The Apple is...
How does the apple signify cultural meaning in 2025?
It’s the winter after Brat Summer. Or, I should say, it’s the global warming version of winter-lite here in Southern California. With the passage of two seasons, I’ve been able to visit the Brat album on my own accord. Last summer, like a true Aquarius, I avoided Brat references and songs when they reached the peak of their virality. I gave the album a listen when it released, but I decided that Brat paled in comparison to Charli’s 2022 album Crash. Despite my lack of participation in Brat-posting, Brat references still permeated my social media post replies, particularly references to Charli XCX’s song “Apple.”
Well, yes, I am wearing a green apple shirt, and the Brat cover is a similar shade of green. And yes, I own two green apple motif shirts (other shirt pictured in my profile image). I still don’t know how it became a trend to reply to anything apple-related with “I think the apple’s rotten right to the core.” This lyric comment floated around as a form of proof that one was “in” on a cultural moment, functioning sort of like an “I like your shoelaces” in-group signifier that Tumblr users tried to make happen in the early 2010’s. “Apple” was undoubtedly the most viral song off the already-viral Brat album, so it’s not surprising that the sharing of its lyrics signified one’s knowledge of a cool trend. The green apple took on a new meaning through this process, in which it became a symbolic shorthand for Brat. However, separate from Brat consumption, I still found myself being drawn to the imagery of the green apple. Why was that?
Historically, the symbolism of the apple has proliferated in western culture. For one, the apple is a representation of health. “An apple a day keeps a doctor away” is a saying we’re all familiar with, which originated from an 1866 saying: “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread” (thank you Wikipedia). The apple is a symbol for knowledge. Perhaps you gave an apple to a teacher as a kid, or you’ve seen stock images of red, glistening apples sitting on teachers’ desks. The apple is also the sinful fruit of knowledge we ascribe to the Adam and Eve story. The Bible does not name a specific fruit, but French translations of the Bible in the 12th century were the first to connote the fruit as an apple. Mass interpretations of this version of the Bible solidified the apple as the forbidden fruit Satan tempted Eve with.
The apple persists in our everyday, too. If you want to eat a portable, ready-to-eat fruit, an apple is a go-to choice. We teach kids that “A” is for “apple.” Apple brand computers and phones dominate our technology market. Inspired after a visit to an apple orchard, Steve Jobs choose “apple” to represent his company was because he thought apples to be “fun, spirited, and not intimidating.” In the 2024 release, “How Sweet,” K-pop group Newjeans sings, “It’s simple / it’s like biting an apple.” Apples–both red and green, but mostly green–have been steadily growing in trendiness in stationery and trinket hobbyist circles online. I began to notice this uptick in intentional apple imagery last spring, perhaps boosted in popularity by K-pop soloist Yves and her apple-themed musical concepts. Also, artist and sticker maker theirfieldnotes on X is a notable green apple imagery user, whose art inspires others to incorporate apples into their work, including me! This modern version of the apple is also part of the resurgence of early 2000’s aesthetics that we are now drawing on now that the early 2000’s are considered vintage.
Brat has undoubtedly played a big role in bringing the apple back into the mainstream visual moodboard. Brat is also a big reason as to why my apple shirt picture, taken mid-walk coming back from my lunch break, gained 70 thousand likes in a couple days. For all of the virality of Brat and “Apple,” I noticed a paradoxical tension between the Brat-wielding social media user and the actual artistic content of Brat. With its hyper-recognizable branding and TikTok success, Brat was catapulted out of Charli XCX’s fanbase and into the mainstream. People who had only heard Boom Clap and Fancy by Iggy Azalea were only then realizing that Charli had been making music all along. Everything and anything was Brat, including corporal-punishment lover Copmala Harris. Brat had lost its meaning somewhere in its trend-signaling digital consumption, and so did “Apple.”
But what did Brat originally signify? Was Brat something you could buy, put on, and take off? Was it just a way to show you were online in a cool, nonchalant way? Or was it an accessible idea you could etch personal meaning onto? Although the true definition of Brat Summer was debated among internet users, Charli XCX’s definition of Brat was the act of embracing a hedonistic, lust-filled, party-going lifestyle. It was a rebellion against the pressures of our increasingly sexless, digitized, and homebody-fied society. It’s not brat to sit in your house and scroll online or let yourself bail on going out plans. It’s brat to allow yourself to be rough around the edges, makeup smudged, clothing disheveled, because these were tangible indicators that you lived life.
Charli’s instagram post description upon the release of Brat:
“Also to @imogene @terrencefoconnor and @chrishoran20 aka the supers - you are the visual trifecta and I’ve loved every second of working on this project with you…. squeezing out every element of theory, analyzing each possible outcome, playing out every conceivable scenario and then also just going “fuck it, it’s brat!” and doing whatever the fuck we want… its been exhilarating and wild and crazy and unforgettable. “
The concept of Brat exists in opposition to the hyper-curated digital existences that is now the norm for most social media users. The Brat is the foil to the Clean Girl, who meticulously performed a controlled candidness on Instagram and TikTok, with slicked back buns and outfits lifted straight from Pinterest. The Brat also challenged the chronically online introvert–you can’t be Brat if you aren’t actually going outside, talking to strangers, and seeing what the night has to offer. You can’t be Brat if you’re too afraid of being perceived to start living your own life.
This brings me to the viral Rachel Sennott Instagram pictures from August 2024, taken at Charli XCX’s star-studded 32nd birthday party. In the pictures, Sennott is photogenically sprawled on the floor, wearing a tight red mini dress, pushing up her own breast, and gazing directly at the viewer. Her face holds a disaffected but sultry expression. “I’m having fun,” her eyes seem to say. “I’m enjoying my body, my sexuality, my youth, and my unpictured illicit substances.”
These pictures blew up on X and sparked... discourse. I only saw the pictures by way of this specific tweet by mellybysea, and the tweet is still up as of writing this. Rachel Sennott’s pictures are provocative, both sexually and artistically. The pictures triggered a sore point for online users in the throes of phone addiction. Here, the two quote retweets read: “i’m kinda tired of all this tbh. is brat summer just about watching rich ppl have fun” and “The worst part is they’re not even having fun they are just obsessed with checking their phones as well and when they are not checking their phones they are wishing they were.”
Here, we see what is most likely a textbook case of projection. Let’s situate ourselves in reality: this online user wasn’t at the party, so they have no idea if people weren’t actually having fun or if they wished they were lined up at the digital slop trough instead. Maybe you think you would choose your phone over human interaction because you are stuck in a rut of your own limited imagination. Perhaps you have been turned soft by the cocoon of your doomscrolling and you can’t picture metamorphosizing into your fullest self. Brat summer is there for the taking if you choose to enact it, and you can’t even imagine a world in which others are actually living it.
In my recent piece, Seeking Friction in Fascism, I wrote about our habitual avoidance of friction in an increasingly disconnected, digitized, comfort-centered society. The repeated rejection of friction dulls our senses and stifles our humanity. Living a Brat Summer requires pursing all the pleasure that the human body can experience, including pleasures that are considered sinful in our sterilized culture. Being Brat is eating the apple when you know you shouldn’t. Even more, it’s encouraging others to eat the apple and showing off the bite marks; it’s proof that you are a living creature who hungers.
What if the apple is rotten right to the core? Uncertainty is a part of life, and Charli XCX acknowledges that facing the unknown can be scary to her, too. “Apple” has some existential, harrowing lyrics, which make the casual use of its lyrics as a trend even more paradoxical.
To Charli, the apple represents the self in the context of generational trauma. She asks questions we all struggle with: Who am I? Who will I become? Who have I become? Is this all I can be? Charli speaks from the perspective of a “bratty” kid growing into her agency, demanding to have her individuality recognized. “Apple” invokes the classic nature vs nurture debate, questioning the extent of the freedom we possess to be our own individuals. It also echoes the core theme of Brat: we exist imperfectly and defiantly because that is our nature, no matter how hard we try to escape it. Even in our efforts to exert surgical control over our bodies (“I split the apple down symmetrical lines”) and avoid the uncomfortable realities we live in (“What I find is kinda scary / Makes me just wanna drive”), we are still vulnerable to injury. We cannot subjugate our flesh. Eve always eats the apple. However, it’s not a bad thing that she did—it’s just something that opened her up to the vast nuances of human emotion, positive and negative. The apple probably tasted good, too: sweet, sticky, nourishing.
Like I mentioned in Seeking Friction in Fascism, embracing the full spectrum of human experiences is necessary to living a rich life. This includes facing the things we turn away from and having the courage to come out on the other side of the unknown. It also includes indulging in sensual pleasures, because swiping a glass screen to see approximations of other people’s lives is not a true life. When everything seems scary, we feel safer locked in our digital worlds, but in doing so we miss out on the joy that the unknown can bring. We were never meant to stay in the Garden forever.
Lyrically, I think “Apple” is a standout on the entire Brat album. It’s a blessing and a curse that the song got trendified. Blessing: the more popular the song is, the more people it reaches, and the more thought it potentially provokes. Curse: it’s too easy to engage with on a surface level, divorcing the song’s meaning from its origin. I don’t know how people feel about the song beyond the parroted “I think the apple’s rotten right to the core” comments. Maybe they feel the same things Charli does, and they struggle to look at their own core. I think we are convinced that our rottenness is unique to us, when we’re all actually feeling the same way. There’s many reasons for us to feel rotten in our burning world. We can only find solutions if we acknowledge the rotten core exists, rather than flippantly joking about our degraded states of self, facilitated by our participation in internet brainrot. I already see the tide shifting online, with more and more people calling for collecting physical media, getting off their phones, and joining organizations to care for others. Perhaps we can regrow our apples, with enough intention and nurture.
Right now, the apple has come to signify something with a beautiful exterior but a rotten interior. We present our best selves in the digital sphere, showing off our shining outsides while our soft flesh wastes away inside. The popularity of apple imagery reveals our collective desire to exalt the smooth, the safe, and the visually stimulating. But we are what we eat, and we’re eating lots of rotten apples. We know they’re rotten, but they’re a familiar taste in an unfamiliar world. Despite this, we have to remember that good apples exist too. You just have to have the courage to take a bite.