Modesty is at its peak… but not in the way you think. The word “humute” is the new word of the season after TikToker Jools Lebron popularized it in a viral video that garnered 6 million views and over 600,000 likes in about two weeks. In it, she shows off her natural makeup and says, “See how I come to work? Very humble. I put on makeup, I put my wig down, I do a little braid, I straighten my hair, I do chichi outfits, I do viral vanilla: very humble, very mindful.”

Now people can’t stop making “modest” comments in appropriate and ironic situations. Going through airport security with your electronics already unpacked? Very cute, very modest. Not freaking out when reacting to drama? Very modest, very thoughtful. Sitting in the middle seat of a crowded train and not breaking a big neck? Very…wait a minute…modest.

The word is so popular that even brands and celebrities have started using it. Netflix tweeted a scene from “Gilmore Girls” in which the main character Rory asks for a soda water and her grandmother replies, “So demure. Isn’t she so demure?” Penn Badgley jumped on the bandwagon and filmed himself on the set of the next season of “You” while repeating LeBron’s quotable line, “See how I get to work? Very demure.” Even the White House couldn’t resist, posting a photo of President Joe Biden with the caption, “(Forgiving) the student debt of nearly 5 million Americans through various measures. Very thoughtful. Very demure.”

The trend seems to have come out of nowhere, but the increasing emphasis on humility and mindfulness is quite understandable given the growing appreciation of authenticity and humble success stories.

Demure didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. It exists in the context it came from: the fall of Brat Summer. To understand the current rise of demure, we must first understand what killed Brat. Charli XCX popularized the word through her latest eponymous album, where Brat became a symbol of a lifestyle of disorder, partying, and hedonism. The perfect example is the viral photos from the pop star’s own birthday: washed-out snaps of tongues hanging out, cigarette butts, and sweaty bodies en masse. The photos drew comparisons to the indie sleaze era, aka the hipster era of the early 2000s, as they can pass as an old photo that Cobra Snake (who was at the party) might have taken. But with virality comes criticism. People started Criticism of the revival of the indie sleaze photo because the carefree feeling that Charli and the throwback era conveyed felt inauthentic in 2024. “This is a completely staged birthday party for the industry,” said one comment under the photos. Others lamented the way indie sleaze co-opted by an authentic spirit into a marketing trickand how indie sleaze parties carefree can never happen in 2024 If the rent is so high, Drugs are more heavily adulteratedand everyone is more busy taking their Instagram photos than having fun.

It doesn’t help that the Brat ethos was already being criticized for losing its spirit through marketing. Shortly before Charli’s birthday, Pitchfork declared Brat Summer dead. This came right after Charli tweeted, “Kamala IS a brat,” after which the VP’s team quickly created new marketing graphics in Brat’s signature neon green to capitalize on that support. Suddenly Brat was political, marketable, and used to woo Gen Z voters with pop culture references and distract from the fact that many young Democrats had made clear their calls for a ceasefire in Palestine. This was the mid-party record-scratcher: Brat had gone too far. Like the indie sleaze photos, what had once felt like an authentic ethos has become a marketing campaign brimming with co-optation.

The shift in attitudes toward “brat” created the perfect environment for a new word—the exact opposite—to enter the vocabulary. While “brat” means being loud and messy, “humble” is about being stylish, considerate, and, as Lebron points out, authentic. In an interview with CBS, the TikToker explained what she means by “humble”: “It means being mindful and considerate of the people around you, but also of yourself and your appearance to the outside world.” As a self-identified plus-size transgender woman, Lebron faces certain preconceived notions. As she told CBS, she struggled with her own self-confidence and learned to accept herself more through making TikToks. By creating content online, she found solidarity with many other girls like her. Referring to herself as “humble” and “cute”—words not often attributed to fat or trans women—is not entirely serious. So, being humble means paying attention to the people around you and staying true to yourself.

Demure has become so popular that LeBron has her own curated “Very Demure, Very Mindful” collection on Netflix. Now she can use the meme’s popularity to fund her gender transition. In a recent TikTok, she tearfully spoke about how she feels about this fame: “I feel so overwhelmed. I’m so grateful, don’t get me wrong, but it all happens so fast.” See her responding to fame with authenticity and gratitude? Very low-key, very mindful.

The virality of “Humility,” as Lebron would say, makes sense when you look at the authentic stories surrounding celebrities who rose to fame this year. Charli XCX, for example, talks about it at length in “Brat,” another reason why her era’s transition to humility isn’t so coincidental after all. On the album, the singer speaks openly about not having achieved the level of fame she would have liked at this point in her life and feeling like her career was inconsequential. Part of the album’s success was the pop star’s vulnerability about her relationship with fame and her decision to continue making music for herself rather than mainstream success.

The other pop star to climb the charts this summer is equally vulnerable when she doesn’t make it. Chappell Roan released her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” last year, which topped the charts but didn’t go viral until her NPR Tiny Desk Concert in March of this year. After that, it felt like her success came overnight, but in reality, it took about seven years to materialize. At 17, Chappell signed with Atlantic Records, when she moved from her hometown in Missouri to Los Angeles to record with the label. In 2020, the record label dropped her when her single “Pink Pony Club” didn’t pull in the numbers expected.

Roan returned to Missouri dejected, doing sporadic gigs in between while working at a drive-in cafe. The hopelessness and defeat are captured in the album’s 13th track, “California.” (“I thought I was cool in California/I’d make you proud/To think I almost made it/But I let you down.”) In late 2020, she came out of the slump and decided to return to Los Angeles to make music as an indie artist. In 2023, she finally signed a deal with Amusement/Island Records to release her album. Even so, it would take half a year for the album to really take off.

Like Charli, Chappell sang and spoke openly about feeling like she “didn’t make it.” She told the Guardian she “felt like a failure” when Atlantic dropped her, and when she tried her chance in Los Angeles one more time, she came out with doubts and a caveat: “I thought to myself: I have no money, but I’m going to hang on; if nothing happens by the end of next year, that’s a sign I need to move back home.” Her busy and humble rise to fame is one of the reasons people celebrate her. “One of the things that makes Roan’s story so compelling is how long it took her to get here,” wrote Constance Grady in Vox. Even with her newfound fame, Chappell has remained down to earth, talking about boundaries between herself and her fans, wanting to “put the brakes on fame,” and turning down invitations for lead roles because “actors are so damn scary” and “the industry is so scary.”

In a sea of ​​Nepo babies, these humble rises to fame stand out. No one would say that Charli or Chappell’s public personas come across as humble, but the authentic way they rose to fame, the way they humbly fought through to get to where they are today? Very low-key, very mindful. Maybe the word hadn’t entered the viral lexicon back then, but by the time they rose to stardom, their low-keyness was already being celebrated.

We even see it with our next Midwestern princess: Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. Walz is called everyone’s Midwestern dad because of his healthy energy, his background as a teacher (so humble!), because he doesn’t own stocks, equity or even a home (so humble!) and because his son Gus Walz tearfully cheered him on during the Democratic National Convention (“That’s my dad!”). He’s so down-to-earth that both The New York Times and former President Barack Obama described him favorably in terms of his flannel shirts. “You can tell the flannel shirts he’s wearing aren’t from some political adviser—they’re from his closet, and they’ve been through a lot,” Obama said. Walz’s wife, Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz, has also been compared to a person who’s too busy being a real human being to have enough time for luxury grooming, or “a high school teacher who just finished her last loud class of the day,” according to The Cut. They mentioned her “frumpy cardigan, her shapeless, above-the-knee sheath dress” and, believe it or not, her “‘modest’ make-up.”

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If Harris is a brat, then Walz’s inseparable Midwesternness, dad charisma, and quaint style are what make him so low-key. And apparently people are starting to think so, too. One of the top comments under Walz’s latest TikTok (yes, he recently joined) reads, “Respecting our neighbors’ choices… very low-key, very attentive, very considerate.”

It’s no surprise that the Harris-Walz camouflage hat – which has been compared to Chappel Roan’s camouflage hat merchandise – sold out in 30 minutes. The modesty trend tells us that people want modesty, leaders and celebrities who are honest and authentic, who have earned their place rather than been born into it. As Brat warns us, internet jargon and fun trends never stay on the internet – they become marketing buzzwords, a cycle Brat both fights against and emerges from. The only question is: will the trend resist Brat’s commodification, or will this thirst for authenticity be used as a campaign against us?