Are you very demure? How to be very mindful of the latest TikTok trend taking over the internet

Are you very demure? Very mindful? Very cutesy? How can you know? Turns out, demure comes from within.

Demure is the internet’s newest buzzword made popular by TikTok creator Jools Lebron. Earlier this month, Lebron posted a video that took social media by storm and has already racked up more than 40.4 million views.

The hair and makeup she’s wearing to work? “Very demure. Very mindful,” she says in the video. But demure, explains Lebron in an interview with CBS Mornings, is about more than appearance. It’s a statement of self-awareness and confidence.

“Your demure is what it means to you. It’s being mindful and considerate of the people around you, but also of yourself and how you present to the world,” Lebron said.

What’s delightful about this trend is its edge and how it pushes back against historical norms, explains pop culture and digital media expert Shana MacDonald, the O’Donovan Chair in Communication at the University of Waterloo.

Once, demure described a more traditional, antiquated form of white femininity, MacDonald told CBC News. Think pearls, perfectly crisp dresses and docility. But she says Lebron, a transgender Puerto Rican woman, is re-defining what it means to be demure on her own terms.

“It opens up the possibility of what demure means.”

It’s interesting, too, that Lebron pairs demure with mindful, says Zorianna Zurba, an assistant professor in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. In this way, to be demure is also to be aware of the impact of our self-presentation on others, she told CBC News.

The fact that Lebron is transgender adds another layer of meaning about how she’s specifically choosing to present herself, Zurba said.

“If it had come from a trad wife, it would mean something very different.”

Demure, a counterpoint to brat

Demure emerged as kind of a counterpoint to brat summer, a term already popular this season thanks to British artist Charli XCX’s album brat. In a TikTok video, she described a brat as “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.”

According to CBC Radio’s Sunday Magazine, the term brat morphed from there into more of a reclamation of an empowered, strong-headed, disobedient woman.

After Lebron posted her video, demure caught on and spread online. Demurely, of course

Essentially, to be demure is to be reserved, or not brat, explains Emily Zwicker, 20, a registered nurse in Halifax. Neat and tidy handwriting? Demure. Cute outfit? Demure. Going out partying with your friends every weekend? Brat.

“I’ll wear a slicked-back bun, and I’ll be like, ‘See, I don’t do too much with my hair. It’s very demure, very mindful,’ ” Zwicker told CBC News.

“I wish I could be demure, but I feel like I’m more on the brat side of things. On the weekends, I like to be brat, but when I’m working, I try to be demure,” she said.

Everyone is suddenly ‘very demure’ 

In addition to Lebron’s own viral content that continues to describe various day-to-day, arguably reserved or modest activities with adjectives like “demure,” “mindful” and “cutesy,” several big names have also hopped on the trend across social media platforms. 

Celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Penn Badgley have shared their own playful takes. The cast of Netflix’s Emily in Paris hopped on the trend, using “very demure and very mindful” to describe their outfits at the Season 4 premiere.

Soon after, Netflix created its own “very demure, very mindful” playlist, which includes Emily in Paris, Gilmore Girls, Bridgerton and Sweet Magnolias.

Even the White House used the words to boast the Biden-Harris administration’s recent student debt relief efforts.

“Cancelling the student debt of nearly 5 million Americans through various actions. Very mindful. Very demure,” the White House wrote in a recent post on social media platform X.

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance recently explained the difference using pandas, describing giant pandas as brat summer and “pumpkin spice pandas” (ie., red pandas) as demure fall.

Straightforward, right?

“It’s hard to explain,” Zwicker admits.

“It’s a word that people are just using in many different contexts. There’s no right way to use it, but it’s always used to describe something very reserved, very clean, very cute.”

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Zurba, the pop culture expert with Toronto Metropolitan University, says she also sees demure playing into the emerging under-consumption trend, in which young people are buying less and focused more on sustainability. (Like minimalism, but rebranded for Gen Z.)

In her original viral video, for instance, Lebron says she doesn’t “come to work with a green cut crease,” a dramatic eye makeup style that creates a contrast by using several different types of products.

“What she’s suggesting is that femininity can be myriad of things,” Zurba said.  

Including very demure.