I first listened to BRAT a few days after it came out this summer, at the recommendation of my roommate. Other things my roommate has put me onto: cottage cheese, staying hydrated, and bell peppers. In fact, I’m borrowing her sundress as I write this. I take her recommendations seriously, so when she told me that I should listen to the new Charli xcx album, I shut up and put my headphones on. I put it on in the background one night while cranking out some busy work (I know a Google Sheet hates to see me coming) and was immediately hooked. I couldn’t help but bob my head up and down to the beat, and by the end of the night, I’d already listened to the album three times in a row. A few months later, I know every track by heart. I even went to Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat tour with my roommate, decked out in Brat green eyeshadow and the brattiest outfit I could find. 

As the designated chronically online friend for many people in my life, multiple friends have asked me to explain what the word Brat means. I usually say that it means being obnoxious but in an iconic way. To be Brat is to be rude, but you’re self-aware of it. It’s like when someone swerves recklessly in front of you on the freeway, and at first you’re a little miffed by it, but then you find yourself impressed by the maneuver, and you have to admit that their neon pink convertible is kinda cunty, and you like the music they’re blaring. 

While everyone has their own definition of what makes something Brat, we can all agree that the word connotes something obnoxious, confident, loud, fun, and bold. However, missing from that definition is the immense tenderness found in many of the album’s songs. From “I might say something stupid,” an earnest confession that will resonate with overthinkers everywhere, to “I think about it all the time,” which explores Charli’s complicated feelings about motherhood, the word Brat, for me, evokes vulnerability—confessing your most intimate truths over club music. Of course, I understand that Charli is not my friend and that BRAT is first and foremost about profit—however, there is something undeniably intimate about a voice singing into your headphones: “Should I stop my birth control? / ‘Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all.” 

And then there’s arguably the most intimate part of BRAT: the “Girl, so confusing” saga. For those who don’t know, “Girl, so confusing” details the complicated relationship between Charli xcx and Lorde, who Charli thinks might hate her, but maybe Lorde just wants to be her. To everyone's surprise, shortly after the release of BRAT, Charli announced the release of a remix of “Girl, so confusing” featuring none other than the song’s muse, Lorde. Together, they sing about their insecurities and the miscommunication that’s plagued their decades-long friendship, and, as Lorde says, they work it out on the remix. 

Many Charli xcx fans were moved by the seemingly sincere reconciliation happening in real time this (Brat) summer, including Julia Fox, the muse for the album’s opening track, “360” (“I’m everywhere I’m so Julia”). In a TikTok filmed in her car, Julia cries to the remix, captioning her reaction video: “I love every single girl ive ever had beef with.” 

This summer, I read Julia Fox’s Down the Drain, a visceral depiction of generational trauma, substance abuse, and the beauty to be found in femme friendships. It also explores the devastation that comes with the unraveling of such friendships and the raw tragedy of losing someone you used to have BFF necklaces with. This and listening to Lorde and Charli talk through their interpersonal strife made me realize that I, too, love every single girl I have beef with. For example: I was recently swiping through Instagram stories and came across S soft-launching her girlfriend. S and I had a beautiful friendship in high school, full of sleepovers, photoshoots, and gossiping about our crushes. After our mutual friend E sexually harassed me and S refused to stop being friends with him, our friendship died, withering away like unwatered flowers on a dorm windowsill. Whenever I saw her after we fell out, we’d walk past each other without saying hi, as if she didn’t know my deepest darkest secrets and I didn’t know hers, like the fact that she is queer and her parents are assholes about it. So when I saw her smiling with her girlfriend through the cracked screen of my iPhone, I couldn’t help but start tearing up, despite E, despite the two years of silent glances in high school hallways, despite it all.  

And when I heard that L, a girl who bullied me mercilessly every day of middle school, has a debilitating coke addiction, I felt a sadness in my chest that would’ve surprised middle school me, who secretly wished for L’s demise every day. At a reunion bonfire for my school, a former classmate says, “She can’t even make it through her first period class without going to the bathroom,” and mimics L snorting. “That’s horrible,” I reply, and the words surprise me, but they feel true as I say them. 

And when I ran into R, who won’t speak to me and I won’t speak to her, outside of a coffee shop in San Francisco, I didn’t want to say something mean but rather felt an urge to compliment her sweater, tell her that I hope she’s doing well, and ask about her little brother. Instead, she glared at me, I glared back, and we never worked it out on the remix. 

Even the person I hated most in high school, C, is someone I found myself defending recently. C and I did debate together, and she made the second half of my senior year a living hell because of her relentless slut-shaming. But when an ex-friend started laughing about a story he’d heard involving her losing her virginity, I told him he was being disgusting. I found myself wanting to reach out to her and offer my condolences about the class of ‘22 being gross, even as I simultaneously thought she was one of the meanest and most inconsiderate people I’ve ever met. 

And over spring break, as I strolled down the cobblestone streets of Seville with the person I’m in love with, I found myself thinking about SC, who I went to school with for nine years. We had multiple falling outs due to some drama long-forgotten in the hormonal mess that is eighth grade. She is Spanish and used to talk about how beautiful Seville was all the time. We all used to tease her about it, saying that we got it, she was from Spain. Years later, hand in hand with my lover, I found myself wanting to reach out to her, to say, “It’s just as beautiful as you said it would be.” 

Do not let me be mistaken: I’m not advocating for all of us femmes to forgive every other femme that’s ever wronged us. And I myself have been too timid to act on any of these feelings; my fantasy about sending every girl I’ve ever had beef with the “Girl, so confusing” remix with the caption “us?” remains unrealized. I don’t think every woman or gender-marginalized person should be neatly forgiven on account of their gender—I still hate Margaret Thatcher and always will. Instead, I think BRAT invites us to look at our personal relationships with a bit more nuance. In a society that’s constantly asking us to speak in the first person (Where do I see myself in 10 years? What classes should I take? What do I want to do with my life?), there’s something refreshing about remembering that in every argument you’ve ever had, there’s a living, breathing person who disagrees with you, who may (or may not) deserve some compassion on your end. Especially in femme friendships, we’re all still marginalized by the same power structure, the one that let some random person tell ten-year-old Lorde she walks like a bitch, that lets people catcall us out of windows, that makes me put on a sweatshirt over my bodysuit on the train to the Charli xcx and Troye Sivan concert. 

BRAT is more nuanced than people give it credit for, just like many of the people we have beef with may be more nuanced than we think. So maybe S and I will never have another sleepover, and perhaps I’ll never talk to any of these people again in this lifetime, but I wish them the best and I think that counts for something. And maybe one day, even if we’re old and gray, we can work it out on the remix.