Lola Young’s hit song Messy has been streamed more than 785 million times.
“Brat Summer” is a cultural trend inspired by Charli XCX’s 2024 album.
Megan Stalter is best known for her role as Kayla in Hacks.
When I was younger, I lived as though I didn’t love myself. I sucked in my stomach and I wore tight clothes despite feeling tense. I exposed my arms and legs despite feeling cold. I did this without being told and I did this without thinking. So Icouldn’t have been the only one.
At this time, the female pop landscape was dominated by a homogenised template of reed-thin women performing in hyper-curated music videos. In the music videos of male artists, women weren’t active players either. They were usually decorative props.
The vibe fell somewhere between whipped cream bras (Katy Perry’s California Gurls), high-glam power femme (Rihanna’s Pour It Up), and hollow-eyed silent beauties (The Weeknd’s The Hills).
There were exceptions to the rule, for instance, Adele. But even then, in the image-control era of Instagram, the vision remained the same. A highly contoured aesthetic where the expensive visual narrative was everything.
Still from the music video of Katy Perry's California Gurls.
Some would say that there is no direct connection between the pop stars and my behaviours. Or that I shouldn’t have sought out their music (I didn’t, it was just out there).
We all know many factors influence a person’s behaviour, not just who is in the charts or who walks the red carpet. Even so, it’s naïve to think the pervasive images we consume, which are still largely created from a patriarchal lens, do not shape our culture. And when we are young, we are especially impressionable.
The tide is turning. Women who are rising to fame now are totally unbothered. They come in all shapes and sizes - and the attention is not on their shapes and sizes. The aesthetic is inexpensive and chaotic. Mental health is visible. Beauty is glitchy. They might wear a baggy t-shirt or a tight crop top. It doesn’t matter. The point is that it looks like they are dressing for themselves.
These women are autonomous over their bodies. These women are comfortable.
Lola Young is one of the artists symbolising this shift. I was introduced to the 24-year-old English singer through a content creator on Instagram (@itsme_layla21), who filmed herself dancing clumsily and freely to Young’s hit track Messy while driving home. One of the top comments on the post sums up Young’s vibe: “Hell yeah just a woman enjoying her moment; you go girl,” it read.
Young, who has spoken openly about her mental health, revealing that she was diagnosed with a rare schizoaffective disorder at 17, also did not grow up rich. “She is what we call ‘common’ in the UK - she looks and sounds like the everyday person,” an Englishman at a dinner party tells me. (Although it should be noted, her great-aunt is The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson, and Young did attend the BRIT performing arts school, which counts Adele and Amy Winehouse among its alumni.)
Megan Stalter, the star of Lena Dunham’s recent Netflix series Too Much, ignites the same flame. The American comedian and actress, who overtly celebrates her aesthetic (in a recent episode on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Stalter wore a T-shirt that read: “Meg Stalter prettiest girl in America”), is unapologetically herself and drives the men on the show wild.
The press has previously been obsessed with the weight of female stars; icons like Kate Winslet and Renee Zellweger bear battle scars. But following Too Much, Stalter’s weight is barely a talking point; she is just an irresistible, talented woman.
Lorde, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX and Chappell Roan are also part of this new mainstream aesthetic. The influence of “Brat Summer”, born from Charli’s 2024 party pop synth album, and the #MeToo movement, which gained momentum in 2017 after Alyssa Milano tweeted it to show support for survivors of sexual assault, is significant. The former popularised a particular aesthetic of non-linear, lo-fi debauchery, while the latter made feminist issues more accessible to a wider audience.
Other celebs are taking notice. “After a decade of every pop star who blows up having to lose 3 dress sizes and then wear the same glittery f****** leotard or swimsuit on stage, with thigh high boots, we are fatigued ... Women are subconsciously aching for revolution,” wrote English actress and activist Jameela Jamil in a recent Substack article.
This new blueprint is exciting. It shows that we are maturing as a society, we are more self-aware, and that the backbones of patriarchy are softer than they were even five years ago. These women project a comfortable version of themselves that nourishes their personal integrity. They are living the truth of their values, which is not only ethical, it is radical.
