Another year, another Victoria’s Secret show. Once again several lucky models have been given the opportunity to ‘fulfil their childhood’ dream after being picked from the crème de la crème of the human race’s gene pool and permitted to walk up and down on a stage in front of the world.
Wait, what?
Is anyone else a bit confused about Victoria’s Secret? I’m holding my hands up and admitting defeat. I just don’t get it.
As far as I can tell Victoria’s Secret is a (reasonably) cheapish high street lingerie brand. It’s sort of like Etam, reborn as the scheming younger sister of La Perla with lofty aspirations and seriously questionable ethics (tbt to when they used to get prisoners to manufacture their products in US prisons and didn’t pay them).
And yet, despite this they stage a large scale, opulent and extended catwalk show every year which, somewhat bizarrely, is met with adoring coverage. I say that this is bizarre because, to me, there’s something fundamentally bloody weird about the whole thing: it’s got the faint whiff of Miss World about it, with an element of Page 3 and quite a lot of pantomime all, quite literally, wrapped up in a girl power bow and sold to us like a Disney movie.
So what exactly is Victoria’s big secret? Is this about selling pants by paying celebrities to wear them? Is it a giant semi naked sleepover for the world’s most famous models? Is it some sort of underwear relay race? Is it about sex? I really, really cannot tell.
It’s not a fashion show, because this is not about trends or artifice. It’s not really about sex, because despite the fact that Gigi, Bella and Kendall are strutting around in their pants it’s not actually very sexy. There’s no fantasy, no erotica and no titillation. It’s all rather tame. In fact, the whole thing is weirdly pastel pink PG 13 and asexual in spite of the obvious nudity. It’s not about athleticism because nobody pulls any moves or does any tricks as they walk up and down in stilettoes. Nor is it really about girl power because none of the girls say anything. And it’s definitely not about so-called ‘body positivity’ because there’s basically no diversity in the show in terms of shape and size.
I’m going to put it out there: I think Victoria’s Secret is that Victoria is a bit confused. In a world where it’s not cool to objectify women anymore, suggest that beauty standards are as hegemonic as being tall, thin, skinny and (mostly white) or overtly promote sexuality to teenagers (who, let’s face it, are the VS target demographic), Victoria’s Secret have tried to become all things to all men and women.
It doesn’t work. The show is awkward, it feels forced and hollow. Do we really believe Kendall, Gigi or Bella when they tell us in earnest that walking down a Victoria’s Secret runway in a pair of jewel encrusted pants was a lifelong dream? No.
In some ways, this is the worst part. Victoria’s Secret obviously know that the show is a bit out of date but as a company they're facing pretty significant profit drops because people don't buy push up bras anymore.In an attempt to stay relevant and enhance sales they sping us a yarn, trying to make what is essentially a massive advert relatable and anodyne by applying a Disney fairy tale narrative to it. The story of the models, their journey to the catwalk is presented to us as to an aspirational one: they work hard for years to get noticed, finally get picked, train and diet like athletes for the big event, can’t wait to get on the plane with all the other models and then, they finally get there and do their thing with their (famous) friends and family cheering them on from the side lines. If you’re Bella Hadid you’re also forced to run the gauntlet of bumping into your ex along the way.
The whole thing is scripted as the Olympics meets Cinderella. Victoria’s Secret angels triumph against the odds, overcome adversity, push themselves to their physical limits and strive for success. The problem is, when they reach the finish line, all they seem to be left with is a burger and some mac n cheese which they share with us via snapchat.
Part of the problem is that the Victoria’s Secret narrative, in which the ‘angels’ (female models) are the key characters, is one of the oldest and most restrictive stories of all time. Women are either good or bad, angels or devils, sexy or pure, Madonna or whores. Victoria’s Secret wants to sell sexy underwear without eroticism, using nakedness without raunch. Their angels must be pure and wholesome, even when their sex organs are basically on full display. The only fall from grace they are allowed is a burger binge in the final chapter.
The Victoria’s Secret story is outdated. Worse still, it promotes really problematic mixed messages: it’s not sex positive, it’s not body positive, it’s not actually aspirational and it’s not empowering.
No boundaries are pushed and no stereotypes are smashed on the Victoria’s Secret catwalk. It’s conventional and, frankly, it’s boring.
Give us a queer cabaret, give us drag, give us performance, give us underwear that looks like something we’d actually wear for a steamy night in, give us proper fantasy, give us anything but this.
If the story wasn’t such a crap one maybe the models wouldn’t all sprint off to gorge on burgers, they’d get a better happy ending.
What’s weirder still is the way that the media fixates on the Victoria’s Secret show. Reporting on it as though it were an actual event. Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth:
‘A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.’
The Victoria’s Secret story is a myth in its own right. No woman can be all things to everyone as the angels are. It’s a patriarchal parable, designed to keep women in their neatly packaged boxes where they worry about being thin and looking sexy simultaneously because they’re told that this is how they win society’s approval.
You might also be interested in:
Jourdan Dunn Happy Not To Be Walking In 'BS' Victoria's Secret Show** **
Study Says Taylor Swift's Feminism Actually Makes People Care less About Women's Issues
Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.