Unless you’re glued to TikTok makeup videos, you may not know there is a trademark tussle going on over the word demure.
In August, a young woman in Chicago drove to her job at a grocery store. While parked outside, she recorded a TikTok video. The next 38 seconds would change her life. “See how I do my makeup for work? Very demure, very mindful. I don’t come to work with a green cut crease [outlandish eye makeup]. 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. See how I look very presentable? The way I came to the interview is the way I go to the job. A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure. I am very modest... I am very demure...”
A trans woman of Puerto Rican heritage, this was not Jools LeBron’s first makeup video, but it was the first to go viral with over 53m views, and certainly the first to inspire copycat videos from the likes of JLo, Khloe Kardashian and RuPaul, all using demure in a slightly ironic way to mean elegant and understated.
Attempting to piggyback on the word’s viral success, several savvy entrepreneurs applied to trademark “very demure very mindful” before LeBron had the chance. On finding out about the applications, and realising she might be too late to monetize her viral moment, LeBron posted a tearful follow-up video: “I wanted to do so much for my family and my transition. I feel like I dropped the ball. Someone else has it now. And I don’t even know what I could have done better, because, like, I didn’t have the resources.”
The whole drama was reminiscent of a similar case a decade ago, when a young African-American woman, Kayla Newman—better known as Peaches Monroee—popularised the expression on fleek (meaning “aesthetically perfect”). Sitting in her car after a visit to the beautician, she filmed a six second video that went viral: “We in dis bitch, finna get crunk, eyebrows on fleek, da fuq”. Although “on fleek” was likewise picked up by celebrities and printed on thousands of t-shirts by H&M, Newman reaped none of the financial rewards.
LeBron, fortunately, has had a happier ending. Her new fans on TikTok—over two million of them—vowed never to buy demure merch unless it came from her. Lawyers reached out and helped her build a convincing case for her own application to the US Patent and Trademark Office. To trademark a word, it turns out that you need three things: to use the phrase more frequently than other applicants; to commercialise it; and to build a public reputation around it.
After posting a flurry of new videos using the phrase, and teaming up with her brother to sell demure t-shirts, LeBron attracted paid partnerships with Lyft, Verizon, Netflix and Bottega Veneta. While the trademark application is still ongoing, in hearts and minds it looks as though LeBron has already won. Her newfound wealth and rise to fame has enabled her, as she told Good Morning America, “to finish out my transition and be able to help my family”.
In this age of monetizing your identity, LeBron has shown how words—even every day, commonplace ones—can be big business.
