About

"Because You're Worth It" is the slogan of the French cosmetics company L'Oreál. The slogan and its accompanying hair-swinging gesture has become the subject of parody.

Origin

L'Oréal was founded in 1909 by Eugène Schueller^[1] and the L'Oréal slogan was written by Ilon Specht on 1973.^[2] Early forms of its use as a joke can be found in Saturday Night Live transcripts as early as 1976.^[3]

Man: Mmm-hmm. The Vice-President of DataCorp, Bill Holding, told me about this place, a man and his wife turn their own home into a restaurant three nights a week. It got a four-star rating in Food Map magazine.
Woman: Oh, wow!
Man: They said it was real expensive, but I made reservations two months in advance, because you're worth it.

The first instance of the meme online is unknown.

Spread

Sometime during the summer of 2011, Cheezburger released a series of LOLcat image macros featuring the tagline. Later instances would include the logo transposed onto the image in the fashion of a photoshop meme.

Many examples quickly became available on other sites like Meme Center^[4] and Quick Meme.^[5] Deviantart has 1,939 results^[6] tagged with the meme L'Oreál. While the tag #l'oreal is often used for cosmetic photography and images of the models of L'Oréal, the meme can be easily spotted on Tumblr with the tag #because-you're-worth-it.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References