It was only a matter of time, but at last, Victoria’s Secret, one of corporate America’s final mainstream bastions of diamond-encrusted and fuchsia-infused sexuality, has gone woke. After more than half a century of redefining the modeling and intimates industries, the lingerie brand is axing its “Angels,” the platoon of voluptuous brand ambassadors, and replacing them with the “VS Collective.”
The new lineup of models includes soccer superstar and woke activist Megan Rapinoe, Chinese skier Eileen Gu, plus-size model Paloma Elsesser, Brazilian transgender model Valentina Sampaio, South Sudanese Australian model Adut Akech, photographer Amanda de Cadenet, and Bollywood-royalty-cum-American-actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas. According to new CEO Martin Waters, the company wants to move away from “what men want” and toward “what women want.”
Just like Nike embracing Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter to distract from its use of Uyghur slave labor, Victoria’s Secret’s great awokening is little more than a ruse to distract from its real problems. Like all brick-and-mortar stores, the company lost even more of its market share to online retailers during the pandemic, and a series of poor business decisions, such as canceling its once-popular swimwear line and failing to include the sizes offered by its competitors, further hastened the decline. But Victoria’s real secret was its former CEO Les Wexner’s sinister relationship with serial predator Jeffrey Epstein.
What’s a company with an actual #MeToo rotting its corporate structure to its core to do? Blame the bombshells.
The real sin, according to the preferred narrative of both the company and the corporate media, is the “patriarchy,” as Rapinoe put it, not in the insidious source of the actual brand’s cash, but that push-up bras and hourglass figures are enjoyed by straight men. What this narrative ignores, of course, is that all the pink thongs and lacy teddys that made VS a lingerie giant were “what women want.”
Sure, women like dressing up (or dressing down) for men, but they aren’t stocking up on affordable yet attractive lingerie (think, “five panties for just $28!”) as a performance. They do so precisely because it makes them feel good.
Consider that the primary audience of Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, that unabashed display of diamond-encrusted bras over 32D’s and G-strings hugging derrieres devoid of an ounce of cellulite, isn’t men. Nope, as late as 2017, women comprised 61% of the televised show’s audience.
Furthermore, the new narrative ignores that the Angels themselves were considered pioneers in inclusivity back in the day. While heroin chic and anorexia dominated runways, VS had the audacity to celebrate curves, specifically (gasp!) boobs.
No, the Angels didn’t look like “normal women,” nor did they pretend to, but Tyra Banks didn’t look like she skipped lunch to fit into a size two, and Gisele Bundchen looked like she preferred a glass of wine in the evening. Contrast that to Rapinoe, who maybe has 12% body fat and a bra size that is likely much smaller than the national average of a 34DD.
The original Victoria’s Secret wasn’t perfect, and some of the brand’s recent moves, such as including more bras for nursing mothers, are frankly overdue. But billing the body of Rapinoe, who is literally famous for her one-in-a-million physique, as somehow realistic but the Angels as insufficiently empowered is laughable. And for a culture obsessed with inclusivity, pretending that the majority of us women who actually like the goods and the aesthetic that made VS legendary in the first place no longer exist is frankly insulting.
