketing to.”

And as Brat Summer gives way to Demure Fall, the meme magic keeps happening. Now we have to make sure the memes translate into votes. But it’s awfully nice to be having fun along the way for once.

@nowthisimpactSee how we use our vote for the greater good? Very considerate, very demure ✨ @joolieannie #mindful #demure #verydemure

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