If corporate entities co-opting brat summer hasn’t already put the final nail in that trend’s coffin, the phrase “very demure, very mindful” is here to get the job done.
In case you haven’t noticed, the internet learned a new word this week, and that word is “demure.” Social trends are like Newton’s law in that they tend to inspire an equal and opposite reaction, and this one was delivered via beauty creator Jools Lebron, who went on TikTok to remind her followers that, unlike what “brat summer” may have had you believe, there are, in fact, many life situations that call for behaviour that she summed up as “very cutesy, very mindful, very demure.”
Coming to work with cut-crease eyeshadow? Not demure, according to Lebron, who also advised her 1.2 million-strong TikTok audience to not “go to the workplace looking like Marge Simpson.” Putting on sunscreen before going out in the daytime? Very demure, very mindful. Crossing your legs on public transportation? Very demure, very mindful. A tiny, tinkerbell-sized iced latte? Very dem—
Now, if the internet is good at anything, it’s taking something that is nuanced and flattening it until it resembles roadkill, but rest assured there is more to “demure” than meets the eye.
Lebron herself has not commented publicly on her inspiration for the original video, but seen through the lens of the recently-viral tradwife discourse (think Nara Smith in full Prada making chewing gum from scratch for her husband and children) and combined with the fact that Lebron is a transgender woman, it’s not hard to see how repurposing the word “demure” is actually an act of subverting the performative femininity that social media has recently been resurrecting. Lebron is just encouraging you to go all-in and turn the volume up to 11 on the ‘performative’.
But don’t go thinking that this isn’t all also tongue in cheek—one of Lebron’s videos features her saying she isn’t much of a partier, interspersed with footage of her (clearly drunkenly) slurring the words “very demure.” She also warns us against doing too much, reminding the girls that a drugstore run is not the time to dress like you’re at the Met Gala.
What makes the trend so catchy is that it has arrived at a time when Gen Z has already had a well-documented love affair with quiet luxury, which is their term for the aesthetic associated with stealth wealth (think Mary-Kate Olsen’s gloriously dilapidated Birkin)—a term that is close cousins with the demurity that Lebron preaches. Or maybe it’s just that we’re all collectively over suffixing our trend names with “girl” (clean girl, tomato girl, brat girl, etc).
So, you’re welcome—the next time your Gen Z coworker references “demure”, “cutesy,” or “mindful,” you will no longer have to pretend to know what they mean. Just don’t forget that it is served with a healthy side of irony. Case in point? Lebron signs off from her video saying, “Let’s not forget to be demure, divas”—indicating that you don’t have to choose between demurity and divadom, and also that the word—like so much of what is said on the internet—means both nothing and everything at once.
