Kamala Harris, president of the meme, the coconut tree and the ‘brat’ summer

July offers no respite. The surprise emergence (surprise if they’d told us a couple of months ago; practically obvious a couple of weeks ago) of Kamala Harris as a protagonist of the global political scene, but also of the local sun loungers, has contained all the ingredients to be a topic of conversation and, above all, meme fodder.

We are not going to deny that Sunday was a busy day, in terms of journalism and work, for those of us living in the United States. Seconds before we threw ourselves into typing, the Lord’s Day had caught us on a bike, returning from shopping or, simply, getting out of bed. But we cannot deny that, in those hours of adrenaline, the surge of memes acted as a community balm to remind us that we had to breathe, and even laugh. The first thing that arrived were the news flashes; then, the jokes. The images of Joe Biden looking for a job on LinkedIn or his (obviously fake) mobile phone receiving non-stop messages from Volodymyr Zelenskiy quickly gave way to Harris as the lead actor and, above all, to two trends: coconuts and green.

These were not suitable for the uninitiated. The coconuts and especially the coconut trees came from a Harris quote from a May speech. Then, at a White House ceremony on education, in which she spoke of the importance of supporting young people, but also their parents and families, she commented: “My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes — and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Then, in the middle of the corseted event, she started laughing uproariously from the lectern, only to conclude on a more serious note: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” On Sunday, invitations from bars in Washington to enjoy a Kamala Coconut Pineapple did the rounds on the internet and even the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, tweeted emojis of coconuts, palm trees and flags. There were also dances on TikTok, a demonstration that Generation Z has embraced the “you think you fell out of a coconut tree, dude” as a vital motto.

And then came green. If last summer we enjoyed — or suffered — a global dip in Barbie pink, this summer girl power has been dyed green. It started at the beginning of June, when the British singer Charli XCX, pure Gen Z, released her album Brat. The color of the album cover was green and a good part of her fan base, especially in the UK, started talking about a “Brat Summer.” But what exactly is a brat, or a brat summer? It’s basically a celebration of femininity, the most carefree joy, of what cheesy people would call joie de vivre, that fresh, promising and somewhat adventurous idea of summer. According to Charli herself, a brat is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who likes herself but then has an anxiety attack” who is “honest, outspoken and a bit volatile.” A good definition of so many femininities of the 21st century.

If summer in the UK is brat green, in a trend that is starting to spread across Europe and the U.S., Charli topped it off with a “Kamala IS brat” tweet on Sunday night, and the VP campaign rode the wave and surfed it gracefully. The Kamala HQ account was colored green with the artist’s typography, and from there came the explosion. More TikToks, montages, videos and images of the president laughing (with those guffaws that Trump attacks to the point of giving her the nickname “Laffin’ Kamala”) and dancing, all against a green background.

Don’t take anything too literally. In the end, this is a game that suits many. The brat green is an aesthetic, what the Barbiecore was to 2023. Only the doll thing was more obvious and this not so much. It’s part game, part pose, one more classification on the social networks, a place to belong. And let’s not forget that it’s a smart move by the Harris campaign team, to laugh at themselves, get in on the trend and approach a young, female, up-to-date voter. Not that they are the hippest movers in the Internet world, but at least it’s a change from the corseted and tedious pulpit speeches of Trump and his ilk. This Kamala, who moves to the beat of Beyoncé, has 100 days of campaigning left, but the summer, green and full of coconuts, is already hers.

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