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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Kirsty Major

‘Very demure, very mindful’: how Jools Lebron went viral – and her life fell apart

Close up of Jools Lebron wearing a black top and looking into the distance
‘ I just didn’t know how big it was going to get’ … Jools Lebron. Photograph: Jamie Kelter Davis/The Guardian

Jools Lebron was in her car, taking a break from her job in a supermarket, when she posted the TikTok video that would change her life. “You see how I do my makeup for work?” she told her followers that day in August 2024. “Very demure, very mindful … 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.”

“At first, it was like any other video,” she says, on a video call from her home in Chicago. “A few likes, a couple of comments. But then I started noticing the numbers moving faster than usual – faster than anything I had seen before. I remember refreshing my phone and just staring at it like: ‘Wait … what is happening?’”

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