flâneur

Brat - Sherry Ning

substack.com · 159 words · saved by 1 readers

Brat is female advantage. It’s pouting your lips until he goes, “Don’t make that face,” and curling the corners of that pout upwards when hesitation turns into submission. Brat is asking for forgiveness instead of permission, because red lip gloss and watery eyes will get a “ok, go ahead—but just this time” out of any grumpy, middle-aged parking enforcement officer. Attention-seeking? Me? Of course. Lee Edelman called it the “fascist face of a baby”, the way drawing attention to ourselves is our earliest talent. Brat is made to be looked at. Vera Atkins, the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, was a top officer in the Special Operations Executive during WWII. She said: I’ve always found personally that being a woman has great advantages if you know how to play the thing right and I believe that all the girls, the women who went out, had the same feeling. We’re captivated by femme fatales and Bond girls. We make muses out of women like Marilyn Monroe—her breathy “Happy birthd

It’s not just a Twitter handle. Brat is a lifestyle. Girl, so confusing Brat is female advantage. It’s pouting your lips until he goes, “Don’t make that face,” and curling the corners of that pout upwards when hesitation turns into submission. Brat is asking for forgiveness instead of permission, because red lip gloss and watery eyes will get a “ok, go ahead—but just this time” out of any grumpy, middle-aged parking enforcement officer. Attention-seeking? Me? Of course. Lee Edelman called it the “fascist face of a baby”, the way drawing attention to ourselves is our earliest talent. Brat…

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