Why is everyone on TikTok suddenly obsessed with demure? A very mindful explainer of the trend
On TikTok, many people are being “very mindful” of their actions.
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.
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