Victoria’s Secret has chosen to join the “social justice” movement and go full woke, succumbing to the hypersensitivities on the Left and embarking on a major rebranding. One of the world’s most renowned lingerie retailers, it is ditching its famous “Angel” supermodels in favor of female “empowerment icons.”
The New York Times reports that the “avatars of Barbie bodies and playboy reveries” will be replaced with women “known for their achievements, not their proportions.” Those new faces of the brand will be represented by a feminist Megan Rapinoe, the Trump-hating lesbian soccer player; Eileen Gu, a Chinese-American freestyle skier and soon-to-be Olympian; the 29-year-old biracial plus-size model and inclusivity advocate Paloma Elsesser; and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, an Indian actress, entrepreneur, and rights advocate. The new brand ambassadors also include Valentina Sampaio, a Brazilian trans model; South Sudanese refugee Adut Akech; and Amanda de Cadenet, photographer and founder of #Girlgaze, a digital platform for female photographers. Their mission on the team will be to advise the brand, appear in ads, and promote Victoria’s Secret on Instagram.
The goal is to “redefine” what the company considers attractive, leave behind accusations of entrenched corporate “sexism, sizism, and ageism” and reverse the trend of losing market share to other brands, including those that market themselves as being anti-Victoria’s Secret.
The article reads, “They [the new ambassadors] will be spearheading what may be the most extreme and unabashed attempt at a brand turnaround in recent memory: an effort to redefine the version of ‘sexy’ that Victoria’s Secret represents (and sells) to the masses. For decades, Victoria’s Secret’s scantily clad supermodels with Jessica Rabbit curves epitomized a certain widely accepted stereotype of femininity. Now, with that kind of imagery out of step with the broader culture and Victoria’s Secret facing increased competition and internal turmoil, the company wants to become, its chief executive said, a leading global ‘advocate’ for female empowerment.”
The statement dramatically contradicts the one Victoria’s Secret took just a couple of years ago, when it had guts to resist the pressure from “woke” leftists who despise women who actually look attractive.
Ed Razek, the chief marketing officer of VS’s parent company and the man behind the VS Fashion Show — an annual event that has been broadcast around the globe from 1995 till 2018 — said a show was a “fantasy” that had no analogs in fashion industry. He explained the brand won’t use transgender or plus-size models since they tried to do so, but “No one had any interest in it. Still don’t.” The rationale for excluding these groups, according to Razek, was that VS wanted to market their products to their customer base, which was not transgender or plus-sized people.
Razek’s statements earned him a heap of criticism on social media, forcing the company to issue an apology.
The company’s sharp U-turn may be explained by the continuous pressure of an industry trend that employs diverse models in a bid to satisfy a growing social demand for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The Berkeley Political Review writes that “diversity is important in the modeling industry because it allows for proper representation of communities that usually lack acknowledgment in mainstream media…. If all the models that are chosen to walk the runways and feature on ads are white, skinny, and tall, the standard of beauty is set as such. This is a toxic and a very Eurocentric view of beauty.”
Feminists proclaimed that such standards were harmful since they encourage everyday girls and women to be dissatisfied with their bodies, and — oh the terror! — to diet and exercise. The “body positivity” movement that, in reality, is a “fat positivity” movement, has been applying pressure as well, never mind the dreadful effects of obesity on one’s health.
Consequently, flocks of high fashion and everyday clothing brands embraced models that were, to put it mildly, far from the “toxic Eurocentric” standards once held by the industry.
Megan Rapinoe called the company’s traditional marketing approach “really harmful,” and declared that it is “functionality” that is sexy.
“As a gay woman, I think a lot about what we think is sexy, and we are afforded the ability to do that, because I don’t have to wear the traditional sexy thing to be sexy and I don’t think the traditional thing is sexy when it comes to my partner or people I’ve dated,” she told the paper. “I think functionality is probably the sexiest thing we could possibly achieve in life. Sometimes just cool is sexy too.”
The thing is, functionality is not very aesthetic — otherwise, regarding the purely physical component of attraction, men would favor short-haired, stout women who are more “functional” than their slim, long-haired counterparts. Straight men across different ethnicities consistently prefer the latter. To use Rapinoe’s logic, men historically would not even prefer women over other men, since men are usually stronger and have more stamina, and therefore have higher physical “functionality” to succeed in everyday tasks.
In addition to reinventing itself as a new culturally up-to-date retailer, VS plans to address some of the long-standing issues with its stock, including providing more sizes and more comfortable clothes, according to the NYT. The stores, previously reminiscent of dim-lighted boudoirs, are set to become lighter and brighter and feature mannequins of different shapes and sizes. While delicate laces will keep their places, the company will expand its product lines, especially in areas such as sportswear or maternity clothes.
The appeal of brand reform — at least for investors — will be tested this summer, when the retailer splits from L Brands and Bath & Body Works and becomes a public company.
