Jools Lebron kept things “very demure” while making her debut on late-night TV.
The TikTok star, who made the phrase a viral sensation, appeared on the Monday, August 19, edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which was guest-hosted by RuPaul.
When the RuPaul’s Drag Race emcee asked Lebron how he was doing in Kimmel’s place, she replied, “Very demure, very mindful.”
Lebron skyrocketed to fame earlier this month after uploading a video showing off her makeup for her job. “You see how I do my makeup for work? Very demure. Very mindful,” she said in the clip. “I don’t come to work with a green cut crease. I don’t look like a clown when I go to work. I don’t do too much. I’m very mindful while I’m at work.”
The post has since received more than 33 million views, garnering Lebron 1.7 million followers and counting on the app.
As for what inspired her to post the TikTok, Lebron explained to RuPaul, “Well, apparently the trauma that comes with working a retail job gets enough to you that you start saying ‘demure’ on the internet.”
She said that she works in a Mariano’s grocery store in Illinois and characterized it as “very cutesy” and, yes, “very demure.”
Lebron then defined demure as “a mindset. I used to be crazy and out of control. And then I found some demure-ity and along with that came success.”
“Demur-ity?” RuPaul asked.
“Demure-ity is my purity,” Lebron responded.
And of all the celebrities hopping aboard Lebron’s quotable catchphrase, she’s most impressed by Jennifer Lopez recreating the trend by sharing a clip of herself sipping from a bottle of her cocktail brand Delola.
“She finally revealed what that orange drink from the block was,” Lebron said, calling it “demure.”
Lebron also revealed that she was invited to attend the Democratic National Convention, which kicked off Monday in Chicago, “but unfortunately I had a wig appointment.”
On TikTok, she’s long been candid about being a trans woman and opened up about her coming-out journey.
“Growing up, I was always into feminine things,” she said in March 2023. “I like dolls, I was always into Disney Princesses, Bratz — some things never change. Obviously [my family] thought it was a phase … it wasn’t. But growing up I never saw myself as a boy liking other boys. I was always like, ‘I’m the girl.’”
In a another video, Lebron said that fellow trans influencers inspired her to be honest about her identity since she didn’t have many trans role models in her life. She looked to personalities like Nikita Dragun, Gigi Gorgeous and La Demi to help her realize she was “a woman.”