feature image photo via Jools Lebron’s Instagram

Trans TikTok-er Jools Lebron Will Use Money from Viral Video for Her Transition

collage made from screenshots taken from Jools Lebron’s Instagram and TikTok

If you’ve been on the internet at all in the past week you’ve noticed that we have pivoted from a brat summer into being very demure, very mindful, very cutesy. We have trans TikToker Jools Lebron to thank for that, who made a hilarious video about how to dress for work. It has since taken off, starting with the regular TikTok parodies, eventually exploding out of the app to late night talk shows and celebs on their Instagram reels. Netflix even got in on the joke.

The best thing to come out of this trend, of course, is that Jools Lebron’s life has changed overnight. She says she was working as a cashier and making videos on the side (mostly GRWM makeup reviews, from what I saw), and this one video going viral means she’s being invited to LA to host shows and start her dream career. Even better: The money she’s made from this video going so viral will help her fund her transition.

I went to FlameCon this past weekend, which is a queer comic con in NYC, and everywhere you turned was a drag queen declaring how demure they were being, a queer thanking for someone for being mindful, a gay dressed as She-Ra being called cutesy. And I know some people on Twitter are annoyed by it but I personally find it hilarious every time, and to those who can’t get into it, I will say what Chappell Roan said to her VIP section who wouldn’t do the HOT-TO-GO dance: YOU’RE NO FUN.

It’s just a trend, and it will pass, but to pretend like it’s “brainrot” is to erase the fact that this exact thing happened in pre-TikTok culture, too. I knew most of the dialogue to Napoleon Dynamite before I ever saw the movie because of how often people were quoting and referencing it, people still quote Sallie Fields’ acceptance speech where she declared “You like me!”, and I know you’ve heard at least one person in your life imitate the Marilyn Monroe “happy birthday.” We’ve been echoing the things we hear and enjoy as a people forever, because it’s fun. Let people have fun!

Also, these things always pass. There was a trend a few years ago that drove me batty but I just bit my tongue and rode it out and eventually it was on to the next thing. So let us enjoy our mindful, cutesy, demure trend while it lasts.

We love to see LGBTQ+ people going vital for positive, hilarious, and uplifting reasons. Congrats to Jools, may her time in LA be so cutesy, so demure.

More Demure News For You

+ Ilana Glazer says pregnancy helped them realized they’re non-binary

+ Check out Ayo Edebiri in this trailer for Omni Loop

+ Clea Duvall is set to write and direct an adaptation of the Anna Dorn novel Perfume & Pain

+ I can’t say it better than this subheading: “A 95-year-old diamond heiress and a much younger genderfluid reality star got famous on TikTok for their epic feel-good romance. Was it all a long con?”

+ All-American: Homecoming star Rhoyle Ivy King talks about the show’s queer characters and final season

+ A new trailer for Only Murders in the Building dropped, and the gang is headed to LA

+ Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie will feature Niecy Nash-Betts as Detective Lois Tryon (and also Travis Kelce??)

+ Chappell Roan is charting but she doesn’t care, she just likes that gay people care

+ Rosie O’Donnell’s son got married (which is crazy because I feel like I remember when she first adopted him because my mother used to watch her talk show I FEEL OLD)

+ Kesha is bored of wearing clothes and I love this journey for her

+ Demi Lovato sometimes feels trapped in music because she doesn’t have a backup plan, and doesn’t want the same for her theoretical future children

+ Bad Sisters is coming back for Season 2, and with it, its gay character Bibi and lesbian actor Fiona Shaw

+ The Last of Us has wrapped filming! Also Kaitlyn Dever had to have extra security because people don’t know how to act.

+ Also it seems like there might be a third The Last of Us game in our future

+ Sophia Bush has been told to keep out of politics as an actor ever since she was a baby gay, but she’s not taking that advice

+ Dylan Mulvaney is having fun at the expense of the far right, who now is convinced she was born a cis woman, forced to transition to male as a child, and is transitioning back to a woman as an adult

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