Textual Analysis - Maybelline Xxl Mascara

In the January of 2006, Maybelline New York featured a full-page advertisement in the magazine Cleo, displaying their new XXL volume + length microfiber mascara. This analysis will argue how this particular text produces an ideology of androgyny and investigates its means of doing so through its selections of signs and semiotics, use of intertextuality, choices of register, rhetoric, and interpellation, and the addresser-addressee relationship it constructs.

The visible signs in Maybelline's text lay the foundations for further meaning to be produced, and strongly connote the ideology of the desirability of androgyny. The initial signs that are seen are the top half of a Caucasian woman's face, a thickly striped black and white jumper being pulled up and covering the lower part of her face, the mascara product itself, and its accompanying text. The model is not presented as a person, and is not assigned a name or personality, but embodies the ideology of androgyny designed