Brat Girl has been out late every night since June, dressed in a rotation of neon green crop tops with various stains (one sweat, one vomit, one unidentifiable). All summer long, Brat has done Jell-O shots off strangers’ abs and danced on elevated surfaces, taking nothing seriously but the pack of Parliaments in her pocket. But as summer winds down, fall startlingly within reach, a new girl has the internet’s attention. While Brat nurses her hangover, this new girl is not overdoing it. She’s not laying it on thick. She’s respectful. She’s cutesy. She’s . . . demure. And she’s sheepishly taking her turn in the spotlight.
With the popularity of Charli XCX’s latest album, it’s been near impossible to avoid the slime-colored wave known as “brat summer,” a movement encouraging women to loosen up and embrace their messiness. But even though August is only halfway through, and summer temperatures haven’t dissipated, the tune on TikTok shifted ever so slightly this week, when creator Jools Lebron christened the upcoming season “demure fall.”
“I don’t do too much, I do just enough. I don’t go overboard, I don’t go underboard,” Lebron explained in a recent video, deploying her signature mesmerizing lilt. “I’m not the basement, I’m not the attic. I’m where you live. I’m very demure.”
This message turns the brat craze on its mussed-up, uncombed head.
If brat summer is the sister who rolls up late to the family breakfast, eyelids smeared with last night’s liner, then demure fall gets up early to set the table – very considerate. Demure fall waits patiently with her hands folded in her lap for her sister to sit before she nibbles on the pancakes she very sweetly made from scratch. Very classy, very respectful. Meanwhile, her sister scarfs down a short stack with a belch.
The chaos of brat summer carries on the legacy of lawless summers gone by, including the feral girl summer of 2022 and rat girl summer 2023. In a TikTok announcing the “Brat” album in July, Charli identified the most important brat qualities. “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things,” she said. “That’s brat.”
Lime green will continue to hold a tender place in the hearts of all the brats who were unapologetically themselves this summer; those who celebrated what might have gotten them labeled “tasteless” or “unbecoming” by traditionalists. Even democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has embraced brat, showcasing that it’s about more than irreverence and partying – it’s about not being afraid to be loud: with your wardrobe, your opinions, or your joy.
But whether you see demure fall as a rejection of brat summer (a bratlash, of sorts), or just a different set of values will depend on how you interpret Lebron’s videos.
Though there’s been some drama surrounding the rightful claim to “demure” on TikTok, Lebron certainly elevated it to a viral trend – earning herself the nicknames “Demure Lovato” and “Demure Moore” along the way. The bit, usually delivered as Lebron runs her acrylics through her 26-inch blonde wigs, is a joke. As she’s stated in some of her videos, she isn’t actually telling women to tone it down.
But there are plenty of people who would be happy to take demure fall literally, likely including TikTok’s “tradwives” and coquette it-girls – and, on a more sinister note, the architects of conservative manifesto Project 2025 and its supporters (two of whom are currently running to be elected to the White House). A truly demure woman is, after all, a submissive one. She’s content with very little. She’s physically and emotionally small. She speaks when spoken to. She doesn’t flaunt her sexuality. To be pure and demure is an outdated ideal of womanhood embodied by old Hollywood starlets and British royalty – not 365 party girls.
Lebron – a Chicago-based Puerto Rican trans woman who identifies as fat – doesn’t qualify as traditionally feminine or demure by those standards. And while she’s mostly exaggerating for comedic effect, there’s a touch of sincerity in her crusade to redefine demure for a new era of girls and women.
In Lebron’s mind, “demurity” isn’t about being dainty or petite or repressed, as it once meant. It’s rooted in sweetness. “Let’s be kind, divas. Let’s uplift each other,” Lebron says in one of her videos. Very mindful, indeed. (Lebron did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.)
There are elements of both brat and demure that we can choose to carry with us as we prepare to kiss summer gently goodbye. We can be our most authentic selves, showing up with our flaws, our failures, and our fun without being selfish or brutish. We can be attuned to the needs of others, and we can be kind to them and to ourselves without sacrificing our complexity as humans. We can be sweet, not because it’s palatable to patriarchy but because it’s just nice.
So as you swap your green mesh for your pink silk ribbons this fall, remember girlhood means holding multitudes. Maybe the apple’s not so rotten after all.
Emma Glassman-Hughes is the associate editor at PS Balance. Before joining PS, her freelance and staff reporting roles spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, travel for Here Magazine, and food, climate, and agriculture for Ambrook Research.
