Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls

About

"Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls" is an expression from the 1997 drama film Titanic which is often used to caption photos of people or animals laying down in an alluring pose.

Origin

The phrase was first used in a scene from the 1997 film Titanic^[1] starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. After seeing drawings Jack Dawson (DiCaprio) had done, Rose (Winslet) tells him, "Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls" (shown below).^[2]

The earliest known use of the quote for comedic effect can be traced to an entry in a Moviefone^[3] caption contest for the superhero film Iron Man in 2008, which paired the phrase with a photo of Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) showing off an arc reactor mounted in his chest to Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges; shown below). The first image macro instance featuring the phrase was a LOLcat image posted to I Can Haz Cheezburger^[4] on May 4th, 2008.

Spread

The phrase did not gain much traction until years later on January 7th, 2011, when Tumblr user meguhime^[5] added the caption on a photo of a plump pug dog (shown below) originally taken by Flickr user mylulabelles.^[6] In less than 24 hours, the post had received more than 11,000 notes.^[8]

In the coming days, meguhime's image macro was shared on the Internet humor blogs Pleated Jeans^[9] and I Has A Hot Dog.^[10] On July 5th, 2011, the Internet news blog Uproxx^[12] featured a slideshow of notable examples from the series. On May 27th, 2012, 9gag^[13] user La_Pomme submitted a post titled “Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls,” featuring a photoshopped screen capture of the scene from Titanic with Jack using the Draw Something mobile app (shown below). Within one year, the post gained over 38,000 up votes and 3,700 Facebook shares.

French Girls Mobile App

On March 23rd, 2013, the mobile software company APPEK released an iOS app titled French Girls, ^[14] which allows its anonymous users to draw sketch portraits of strangers and upload their own photos for others to draw. In the weeks following its release, the app was featured in several tech news blogs, including Softpedia,^[15] Fast Code Design^[16] and Gizmodo.^[17]

Notable Examples

Additional image macros can often be found on the microblogging site Tumblr^[11] under the tag "#draw me like one of your french girls."

Search Interest

Search query volume for the phrase first spiked in January 2011, dipping slightly until May when it began steadily growing.

External References