Body By Illusion
The Death of The Victoria’s Secret Angels
I remember as a young girl going shopping with my parents on Michigan Ave. I distinctly remember walking past Victoria’s Secret and seeing the giant installations in the store front featuring photographs of women. It was hard not to look up at them in complete awe. The mere size of these photographs would have been enough to capture any passerby’s attention. 10 ft high, lit up and featuring lingerie-clad models, it was easy to gravitate towards these stores. We walked past and my mom declared, “Wow look at those beautiful women!” Obviously, I had no idea what that meant. At the time, I didn’t know what the store was selling; I wouldn’t have to think about bras for many more years and I couldn’t understand what made these women more beautiful than other women. I’m not sure about you, but I know as a child that I didn’t think about beauty often. I still fought my mom daily when she tried to brush my curly, tangled hair and insisted that I go to bed without a bath, my face covered in dirt from playing soccer with the neighborhood boys. I would beg for candy every day and only looked in the mirror to make silly faces at myself. Children start out completely unaware of these roles that society boxes us into. I was much too young to understand beauty or attraction but the truth is, society doesn’t care if you understand or not. It will be shown to you much too young. Men and the media will present the same standard of beauty to all ages and expect that even before you have figured out how to drive a car, you must learn to fit into that role (or that dress size). Without my permission, I was being taught about beauty every day from the media and the women around me who had lived through the same brainwashing. The media takes no prisoners. Even though a perfect body is an illusion, an idea of what is perfect, not a fact and not a requirement, we unconsciously live our lives as though it is a fact and a requirement to be worthy of success; always striving for something that doesn’t really exist in any one way. It was not our fault really, because whether we realized this or not, we were all being taught: those models represent the ultimate woman and if we all become that, we will be deserving of greatness and respect.
I must admit that I grew up to become a fanatic of Victoria’s Secret and those models. Most females growing up in the United States probably owned at least one item from this store. Many women own a lot of items from this store. It was a household name. Every year there was the Victoria’s Secret fashion show and millions of viewers would tune in. I know my family did! If you didn’t watch it, you definitely knew about it. Point is, it was hella popular. And these women were the epitome of beauty. With their tiny waists, blow-outs and perfect skin. They were always evenly tanned (never any tan lines of course), had voluptuous hair and thin, tall bodies. We all saw these women wearing diamonds and jewels oozing confidence and effortlessness all over the runway as if they were the chosen ones; as if looking that way in lingerie made them truly happy and they were totally self-actualized. Decked out in cloth that was way too little to be that expensive, walking around in heels without even a single millimeter of jiggle, as a crowd full of mad-men (keyword, MEN) cheered them on. This is why Victoria’s Secret made millions off of their dumba** marketing decision to call these women (who, let me remind you, were there to advertise a brand of lingerie targeted towards growing teenagers and every day women) ….“The Angels.”
Which brings us to the reason you are all reading this to begin with (or maybe you’re only reading this because we’re friends, in which case, hello and thank you!); You want to know what ended the era of “The VS Angel”. I mean, *insert sarcastic tone* how could such morally sound company imagery have failed?! But before I can get into that, we have to dissect what this “Angel” persona really was. Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, this company wasn’t just selling me support for my “twins”, they were selling a persona. So what was this persona and why did we go in search of it? Well, Women want to feel sexy, which sometimes means following the trends and wearing the clothes that models wear. Failing to fulfill the want to feel beautiful, paired with the catalogues in the mail showing how worshipped these so-called angels were, we would all flock to the stores. Notice how every single model who has ever been featured in a catalogue for VS or in store was a specific measurement. Same body size, shape and height. They were creating an archetype of woman that would fit into this definition of an “angel.” Their message to the world is that the perfect woman, is one that fit certain requirements. According to The Globe, the average VS model has a 23.6 inch waist and hips the size of 34.4 inches in 2019. A new study from the Boston University School of Medicine has found that models for the lingerie company have gotten ever skinnier over the past 20 years. The measurements listed above have changed overtime. They have actually gotten one inch smaller. Reading that should make you go OOF like someone just punched you in the stomach. If not, let me put this into perspective for you.
The demands:
34” bust
24” waist
34” hips
A MINIMUM height of 5’9”
A MAXIMUM body fat percentage reading of 18%.
Glutes as “solid as concrete” (according to hitmodel.net., a site that gives guidance to lingerie industry models).
So why does this matter? Well, the reality is that this is simply not an attainable or healthy goal for women to have. Let’s look at the numbers of women aged 20 and above in the United States according to the CDC. Well for starters, the average woman in the US is 5 ft 3” in height. So for many women, they “fail” the first requirement. Moreover, the average healthy woman in the US has a body fat percentage of 26% and weighs an average of 170.5 lbs with a waist circumference of 38.7 inches. Which brings us to this - so insane it must be a joke - campaign below.
Taken directly from the VS website, Oct. 2014.
IN WHAT WORLD is that ad relatable? How can a company lack so much knowledge of the women they are marketing to? It’s downright embarrassing. If we actually went off of the campaign pictured above, the “perfect body” represents next to none of the women aged 20 and over who are living in the US right now. It also does not represent women with dark complexions, transgendered women or (AH HEM!) Asian women. Ok, so let’s not stop at just the United State’s averages. The popular regions of the world that VS had most advertising in were the US, the UK and Eastern Europe. So, I looked up the UK’s average measurements. I found that the only difference is the average weight. In the UK, the average weight is 154 pounds for women 18+. The ratio of height to weight to waist of an “Angel” is so far-fetched. The German-based website, worlddata.info, shows that in Eastern Europe, a woman’s average height is 5’4ft and 159lbs. Again, an average that completely misses the “Angel” mark. The most concerning thing about these numbers is the fact that young girls and women around the world are seeing this standard of beauty that is in no way a realistic picture of womanhood.
How can it be that only a select few women are “angels”? It cannot be. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not here to skinny shame. A healthy skinny is beautiful too. The point is, it is often the ONLY beauty shown even when there such a variation of beauty all around us! How absurd! For so long, my Instagram feed used to send me into these mental spirals full of ultimatums I would give myself. Stop eating chocolate every day so you’ll have the life you want. Either you eat less and work out more, or you stay ab-less, hating how you look in the mirror. Lose weight or just accept that whoever you date will always have a wandering eye. Stay ab-less, stay lonely. What a ridiculous set of thoughts to accompany the action of simply scrolling through an app who’s intentions were just to share photos, not to create these unhealthy feeds full of unattainable beauty standards.
At some point in time, women all over the United States decided to turn the words, “every woman is beautiful” into a true belief. Women all over have always been woke to these twisted beauty standards and illusions of women that are seen in the media. However, Victoria’s Secret never changed (albeit for getting even skinnier) and women all over still flocked to the stores. So what changed in the past couple of years to cause many of their stores nationwide to close, their annual VS fashion (more like vanity) show to be cancelled in 2019, followed by an unsurprising announcement by the company that they have filed for bankruptcy?? I’d say it’s due to a huge decrease in product sales and an overwhelming amount of people unwilling to invest in or watch the annual show. It just simply is not cool anymore to show the same body over and over. Women want to feel comfortable when they go bra shopping; they want to see images that are based in reality of women being celebrated for being confidently natural. No filter needed! The overwhelming consensus is that differences are good and we women want to see representation! Due to this total lack of awareness, VS is finally on its way out.
This is great news for feminists all ovaaaaa. The women’s march of 2019 was arguably the most influential of marches due to our means of sharing this. Social media has given so much rise to feminism and allowed women to have a platform for speaking out about these beauty standards. As mentioned above, I am aware of all the Instagram influencers with their “perfect” bodies and their photoshop skills. I know that Instagram has this dark side. But it cannot be denied that there is so much positivity from profiles all over instagram that show women being women. Women being freely themselves and showing their bodies for what they are. I love that there is an outlet for women to speak out about the cage that society has locked us into. Things are changing and it’s not just on instagram. Women all over the world are seeing body positivity messages everywhere! Lingerie companies like Aerie have been creating catalogues full of all shapes, sizes and races of women modeling bras and underwear for years. Calvin Klein followed the wave by featuring it’s first transgendered woman on an NYC billboard, Sports Illustrated featured their first ever transgender model in their swimsuit edition, both in July 2020! HALLELUJAH! There is no one definition of what a woman looks like. There is something so appealing to the customer about showing this. It is a trend that will likely become a permanent message. When young women visually see that there is no one picture of beauty, this carves out some extra time in their schedule. No more hours being wasted on covering that pimple or blurring off that cellulite. I feel more powerful every time I see a fellow women being completely unapologetic for being human.
The reality is, Victoria’s Secret is never going to be the company it used to and it will never have the following it had for so many years. Imagine a future where our daughters and sons see photographs of women of color, women with muscles, fat rolls, minimal clothing, modestly dressed, with short hair, holding degrees, transitioning, eating burgers, eating vegan, pictured as bosses, no curves, lots of curves and basically just owning their right to their bodies, instead of these toxic expectations for women. There is no one picture or measurement that can determine your worth or your body’s claimed “perfection.” The Victoria’s Secret “Angel” is not going to distort any more mirrors anymore.
