I identify as chalant

Secrets out, you're like other girls (and it's not a bad thing)

Demure. Mindful. Nonchalant. All these words that tell women that we need to diminish parts of ourselves, that we need to quiet down and minimize our passion, energy, and personalities. “Very demure, very mindful”, became the new, “Cool girl”, which was the reformed “I’m not like other girls”. Why is it always women against women? Why must we always be changing, and battling each other for validation? Trends online concerning men include funny bits like asking if the men in your life think about the Roman Empire. Trends concerning women persistently attack our individuality, shaming us for having interests or being zealous.

Unsurprisingly, I’m zero for three aforementioned characteristics, and I always have been. When I like something, I’m not casual about it. If I like a book, I will write a four paragraph essay review on Goodreads, with an introduction, body, and conclusion. When I am obsessed with tv shows, I can talk about them all day long. I am not demure–I am passionate, I am devoted, and I am vocal about it all.

Freshman year of college a couple years ago–before demure was ever a thing–being nonchalant was becoming everyone’s goal, and being mysterious was the key to feeling cool. I told my friends: I’m done trying to be nonchalant. I am chalant! I don’t care if it’s not a word, it’s what I am. I can’t quiet down and I can’t hide parts of myself and I, quite frankly, don’t really want to.  

Mary Oliver has been all over my tiktok recently. If you know me, you know I love Mary Oliver, and I love that her poetry is being highlighted. I am grateful that all it takes for me to find meaning in a bad day, or to find joy in the pouring rain that soaks my backpack when I walk to class, is reading one of her poems. She has a poem titled, “I don’t want to be demure or respectable” and in this poem, she writes, “I don’t want to be demure or respectable. / I was that way, asleep, for years. / That way, you forget too many important things.” 

The recent ‘demure’ trend has been virtually isolated to women. The trend and the people who have participated have no ill intentions or malicious desires, but there’s no denying that it repeats the perpetual history of silencing women. So while the trend isn’t intentionally harmful or cruel, it made me reflect on how women are constantly being told we need to fit into certain molds, how we need to act a certain way. There’s a script we’ve all got to follow, yet there’s no overwhelmingly positive reward for our constant acting. Our lives are a never ending Broadway show, with scripts and actions constantly being developed and shifted into the specific box at that specific time period. Clean girl, it girl, cool girl, brat girl. Women’s personalities and traits aren’t like skirts that are fashionable one season and tasteless the next–the fact that feminine characteristics can be reduced to trends continues to objectify women and minimize our passions, desires, and ideals, enforcing the idea of women as a commodity.

Since I was a child I’ve been proudly passionate and eccentric. I’m a little weird, I don’t have an inside voice, and I obsess. These are characteristics that I share with just about every other woman. Yet, these aren’t the traits that we highlight or make viral, because a quiet woman is an accepted woman. When girls are weird, we get looks, judgment, fear. There’s so much of myself I have been afraid to show other people because I’ve been told it’s not what others want to see from me, it’s not what boys find attractive, it’s not what will help me make friends. 

Oliver continues on in the poem to say, “There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes. / It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room. / The glimmer of gold Bohme saw on the kitchen pot / was missed by everyone else in the house.” So much of life is missed when we hide ourselves. If we are so inwardly focused on how we are presenting ourselves, if we’re sticking to our rehearsed lines, we miss the little things that make a life. If we quiet the outspoken parts of ourselves, we miss the connection and love that we share with others. 

It is cool to care, to present yourself fully when you interact with others, and to own who you are. I want to reiterate there’s nothing wrong with being demure or mindful or nonchalant. Some people are like that naturally, and that’s nothing shameful, even if it’s become monetized and trendy. What is shameful is women constantly being told by others and the media that we are too much. That to be accepted means we need to be less. That there is only one certain type of woman that is allowed to exist.

There’s discourse on substack, instagram, and tiktok about the demure trend, about who and what is mindful, and who and what is not, and I don’t want to become one of the many fish in the sea, saying the same thing as everyone else. I haven’t read many of these posts because I wanted my post to be genuine and authentic and purely from my mind. I have concerns with these labels because I see a young version of me consuming this media and feeling like I have to hide myself to feel loved. I see myself as a ten year old girl, who was loud about what she loved and who she was, seeing these trends and learning at a young age that there was only a certain type of woman I could grow up and be if I wanted to be welcomed by the world. 

I had a discussion with my friends Haylie, Samara, and Hannah on our drive today, because I told them I was writing this and wanted their input. We talked about how trends like this make girls feel unsatisfied with everything we do, like there’s a superior version of woman that we can never live up to. It constantly feels like women are competing to see who comes out on top, pitting ourselves against each other instead of uniting against the common enemy: people and social media telling us how we must behave. One month it’s the demure girl, one month it’s the clean girl, one month it’s the it girl. How many times are women going to be commodified? How many trends can be made out of the way women look and act? 

We continued to talk about how these new and developing standards present on social media continue to lay on women certain beliefs about how we must act and behave in order to be seen as attractive, to be successful, to make new friends. As aforementioned, the demure trend was something that started from a harmless video, made about makeup in the workplace. The original video wasn’t detrimental–it’s the videos about what women are wearing, what women are eating, how women are acting, labeling these actions as demure or mindful, that are damaging. It is just another way to confine women to specific socially acceptable actions. 

Why is saying “I’m not like other girls?” something girls are proud of? I am like other girls, and I love that. I love sitting with my six roommates and talking about things we all have in common, things we all desire. I love meeting new women and complimenting their style because they’re wearing something I would wear. We share more than we don’t. Spoiler alert, you’re like other girls! And it doesn’t advance anyone to constantly be competing for the number one spot, for the it girl spot, for the spot as the most demure girl.

My best friends, who I am proud to be like

While abroad during the peak of the demure trend with my friends Maya and Rachel we talked about how this trend annoyed us because we weren’t demure, and it just felt like another way social media told us we weren’t the right kind of woman. But being around girls like me who felt similarly about these trends showed me that the majority of women aren’t truly ‘demure’ or ‘mindful’,  and that real women are many things: weird and loud at times, quiet and reserved as others. Enthusiastically vocal at times, absorbent and thoughtful at others. There's no two or three specific traits women need to encompass. It’s limiting and demeaning to say as much.

I think about Anne Elliot in Persuasion, who is the definition of demure. She often goes unappreciated because of her shyness. She is at the mercy of others, and duties that she never asks for get placed on her, because she is unassuming and diligent, and her family always expects her to do these jobs. From this I gathered that truly being demure isn’t a huge plus, it’s another way women are taken advantage of. Kindness being exploited, modesty being misused. Yet, being demure and nonchalant as a facade is a trend, so nobody can tell women that we’re being too much. 

It’s frustrating to me that this cycle of trends perpetuating silencing women continues to run rampant on social media. Even if they start off innocent, the impacts this has on women, young and old, is not innocent. It’s degrading, unnecessary, and heart breaking. A young girl will see that and the trajectory of her life will be changed.

I am sitting next to my friend Cielo who just said: “I am not demure. I am loud, I am annoying, and obnoxious, and that's who I am. Sorry! No wait, I’m not sorry.” And I share the same sentiment. I’m not sorry I don’t fit into these boxes women of all shapes and sizes are being told we need to squeeze in to. I’m sorry that women are constantly competing to fit a certain image or a certain personality. I’m sorry that I step into a room and I feel that I can’t speak too much or make myself known because then I’ll be too much. I’m sorry that next week, there might be a new trend telling women how to act. 

But no longer will I apologize for being who I am. I’m not going to forget important things, I’m not going to keep parts of me asleep. I’m going to step forward every day with the fire of my lashes burning bright. Because being demure is being asleep.