Friday Notebook

What comes after demure? By Lara Olszowska

Until two weeks ago ‘demure’ was a term typically used of a woman who acts reserved or shy, or a descriptor of modest clothing. Thanks to the content creator Jools Lebron, as of last week, it means almost anything. “See how I do my makeup for work? Very demure, very mindful,” she lectured her apostles, who spread the word far and wide. Now, something as innocuous as grabbing a matcha latte is suddenly very demure, very mindful. 

Just picked up my stuff from my ex’s flat — very demure, very mindful. Just baking some cookies — very demure, very mindful. Just burnt the cookies — very demure, very mindful. 

You get it: say it with enough conviction and the glove will fit. A bit like Brat Summer. There’s no dictionary definition for a term that thrives off pliability (how else would it go viral?). And yet you know that doing your tax return is not very brat summer, whereas breezing into work on a Monday morning straight from an All Points East afters, that wound up around 5am, is. 

My week started very demurely. An Italian from Saturday night left my bed on Sunday morning, and I said ci vediamo! without really meaning it. But also, very mindfully. I spent my Sunday shift at work listening to Radio 3 and pretending not to be hungover. Is everyone having as demure and mindful a time as I? Tommy Fury and Molly Mae are not; nor are JLo and Ben Affleck, who filed for divorce for the second time this week and despite JLo’s best attempts to lean into the trend. I wouldn’t say Michelle Obama is having a demure or mindful time either, after taking centre stage at the Democratic Convention earlier this week and eviscerating Donald Trump to the rapturous applause of the audience. Even though she was speaking sense, she did so with invectives. Very powerful, sure – stunning, even – but not very cutesy.

You have to wonder whether this latest microtrend is just another internet fad rolling back decades of progress for women – like trad wives. Model Nara Smith making everything from scratch for her husband? Very demure, very mindful, I’m afraid. Should we read anything into the monotony of the 22-year-old’s tone as she narrates videos of herself preparing food to satisfy her husband’s food cravings dressed in full glam, hair and makeup? Or what about mother of eight Hannah Neeleman, who sells the homemaker lifestyle to her 10 million Instagram followers and was crowned Mrs America 2023 two weeks after giving birth?

Does this modesty extend to behind the scenes? I doubt it. If the Duchess of Sussex is anything to go by – surely, a trad wife hiding in plain sight if there ever was one – then the allure of timidity and deference is but a mask. Meghan Markle speaking in perfect Spanish to Colombian schoolchildren this week? Very mindful. But the high turnover of staff on Harry and Meghan’s team tells another story. Josh Kettler, chief of staff, quit last week after three months in the role, making him the eighteenth – eighteenth! – such casualty since 2018. “The decision to part ways was mutual, with both sides agreeing it wasn’t the right fit,” said People. Hmm.

A more cerebral point, now. You also have to wonder at the plasticity of language – how a term like demure, uncommon by any assessment, can be resurrected, plundered, and trivialised (in that order). It happens all the time. Terms like ‘icon’, ‘diva’, and ‘zhuzh’ are now part of the mainstream. Drag culture is often the source. Pushed to the cultural fore by Ru Paul, the drag queen is a loquacious character; verbose; like a thesaurus. The more obscure the term, the more camp the result. George Santos being expelled from Congress following a damning ethics report and dozens of criminal charges? Diva down. Naomi Campbell describing her presence at the war crimes tribunal of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor as “a big inconvenience”? Icon.

Not to wipe myself clean in any way: we’re all guilty of participating in this sort of semantic bleaching, as the columnist Arwa Mahdawi put it this week. I was at my parents’ house for Sunday lunch earlier this month with my grandmother. “Put this in the oven, Lara,” dad said. “Put it on a tray,” added mum. It doesn’t need a tray. I can put it straight in. (It was focaccia.) “I’ll just rawdog it.” Silence. Mum gave me the look of red fury she often wears whenever I accidentally swear in front of a senior family member. Thankfully, this rather vivid use of the word rawdog swept over grandma’s head like a wave.

So, which word is next? October is around the corner, with witchery sure to abound. Tricksy? Wily? Knavish?

Lara Olszowska is a freelance journalist and author of the Off-diary newsletter. Subscribe to her Substack here.

For your weekend reading: our interview with the artist Jan Gleie.