So Sree emailed me a grin-inducing link to the SAJAforum blog, where once again they are trying to…
test the “all desis know each other” theory and see if one of you can identify this model. [linkaya]
While the Microsoft billboard which inspired our original WTG post is apparently gone, there is no need to mourn the thrill of emulating Scooby-Doo while we attempt to solve a mystery. You see mutineers, we have ANOTHER model to play Kevin Bacon with!
…yesterday, as I walked into the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and 59th St with my wife and kids, we were greeted by the poster (above)…Come on, folks, let’s ID her and give the theory a second chance.[linkaya]
Sree was basically asking the Mutiny if we were “in” when he sent me that GMail. I was all like, “Oh, we’re HELLA in!”, except I didn’t say that since I’m the only Northern Californian who refuses to hella anything.I was actually surprised that we didn’t figure out who Miss Office ’07 was. Our failure to discover her name (and alma mater, hobbies, biodata etc) shook my faith in the previously unchallenged idea which insisted that even though we Brownz might number a million+ here in Amreeka, none of us is more than two degrees apart, especially when super-friendsters like Shail exist. Two degrees, y’all. If it’s not true, then Aunties have terrifying powers of omniscience.
Anyway, I love how last time, the unidentified smiling desi was a model for Office ’07– a.k.a. poo— and this time, our brownette is reppin’ the maker of my beloved iBook. Ah, I’m easily amused, except by stupidity, so please, just like last time, no comments on skin color, weight, caste or anything else unnecessary, okay? Thanks.
Just for good measure I’ll make the obligatory ‘she’s hot’ comment 😉
Anna..I know why Indian girls..they have beauty with the brains 🙂 Well thats my way of thinking when I look into those ad boards…
Ardy, you are incorrigible. 😉
NRITechie, that is a very sweet way of thinking. 🙂
I really appreciate how you SMers realize that having a little fun doesn’t mean we are fiddling while Rome burns. THAT weird analogy was born thanks to this comment:
Eeek.
Well, I’m going to put my vote in for either “Priya” or “Neha” right now.
I hella say hella. NorCal & proud baby.
There are so few brown faces in commercial advertising its always heartening to see a new one. I do wonder however what image the advertiser is trying to convey with a south asian face alongside a tech product. Duh.
OTOH it was nice to see our Aish doing L’Oreal.
Thass right! Apple is saying “MS, You can’t hide the faults of your software by throwing hot brownies at us. Right back at ya!”
I really don’t know what SAJA is coming to these days! First the MS girl, now the Apple girl, and the celebrity line-up offering ‘quotes’ for the mango-fest in between. But at least we here at SM don’t get into such silliness. Or do we? 🙂
Do people agree right off the bat that she has to be South Asian? She could well be Mexican or Peruvian too. (I know, some people would then go, so you mean she is Indian then!) But if she is Indian-from-India, then my guess is she’s Telugu-speaking. A GultiGirl. What do you think, GultiGirl? 😉
Chachaji, you’re right, if she is of Indian origin, she looks like her parents/she are/is telugu.
“Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the U.S” bigger issue then this??
the hot desi girl (who’s name I would like to think is Dar es salaam, Dara for short, because her mum and dad hail from Tanzania and actually started the Beckham craze of naming their kids after the city of conception) is holding one of the greatest machines on the world.
The queen sucks raw green eggs. Dara should be on the Ipod ads or be the face of apple when leopard comes out!
I’d peg her as an ‘Anjali’. Someone should email stevejobs@apple.com and ask.
i say hella all da time…im not even from norcal..socal for lyfe baby! 😀
Did any one else notice the wording on the poster. It says “one to one, personal training at the Apple store”.
Are you sure this has got nothing to do with whole “desi tech support” stereotype? Not that I am complaining, I mean who wouldn’t want to receive a one on one training from her? 🙂
I think this image is an extension of a certain theme: dark-skinned (not too dark though), wavy-haired women being used to sell computers and computer-related services.
Somewhere in the deep caverns of Advertisia, the goblins have decided that sex sells, sure, but no one wants to associate straight-haired fun-loving blondes with DSL service. Save that for beer, spas, and, uh, everything else. If it’s computers, bring on the brainy-but-fun ambiguously ethnic model. Curls a plus.
For more, see item #2 on this interesting (but yuckily-worded) page.
I must say the apple girl looks more hip, cool, and young. That denim jacket, and those earrings big enough to be used in a Hula Hoop contest. I just can’t resist the hipness. The Microsoft office girl was wearing a boring business suit. That’s not acceptable.
Therefore, I simply have no choice but to buy every apple product known to man.
14 “Somewhere in the deep caverns of Advertisia, the goblins have decided that sex sells, sure, but no one wants to associate straight-haired fun-loving blondes with DSL service. Save that for beer, spas, and, uh, everything else. If it’s computers, bring on the brainy-but-fun ambiguously ethnic model. Curls a plus.”
You are absolutely right. Advertising is all about stereotyping, which is the quickest way to connect with the consumer. Don’t look to us for righting the world. We are just trying to move product, make our clients rich, create jobs and economic well-being, raise life expectancy, fight hunger, and a few other assorted things.
Now, if I ever see an Indian girl in a beer commercial, I will not be a happy camper.
Mr. Kobayashi, that was a funny link, and I agree that there could be more to this sort of advertising than meets the eye…but compared to the alternative (few to no non-whites in ads) isn’t this better? People used to complain when minorities were under-represented in commercials and print ad media. On balance, even though the psychology behind these ads may be suspicious to an extent, we can’t have it both ways.
That girl to me looks like she could have roots in any of the four southern states. Definitely not Mexican or Peruvian, Chachaji!
“People used to complain when minorities were under-represented in commercials and print ad media.”
Must have been a long time ago. Either that, or nobody ever thinks their group gets enough exposure. Desis are not too common in ads, and I see more far-eastern Asians in real life than commericals, but Af-Ams (and blacks of other nationalities) are very common actors in advertising, far more than the 12-15% they represent in the total population. The tv commercials I see on cable run about 50-50, black/white. Either that, or I need to get my eyes checked.
Anna, you disappoint. You don’t say hella? I’ll admit the east coast has tainted me and it’s no longer a part of my vocabulary, but I plan on incorporating it again once I’m back in California (as much as the hubby will hate that). But I refuse to use this new “hyphy” word that’s going around.
I have noticed a major trend towards including token representatives of all major races in “ensemble” ads. The standard format seems to be to show a black guy, a white couple and an east-asian guy sitting around eating chips/guzzling beer (or bouncing it off the floor).
Now to the speculative part…do you guys think that using desis allows them to reach out to all races at once? Not so white that you don’t appeal to the black folks, not so black that you get ignored by the caucasians. Pretty, brown, easy on everyone’s eyes.
I know I am on very flimsy ground here, but its worth testing a theory with the Mutiny!
I must be one of the kids doing his own thing because in addition to the first “who is this” post, this one’s subject also does nothing for me. She probably has wide hips and a happy trail. I stereotype, of course, with no offense intended.
I was surprised that noone knew the woman from the first post.
Now if you guys want another “who is”, go here (work safe photographer’s site), click on Gallery, and look at the first 2 pics. Wow!
Here is the link to the first 2 pics
http://www.globalgypsies.com/fbphoto/gallery/SM1.jpg and http://www.globalgypsies.com/fbphoto/gallery/SM2.jpg
Coincidentally that girl’s initials are SM …. She could be a mutineer :-p.
She could be computer-generated. heehee
Just for good measure I’ll make the obligatory ‘she’s not’ comment ;$
She does look Gulti. Wonder how long her last name is? 😉 She’s quite beautiful too.
aah, when is google going to have a true image search — you uplaod the image and the name pops up
Please. Don’t give them ideas! It’s not as if they’re not already mining everybody’s websites, and myspace pages, and flickr photostreams and personal email through gmail etc. But for what you are suggesting, we’d need a lot more improvement in image/pattern recognition technology first, especially if you want real-time image recognition, it’s not just a search issue. But even then, they’d first have to create a database where everyone uploads a picture of theirs, taken in some standard pose. Then, for any other picture you want them to recognize, they’d have to run the image recognition etc.
And gulti girl and Avi, thanks for backing me up on my ‘guess’ 🙂
I like this girlie — she didn’t straighted out her cruls!! I don’t know who she is. But looking at her curls, the question I have for all of you curl girls is what do you put in your hair for non-frizzy curls and do you blow dry?
which basically would mean this is one issue where ACLU wont get a chance to monitor since this can be done only on a voluntary basis. However, the current Google search which depends on the picture caption and such information can still be made a lot better. It can correlate various pics of the same person/entity and thus build it’s mined database and thus mine information about us even more. Of course image recognition is a lot more difficult than speech recognition because of much larger variables in a picture than speech (where diction etc are consistent and thus you can build a more consistent and recognizable signal profile of the speech and use that) and so it’s not happening soon.
She looks better than the last chick that was put on Sepia. They don’t show enough of her body so I can’t comment on weather she is hot or not.. Her face looks ok, it is not ugly, but not quite attractive either, her face is more plain looking..
we’d need a lot more improvement in image/pattern recognition technology first, especially if you want real-time image recognition, it’s not just a search issue. Riya has tried to do something of the sort. They use user-generated tagging to do pattern-recognition inside photographs. I am not sure, though, how they can eliminate false positives entirely. F’rinstance, check out these pictures of Aishwarya Rai. Quality. Maybe there was some human input at Riya’s side to create directories a la the original Yahoo search.
Wanna bet that the girl’s name starts with either an R or an S?
Unless, of course, they get rights to access the database of people’s driver’s license and passport photos, which are taken, for analogous reasons, in ‘standard poses’, and which fall into the grey area between voluntary and required. Of course, it would still need improvements in image recognition, for the reasons you suggest. But this was about not giving them ideas 🙂
wanna bet the girl is a brahmin ?
The Office ’07 billboard is gone? I just saw it the other day, going on to South 101 from the Bay Bridge. (That’s Bay as in the San Francisco Bay Area, for those of you hella not from NorCal!)
Bengali chick – Paul Mitchell’s The Conditioner or the Frizz Ease Serum. And no, no blow drying so the curls stay in tact. Like the girl in the picture 😉
The Office ’07 billboard is gone? It might have been a little too distracting for all the desi singles. It is what I call an accident waiting to happen runs ducks for cover
Sadaiyappan, enough. This is a warning. Anna spelled out the following rather clearly:
And yet, you wrote:
Next time, you’re banned. Just like you were before. Your “hot or not” commentary won’t be missed.
Apple seems to have discovered something clever: if they put a desi lady in their ads then they will get free ad space on Sepia Mutiny. 😉
Somewhat tangential topic : there are two desi females at my work that routinely change their hair from frizzy to straight, and every point in between. I do not understand what form of advertising they themselves are undertaking, or even why they do it to that extent. Are they trying to re-invent themselves each week?
Neither of them own macs.
Thanks Angel:) Honestly I love the fact that this lovely chica is wearing her hair o’naturale. I get this comment a lot, “You’re Indian? I thought all Indians had straight hair.” Uhm no, it’s call flat ironing my love. I’m so glad Apple didn’t think she would look more South Asian with straight hair. Her curls look sultry.
Bengali chick…so agree with you! It seems 99% of the Indian women are addicted to flat ironing or chemicals to make the hair straight. I keep it curly b/c why look like the masses?? 😛
I’m sure my co-workers think the same thing. I have a love hate relationship with my hair. You want what you don’t have. I wish my hair were straight so I could get up and go. Sometimes my curls look fabulous and sometimes I look like I’ve been electrocuted. When I’m lazy my hair is one frizzy nasty mess. When I’m not horribly lazy or in the curl mood I wear my hair curly. When I’m super on top of sh*t and not lazy at all — I flat iron my hair. I know, I need to learn to love my curls
So these lovely chicks at your work aren’t trying to change their image with their hair. It’s probably about how much time they have in the morning to do their hair.
But, Bengali Chick – to ask this question as gingerly as possible – could it also be, as it looks to me, that she curled out her natural straight hair, to give it, er, ‘body’? Just askin’…
See, this is why standards of beauty need to be altered. Women need to just have a summit, and decide on a day, which from that day forward: all hair will look like Demi Moore’s hair from GI Jane, and no more high heels.
Very true! But I like to believe she’s a natural curl girl:)
I vote for Julia Roberts’ hair from when she does Gloria Steinem impersonations to be the standard :0)
Too late.
In this day and age, there are no more “sequels”…only “ReMiXeS” yo….haha.
BC,
Just as many south asian girls have straight hair.
Women need to just have a summit, and decide on a day, which from that day forward: all hair will look like Demi Moore’s hair from GI Jane, and no more high heels.
OT, and sorry for the slight thread jack, but it just has to be said, IMO.
I think this sort of thing happens everyday at most sorority houses (with apologies to any “Greeks” here), but in the opposite direction. Every sorority girl seems to have the same hairstyle, clothes, handbag and shoes as her sorority sisters.
I’m beginning to notice a similar trend among female desi teenagers and college students…they all have the same length of hair, wear their makeup the same way, etc. I guess it’s a sign of how much fashion needs deprive us of individuality.