On TikTok, many people are being “very mindful” of their actions. They’re acting “very cutesy.”
In fact, you could say they’re “very demure.”
Those three phrases — but “demure” specifically — have consumed the platform in recent weeks after a creator who goes by Jools Lebron began using them this month to explain to viewers how she handles a wide variety of daily situations: from being “very mindful” when she’s on vacation to being “very demure” while waiting to board a plane. It’s unclear how many followers Jools Lebron, who also goes by @joolieannie, gained since the trend went viral (she has 1.3 million followers on TikTok), but 50,000 posts on the platform have used the term “demure.”
“See how I come to work? Very demure. I do my makeup. I do my wig. I do a little braid. I flatiron my hair. I do chi-chis out. I do viral vanilla,” Lebron, who is transgender and uses she/her pronouns, said in what appears to be the first video in which she used the word "demure." In the video she sprayed herself with perfume in her car before going on to say she is being, “Very demure. Very mindful. Let’s not forget to be demure, divas.”
The terms are the latest verbal trend to overtake TikTok and other parts of social media, where inside jokes and slang can rise and fall so quickly that only those who spend a considerable amount of time online can keep up. Some of those terms have entered a more common lexicon, like “OK Boomer” (a dismissive retort to an older person), while others have remained relatively niche, like “Goblin Mode” (a person who is messy). Last year, “Rizz” (short for charisma) came out of the internet ether to be named “Word of the Year” by Oxford.
Even social media’s youngest users, Gen Alpha, have developed hyper-online styles of speech, sometimes referred to as “brainrot” that can make language derived from the internet seem unintelligible to those who don’t use it.
“Demure,” for now, has its own momentum. The first video of Jools Lebron using the term has been viewed 3.9 million times. The second video she posted about being “demure,” “cutesy” and “mindful” has more than 13.8 million views. As she continued posting videos with the term, she continued wracking up tens of millions of views.
“Demure” means reserved or modest, according to Merriam-Webster.
Lebron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Initially, Lebron made content like “get ready with me” videos and product review videos. After what appears to be the earliest videos of Lebron using her now-iconic phrase on Aug. 2, she continued to post about what she called “demurity” and how to be “demure.”
“You see how I do my makeup for work? Very demure, very mindful,” she says in a video posted on Aug. 5. “I don’t look like a clown when I come to work. I don’t do too much, I’m very mindful while I’m at work.”
The audio attached to that Aug. 5 video has been used more than 7,000 times on TikTok by major accounts lip-synching along to it, including “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Bob the Drag Queen, who has more than 3 million followers, and lifestyle vlogger Monet McMichael, who has more than 3.8 million followers.
Other major TikTok stars have used the term sarcastically. Influencer Haley Kalil, who goes by @haleyybaylee on TikTok and has more than 10 million followers, made her own video saying she was blocking her ex-boyfriend, but doing so in a very “demure” way.
“Do you see how I block my ex? Very demure. Very mindful. I don’t go blocking my ex all crazy and insane. No, no. We keep it very cutesy,” Kalil says, imitating the way Lebron speaks in her videos — before appearing to have a not-so-demure breakdown.
Users have even proclaimed that the seasons are transitioning from “Brat” summer to “demure fall” — although others are calling it “mindful autumn.”
In a video posted Tuesday, Lebron described how the “demure” trend has changed her life.
“Maybe you should make the videos because one day I was playing cashier and making videos on my break,” Jools Lebron said in the video. “And now I’m flying across the country to host events, and I’m going to be able to finance the rest of my transition.”
Of course, because she is cutesy and mindful, she hashtagged the video “#demure.”
