The Definition of Demure

A portrait of the most graceful woman I know.

The other night at our buddy’s place, we were pregaming for nothing really. I was being a particular strain of obnoxious. Describing things as “brat” and “demure.” Internet-soaked and flamboyant after chugging a Yogurt-flavored soju. Bewildered, my heterosexual¹ friend

briffin glue

interrupted me.

“What does demure even mean?” he asked, clueless in the face of our generation’s collective algorithm.

It was a fair question. All over the internet that summer people posted videos highlighting the abstract ways we should be “very mindful, very cutesy, very demure.” The meme was something of a medium for ironic confessions of one’s own lack of elegance. It wasn’t that confusing. There was a new cultural truth: to be demure was the goal.

However, when Griffin asked, I stared at him speechless. Explaining it would only make me feel dumber than I already looked. My answer wasn’t in words. It was in the night before.

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After closing up at the wine shop—drunk off expensive Chardonnay—I hopped across the street to find a friend who had just gotten back from San Francisco. It was a city she was much too charming for.

I spotted her, poking her head out of a glass door. “Jen!” I called out and when we hugged I tried not to be nervous. Jen was one of those effortlessly cool types. The kind that didn’t have to convince anyone of it.

She was 5 '3. Small-faced, small-waisted, and always clad in black. Slender in the way people photoshopped themselves to be. And god, was she beautiful. The kind of beautiful that typically inspires scorn from other women and attracts the grimiest of men. Despite this, Jen carried herself with such a grace that I liked to imagine the grosser things in life—things like jealousy, pettiness, and hideous men—just rolled off of her. Like raindrops off the petals of a white rose.

I always sort of wondered how she went through life not making enemies or leaving men heartbroken just by turning the corner. While I never admitted to it—I always nimbly avoided introducing her to my straight guy friends. I knew they’d fall in love with her in an instant. Jen had a way of making you feel more elegant than you actually were. And there was nothing more annoying than seeing that glimmer in a straight boy’s eye. That deluded sparkle when he looks at a beautiful woman and thinks “She’s the one.”

Jen was a large-scale, abstract-expressionist painter. Her canvases seemed chaotic on a surface level—scratchy and smudged in different shades of charcoal—yet there was a harmony to them that was reflective of her inner world. Her place was decor’ed² with art books. Basquiat. Duchamp. Rothko. I’m sure somewhere in the pile you’d find The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. Her bathroom counter was lined with products I could never afford.

As I sat on her barstool swaying from the wine, I wondered what it must be like to walk into a store like Aesop and knew you belonged there. A store with $$$ on Google maps. One for clean people who knew the feel of expensive things. Jen knew. She definitely knew.

I watched her pull a 312³ from her fridge. She poured it over ice into two glasses. I hate 312. But the tungsten ambiance of her West Town apartment made it taste like heaven. She leaned over her kitchen counter like a goddess and casually filled me in on her time in San Francisco. She hung out in parks, painted in her sister’s studio, started seeing a man, went out dancing at night. It was easy to imagine her lighting some incense, sitting crosslegged in the afternoon, and absorbing the energy of the city into herself, synthesizing the smog into something peaceful and exquisite. Only Jen could make Northern California sound charming.

As we talked, I realized: she is it. Jen was the embodiment of demure. She lived on her own terms. Went out only when it suited her. Danced with her eyes closed and her dainty arms raised. She sipped on espresso martinis. Dabbed her lips with a napkin before reapplying her lip gloss. She changed into pajamas at night and went to bed at a reasonable hour. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone. She just existed in her own soft, mindful way. I was enchanted. How the fuck does she do it?

We went down to the Fry the Coop below her apartment and both ordered chicken sandwiches. She ate her food. I devoured mine. After dinner, when she declared it was her bedtime, I was impressed. I hugged her goodbye and we went our separate ways. I didn’t find myself asleep until long past midnight.

I envied Jen. I imagined her waking up the next morning in her Brooklinen sheets, her room warm with the scent of Le Labo candles and Aesop incense⁴, doing her Kiels skincare routine. She would walk over to her loft window and sip green tea before whipping out a shadow work journal and doing her morning yoga. It all seemed so effortless.

My morning found me on someone’s air mattress, beneath a single gray fleece blanket from Target. Grimy and shivering. My breath reeked of cigarettes and shame. I had to go back to work and open up the wine shop in a couple of hours. My face could feel the breakout forming beneath my skin. 

If Jen was the definition of demure. Then I—in that moment—was its antithesis.

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Griffin had asked a simple question, but the answer wasn’t as simple. To understand the meme wasn’t about knowing the definition of some silly word. It was about knowing someone like Jen⁵—who glided through life like a figure skater. It was about waking up in the morning and realizing you were miles away from elegance. About knowing you could never step into an Aesop and feel like you belonged.

1. I wouldn’t normally feel the need to clarify something like this, but in the conversation of “Brat” and “Demure” sexuality is kind of an important thing to note. Griffin’s the kind of straight guy who wears tote bags and Birkenstocks, so the algorithm feeds him “brat”/”demure” content whether he understands it or not.

2. Decorated isn’t chic enough of a word for her.

3. A local Chicago craft beer

4. When reading the rough draft of this essay to a friend, she thought it was important to note that “When Jen comes over, her scent lingers in your apartment.” For my birthday, Jen gifted me Aesop incense and cologne… for your hair. Now that’s class.

5. The craziest thing is I think she’d be embarrassed and slightly annoyed to be compared to some internet trend like this one. But Jen, if you ever see this, just know… you are not some lame internet trend. You are what the “demure” TikTokers and Instagram Reelers wish they could be.