demure

TikTok video creator Jools Lebron has managed to give the word demure a new twist — and has persuaded her followers to send in examples of what is demure these days.  Demure used to be an adjective applied to women and girls who were modest in their behaviour and dress, slightly simpering to be honest, slightly coy.  But Jools says that it now means that you are mindful, cutesy, not doing too much.  So Jools dressed down (for her, that is) to go to work, applying only half the eye make-up that she would usually wear and adopting a wig which is neither too high at the front, nor too low, is demure.  Jools enjoins us to be mindful and not fight mother nature.  Mindful is a word that she often associates with demure.  There is also a sense of being considerate.

So her followers have now supplied examples, though rather like Lebron herself, very few of them can say it with a straight face.  Kamala’s suit is demure.  Looking at pornography on an iPad which has lots of cutesy photos on the back is demure.

And now Peter Dutton has entered the fray. With his first post on TikTok he said that, while he thought he should say something that was fun, maybe demure, he was in fact going to talk about housing.  Next he will be telling us that nuclear reactors are demure.