We hear an elderly woman coughing, struggling to breathe. She feels as if she's suffocating. Despite everything, a very cracked female voice makes an effort and recites a text: "I use the most expensive hair dye in the world. It's not that I care about money, but I care about my hair. It's not just the color. I expect great color. What's important to me is how my hair feels." From a wonderful New York apartment decorated with exquisite taste. The woman stops and laments: "I can't remember any more text. If we had more time..." And a younger male voice asks her somewhat vehemently: "And why don't we have more time?" And then we finally see a very old, small woman lying on a sofa. She looks at the camera and says forcefully: "Because I'm dying! I'm about to eat it!"
The woman is Ilon Specht, one of the few female creative directors at one of the great advertising agencies of the 1960s in New York. She is the creator of one of the most famous, transformative, and memorable slogans in the history of advertising. The one about L'Oréal's hair dye, "Because I'm worth it!"Here we got used to hearing him in Spanish:"Because I'm worth itIlon Specht died in April of last year, and shortly before his passing, he agreed to star in this short eighteen-minute documentary available on Amazon Prime Video. The director is Ben Proudfoot, winner of two Oscars for two other short documentaries, The last repair shop and The queen of basketball. In this one, as in the previous ones, we once again perceive her sensitivity, the ability to condense a good story into a few minutes and celebrate the talent that often remains hidden and deserves to be applauded and recognized.
Through Ilon Specht's stepdaughter, we learn the story of this publicist who spends the last days of her life in her apartment in the Dakota building, across from Central Park. The documentary montages advertisements from the sixties and seventies to highlight the machismo of the time and how commercial narratives on television were written from a male perspective. "I was angry. I wasn't interested in writing about how to look beautiful for men. Screw them!" Specht says in a whisper. Her career connects with the feminism of that time, which she took to the bitter end. Final copy of Ilon Specht goes beyond remembering what was successful"Because I'm worth it!"What it does is show that for Specht, it was much more than a slogan. It was a life motto. That's where the true value of her work comes from, and how she empowered women through her ads, but also other women around her, who we didn't know was hiding behind a woman like this.
