If you’ve been online in the past week, you’re probably familiar with the “very mindful, very demure, very cutesy” agenda. It’s a phrase beloved by pop stars and politicians — having been seen on the feeds of J.Lo and the White House — and all that attention has made it possible for its creator, TikTokker Jools Lebron, to finance the remainder of her gender transition.
In a TikTok posted earlier this week, Lebron described how much change her videos — most of which describe all the ways she stays “very mindful, very demure, very cutesy” throughout the day — have brought to her life in such a short time.
Why is everyone online ‘very demure, very mindful’ right now?
“Hey pendeja,” she tells the viewer, using the Spanish word for idiot, “Maybe you should make the videos because one day I was playing cashier and making videos on my break and now I’m flying across country to host events and I’m going to be able to finance the rest of my transition.”
In another video, Lebron explains that tough she has been overwhelmed by all the attention, she is indeed living her dream.
Madison Werner, a trans content creator who posts about social justice issues affecting her community, noted on Instagram that Lebron’s success is a win for trans women everywhere. “Trans women are gender experts via lived experience,” they wrote. “The ‘demure’ trend is a comedic commentary on, and a reclamation of, an [sic] historically oppressive ideal of femininity… for some trans women, this ‘quiet elegance’ is a form of survival.”
View this post on Instagram
Lebron has been booked and busy since her approach to life took off online. Dozens of major brands comment on her videos regularly, and she has attended events in New York for beauty brand Patrick Ta and collaborated with Kombucha brands GT’s Synergy in Los Angeles.
Her most-watched video as of publishing is one in which she describes how she shows up to work which is, of course, “very modest, very mindful.” It has 29.9 million views.
