The Pursuit of Pleasure

BRAT and Babitz

It feels good to be bad, they say. Alcohol, nicotine, cheeseburgers and ice cream. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Hedonism is hot. 

Philosophically, hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure, or the idea that the purpose of life is to oblige satisfaction. Practically, it’s the unfettered participation in that which makes you feel good, even (and especially) if it's bad. 

Note that this definition of “bad” isn’t absolute. Cheeseburgers and ice cream are fine in moderation. Sex and rock and roll are essential parts of the continuation of life. Nicotine, alcohol, and drugs are fun, even if they serve nothing but a lightheaded feeling. 

It is this lightheadedness that might suggest hedonism as a practice of participating in bad things which feel good. Culturally, socially, we might view them as exciting because they are taboo - a forbidden fruit complex. Being told you can’t do something makes you want to do it all the much more. This might be what makes it fun, and what makes the participation in it cool -- giving no fucks, giving into hedonism. This summer we’ve seen it on full display. 

It’s old news at this point to make any kind of comment on Brat Summer. Named for Charli xcx’s hyperpop album BRAT which features dance beats evocative of smudged glitter and recreational drug use, Brat Summer means being a brat -- or doing things that might not be considered socially acceptable. Out of the album has emerged a culture of its own. Partying, doing recreational drugs, drinking, and then going to work the next day visibly hungover is very Brat. 

Brats don’t care about being polite, or conforming to social niceties. They care about fun, life, and pleasure.  

Though I can’t say I don’t enjoy Brat Summer, and the album itself, I’ve been much more inclined to say it is Babitz Summer. Since June, Eve Babitz is the only thing I’ve read. I am so utterly in love with her, her writing, and her work. She is cool girl coded in the most unobnoxious, genuine, artful way (although I am aware it is now very uncool to ruminate on literary cool girls). 

So whether you call it Brat Summer or Babitz Summer, both basically mean the same thing -- which is to say it's the Summer of Hedonism. 

BRAT and Babitz fully sink into hedonism by their form and content; Charli xcx is a sweaty dance floor rave sniffing poppers. Babitz is 1970s Hollywood playing over rock and roll and cocaine. 

It makes sense that this feeling of hedonism has emerged in the summer; our collective psyche refers to it as the Fun Season. I’ve actively tried to embody this myself, engaging in a “summer of yes” challenge, for which I’ve said “yes” to every hang out, party, date, kickback, barbecue, and beach day, within reason and without. 

Summer is often when I’m reminded of my own experiences with hedonism too. I was a teenaged party girl every August, I was a Hedonist Femcel. As I’ve gotten older, and the novelty of partying has more or less worn off, and hangovers only get harder, I’ve come to think of the idea of pleasure in the holistic sense. What is pleasure? What is real pleasure? 

It’s worth noting that the pursuit of pleasure does not necessarily equal the pursuit of partying.  

Consider what gives us pleasure versus what induces it. The pleasure you might feel from scrolling on Instagram, or from just enough tequila sodas, or puffs on your vape, or whatever vice of choice you may choose, is doctored pleasure; you can’t replicate it on your own. It requires the facilitation of some kind of substance in order to create it, and so the dopamine that reacts to those pleasure centers is set off by a superficial source.  

Pleasure, really, isn’t something based on something else. An addiction to pleasure is probably just an addiction.

And that kind of feeling you get causes you to reach a sort of unfeeling; not being able to feel anything, or of everything else being dulled because you can’t escape that feeling. Lingering beneath it is depression, or anxiety that causes a need for a fake feeling to cover it up.  

If you Google when dopamine is released, the AI Overview tells you eating, sex, and drugs. If you scroll down an inch, the first article tells you regular exercise, getting enough sleep, and sunlight. It’s unclear if the robots aren’t trying to kill us after all. 

In other words, the way to access real dopamine is by returning to humanhood - the humanhood that our ancestors practiced. These kinds of substance and consumption habits and blue light are essentially un-human. It is unnatural. They are created to get us away from us. 

Sunlight in the morning, eating right, and sleeping enough are all essential functions of the human experience, and yet come at direct odds with the hedonism practiced by Charli xcx and Babitz; people laud BRAT as a direct contrast to the “clean girl” cult ideology that influencers proselytize. It puts a sadistic imposition on the idea that you should constantly be doing the right things for your body. The issue, in a lot of this online discourse, is that this kind of lifestyle is being presented through a framework of self-maximization. 

I’m addicted to my screen and consuming content, but most of the content I get from the algorithm is all based in female maximization content: weight loss, posture correction, gua sha routines, etc. It advises returning to your circadian rhythm, but with the goal of improving your appearance, not because it is simply good for you. It is rooted in external validation, and finding pleasure in that validation. That pleasure is something you can grasp if you, too, work hard enough for it (becase looksmaxxing is tough work). 

But shouldn’t pleasure be effortless? Shouldn’t it be pleasurable because it is easily accessible? Even if real pleasure is harder to grasp, sans consumption and consumerism, real pleasure and real deal dopamine is more scarce and harder to come by.

So consider what gives us pleasure in the real world, that isn’t based on something fake or that is fed to us. Pleasure is incredibly personal.

You’ve gotta take a beat, man. I won’t say you have to be “present,” because I think that advice is boring and tired, and everyone is familiar with it, and even if we know something is good for us (not looking at screens, exercising), it is still hard to put into practice most of the time. But it’s also unmistakable when you actually do feel it. 

Because if pleasure is the only thing you’re ever chasing, you’ll drive yourself crazy. It is human to feel pain - maybe even necessary to recognize pleasure. It is the natural ebb and flow of life. 

And at the end of it all, it is summer. It’s the summer of hedonism -- and hedonism is a naturally occurring element of summer. I’ll party, I’ll induce pleasure regardless; but I’ll also work to find real pleasure in real things. Live it. Revel in it. Feel it.