MANILA – “Very demure, very mindful” is how content creator Jools Lebron aka @joolieannie describes her every move. “You see how I come to work?” she begins her now-viral TikTok video with 4.2 million views as of writing.

She then proceeds to describe her getting ready routine, which involves doing her makeup, laying her wig, doing a little braid, flat ironing her hair, and putting on her favourite perfume. She then reminds her viewers, “Let’s not forget to be demure, divas.”

Since uploading her viral demure video on Aug. 3, Lebron has accumulated over a million followers. She then proceeds to describe, in her succeeding videos, how she does her makeup for work, how she orders her food, how she comes to her nail appointment, how she picks up the ID she left at a bar, how she shows up at her family vacation—“very demure.”

Her audio has been imitated by legions of TikTok users who use it to describe just about everything they do, pushing the word demure into the current conversation as a new vocabulary for the extremely online girls.

For her part, Lebron has coined even more words to complement demure. There’s “mindful,” “not taking too much space,” and even “demuretesy,” a combination of demure and cutesy. “I mix them both because I’m what? Very demuretesy. I’m very cute with it but I’m very mindful with it, very respectful with it. I don’t do too much, I do just enough. I don’t go overboard, I don’t go underboard. I’m not the basement, I’m not the attic—I’m where you live. I’m very demure.”

Lebron’s even done the Charli XCX “Apple” trend “in a demure way.” Of course. Doing the choreography ever so… cutesy. Demure.

While she has been doling out demure content nonstop (understandably. You want to ride the ephemeral wave of TikTok stardom), Lebron has also been putting out actually mindful content about her weight loss journey, self-care during mental health episodes, responding to drama, good manners, normalizing midnight snacking(!), expressing her gratitude to hospitality staff, staying put after the plane lands, and going after your dreams.

And to the question of “who the original demure is,” Lebron acknowledges the dolls that came before her: TikTok creators Devin Halbal and Selyna, and the late “Paris is Burning” star drag queen Venus Xtravaganza, “who paved the way for a girl like me to thrive.”

“Demure is just a way of life for the girls, for the dolls like me.”

She says the original demure is all of us.

“Being demure is thanking the people who have come before you, while you pave the path for the people who will come after you. And that’s being demure, divas.” -- Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN