The summer cooldown we all needed has arrived in the form of DEMURE, a cold shower of a term that has taken the culture by storm thanks to trans beauty influencer Jools Lebron, who — kind of joking, but also kind of not — sits in her car and explains how we should all aspire to be: demure, cutesy, mindful. “No wing liner or lashes,” she instructs. Just some tinted moisturizer, some wig oil, and a desire to keep it cutesy.
This all feels extremely right for right now. As Emma Glassman-Hughes of PS so eloquently nailed, if summer was all about neon green BRAT chaos, early fall is time to buckle down, knock out the weeknight drinking, and keep it classy. (See also: Meg Ryan fall.)
I, myself, am not particularly demure. My spouse describes the way I open cereal boxes as, “like a Yeti,” and my general aura can be best described as “twitchy.” But I do long to be more calm and collected — or at least appear that way. So far, Lebron has taught me a lot about restrained makeup, fragrance (always vanilla), and chi-chi exposure, but what about eating? Seeing as my personal and professional world pretty much revolves around food, finding the demure within meals would be a good place for me to start. But what is demure food?
Lebron herself says it’s all about skipping the wings after work and going for a salad, but I don’t think salad and mindfulness here explicitly means diet; it means to be “just enough.” But is it more demure to show restraint and skip the avocado, or is the avocado’s cool simplicity actually the pinnacle of demure? Bacon feels distinctly not demure, as does cheese — but then, the French excel at demure and they consume cheese exclusively so that doesn’t quite add up either.
The rest of the internet proved to be no help; most memes have wildly different interpretations of demure, showcasing workday slices of chocolate cake, dripping hoagies, and stacked Double Doubles as demure. Tiktok Tradwives like Nara Smith are definitely one type of demure, talking quietly in a formal dress, taking up as little space as possible while making adorable handmade candy for her kids. I sent my kids to school this week with a pile of Beaver Nuggets in their lunch that I purchased at Texas roadstop and demure death trap, Buc-ee’s. (I was, however, wearing silk pajama pants while packing it, which seems close.)
Demure is really just the polar opposite of last fall’s maximalist dining trend — less pepperoni cups and caviar bumps; more whole sliced cucumbers and Caesar salads with fries. Though, I certainly hope we aren’t all about to slide out of maximalism’s beloved plush booth and back into the world of blonde wood and long minimalist counters. I’m not sure my posture can handle another year of hard, backless stools.
Perhaps it’s more important to focus on the “mindful” part of Lebron’s message — a buzzword that’s been unfortunately co opted by diet culture but which it’s time to reclaim to just mean: be present in your eating. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. Show some gratitude. Which means that saucy chicken wings aren’t necessarily off the table in Demure Fall — so long as we don’t rush and do a cutesy lick of our fingers after.
