We find ourselves in delirious Mid-August: a closing chapter of summer where the impact of multiple festivals, the odd holiday, and a lack of grown-up supervision at work combine to cause feelings of acute disorientation. TikTok has offered Gen-Z an antidote: being “very demure, very mindful, very cutesy.” You might have seen Jennifer Lopez instructing you how to consume a fizzy drink “demurely”, or the White House’s official Instagram post a photograph of Joe Biden with the caption: “Cancelling the student debt of nearly 5 million Americans through various actions.
Very mindful. Very demure,” and thought – what now? Which would be fair. Consider it the comedown of the Charli XCX-pioneered 365 party Brat summer .
Being demure is hiding behind sunglasses, being introverted and being proper. It is the Princess of Wales wearing Emilia Wickstead, not Julia Fox wearing sellotape. The fad began with a TikTok guide-to office make-up by trans creator Jools Lebron (self-styled “miss demure”) at the start of the month.
"See how I do my make-up for work?,” she mews, satirically. “Very demure, very mindful." It has now clocked 42.
6M, and spun into “DemureTok”. Search now, and find countless guides: from how to walk through airports and thank hotel staff demurely, to applying deodorant and eating pizza mindfully. If you were to analyse it further, you could see it as a reclamation of the feminine — enjoying “ladylike”, polite, classy things in a mindful, .