By the middle of August this year, Tik Tokers took over a social media trend and turned it into a cultural movement of the time. Only ‘Very Demure. Very Mindful’ wasn’t just a regular viral hashtag, but a liberating statement that resonated with women and men, ordinary and the famous alike. Such has been the impact of the recreations of the ‘Very Demure’ reels that by August the word saw a 1200% jump in digital media usage. When, this week, dictionary.com named ‘Demure’ as the word of the year 2024, it came as no surprise to anyone even remotely aware of trends on social media platforms.
Meet Jools LeBron, the ‘Demure’ TikToker
The virtual interest in the word and online searches have all been inspired by the reel originally created by influencer Jools Lebron. On August 2, the American TikToker posted a video, explaining to her followers on ‘How to be Demure at Work. “You see how I come to work? Very Demure,” she says in the clip and adds, “I do my make-up, I lay my wig, I do a little braid. I flat iron my hair…Let’s not forget to be demure divas.” The audio clip has since been used by fashion and social influencers throughout Instagram and Tiktok to post their versions of the same.
The original 38-second clip spread like wildfire and by mid-August Lebron had not only garnered over 9 million views but by the end of the month gained fame and started travelling to different cities to host events and make appearances on talk shows. However, she also gained notoriety and was embroiled in a lawsuit over the trademark of the phrase “Very Demure. Very Mindful.” While LeBron lost the lawsuit and may not be able to release the merchandise, she continues to be relevant with over 2.3 million followers on TikTok and be credited for the cultural phenomenon.
How and why did the word click?
LeBron originally intended the word to be equated with balance, restraint and consideration. “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,” she said in an interview, adding the original intention was to go very natural with her make-up look. “I was like, let's not do too much. So that I don’t show up looking like a clown, but I was really referencing how I had shown up at another job,” added the Chicago-based influencer while sharing her backstory.
Celebrities like Jenna Ortega, Jennifer Lopez, Penn Badgley, Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis hopped on with their versions of the trend. A Google Techie's spin-off What’s it Like to Work at Google received a huge round of virtual applause. “What it’s like to work at Google. Very demure. Very mindful. Very, my stock options haven’t fully vested yet and I would like a raise please,” Michael Jiang wrote on his Instagram account along with a light-hearted video. “We’re not investment bankers with our $10,000 suits and $100,000 watches.” He then shows his 'Very Demure' watch.
Soft feminism and cultural impact
Considering it’s a generation of women who have grown up making efforts to be empowered, break the glass ceilings, fighting subtle cultural connotations of patriarchy, demure should have not resonated at all. But it did, for all the satirical reasons, too. The reverse spin-off started out as poking fun at the stereotypical and outdated ideas of femininity and 'ladylike' behaviour. The reverse trend also has taken a life of its own. “You see how I don’t give a damn about other people and their opinions. Very Demure. Very Mindful,” says yet another video with its creator interpreting the trend as “Mind your own business mindset.”
Dictionary.com’s criterion
Before the digital dictionary could name ‘Demure’ as the word of the year 2024, it identified six words that shaped the social media discourse in the past 11 months. So technically, Demure beat the words, Brainrot, Brat, Extreme weather, Midwest nice, and Weird before being crowned The Word of the Year. Dictionary.com’s lexicographers analyse headlines, social trends, search engine results, usage, rise and other criteria to come up with the word they call, “linguistic time capsule that captures pivotal moments in language and culture.” The site had named Hallucinate as Word of the Year 2023, courtesy the rise of chatbots, and artificial intelligence and all the misinformation often spurred online.
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