After reading the Barthes essay on Semiotics and talking about it in class, I thought of diversity in the media. I used the three steps to analyze this ad - 1) find sign. 2) look for denotations/ connotations. 3) see how our myths become attached to the product. In this ad, Aishwaraya Rai and Eva Longoria are modeling their beauty for L'oreal Paris. It is obvious that these two women want to look beautiful but natural at the same time. They both look inviting, as if to say that - hey you can do it to! There isnt a sense of elitism that can come across in beauty advertisements. I feel like giving them a pat on their back to congratulate them for being beautiful. But on the denotative side, it is obvious that this advertisement is trying to appeal to women in minority groups - Indians and Latin Americans. The two women look very proud to be the faces of these minorities - but here is where our myths come into play. These two women look exactly the same. They come from two different backgrounds - but the only reason we know that is because they are recognizable. Just like how people in other cultures would not understand why we make fun of Lindsay Lohan, people from different cultures would not see the diversity here. They both have very similar skin tones and same eye color. I’m sure when they buy their L’oreal products (yeah, right), they pick the exact same colors or very similar colors. To understand the “diversity” aspect of this advertisement we need to bring cultural knowledge to the table. The viewer has to understand that these two different women, however similar they may seem, come from separate parts of the world and represent separate groups of people. If it were a white women and Eva Longoria, the advertisement would be more effective because we could see that L’oreal provides a range of colors and foundations that fits everyone. While its clear that these two women could be many different ethnicities, for someone who doesn’t know who they are, it wouldn’t be targeting a specific group. And in advertising the most important part is to capture the “you,” which the ad does not do.