Alisa Meu Pelo / Smooth My Fur

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About

Alisa Meu Pelo or Smooth My Fur in English refers to a series of memes of a jaguar asking people to "smooth his fur" in Portuguese, which sometimes is interpreted as a raunchy request. The animal is based on the 50 reais note, which features a jaguar on the backside of the note. The meme started to be spread on the internet in 2017, gaining more traction in March 2023 with parody videos, image macros and fan art of the jaguar.

Origin

While the exact origin of this meme is unknown, the earliest known post featuring the jaguar in the 50 reais note with the Portuguese text "alisa meu pelo" (smooth my fur in English) was uploaded on April 11th, 2017 on the meme website Feijoada Simulator.^[1] The image was uploaded with the caption "Alisa meu pelo (onça carente)" (seen below).

A parody video in tribute to the 50 reais note with the jaguar asking for his fur to be smoothed was uploaded on YouTube a year later, on December 24th, 2018 by YouTube^[2] user @SalDoGrau. The video garnered 4,600 views and 189 likes in four years (seen below).

Spread

The image of the jaguar was spread across multiple meme pages on social media in the following years as a "raunchy jaguar" or "needy jaguar." For example, on May 30th, 2019, the Facebook^[3] meme page EtlandiaIV posted a voting pool with the "alisa meu pelo" image alongside another Brazilian note. The post (seen below, left) received 2,900 likes and 1,400 shares in four years. On July 24th, 2020, the first fan artwork of the "alisa meu pelo" meme was posted on Facebook^[4] by user raferson7. The Brazilian made a drawing (seen below, right) of the jaguar with the overlay text "alisa meu pelo," receiving four likes and three shares in three years.

A year later, on September 15th, 2021, a new image macro of a stuffed toy jaguar with the overlay text "alisa meu pelo" was uploaded on YouTube^[5] by NeoMagirer. The video has garnered 13,512 views and 472 likes in two years (seen below).

Around mid-August 2022 the lore surrounding the "alisa meu pelo" meme expanded in a similar way to the Sexo: La Película meme. For example, most of the images shared about this meme are low quality, so Reddit^[6] user /u/ARTHUR_MINE_MT shared a "4k" version of the image macro (seen below, left), receiving 27 upvotes since it was uploaded on January 5th, 2023. On September 22nd, 2022, iFunny^[7] user Polozhenie posted an "8k" quality image (seen below, right) of the meme, garnering 9,100 likes and 71 comments in a year.

"Alisa Meu Pelo" TikTok Trend

On March 7th, 2023, TikTok^[8] user @powerful_sus posted a screen recording of a WhatsApp conversation in which the person keeps sending images of the "alisa meu pelo" jaguar to a friend while the Evanescence song "Bring Me To Life" is playing. The video (seen below) garnered 1.1 million plays and 180,000 likes and started a new trend on the platform, in which parody videos featuring the jaguar's drawing are shared as ironic meme content.

TikTok^[9] user @mpaulalvs posted two images of furniture shaped like a jaguar with the overlay text "alisa meu pelo" on April 3rd, 2023. The video garnered 1.5 million plays and 174,000 likes in two days. Another example of the expansion in the "alisa meu pelo" lore was posted by TikToker^[10] @giuleba on April 1st, 2023. The video received 775,000 views and 140,000 likes in five days and contains a paper filled with rules, prayers and commandments directed to "alisa meu pelo" followers (videos unavailable).