Who Exactly Is The Victoria’s Secret Show For?

It was with increasing confusion, and then a deep, almost existential sort of weariness, that I watched the Victoria’s Secret show colonise my Instagram feed. You’ll know the drill by now: wings, confetti, pneumatic bodies and lots of skimpy, skimpy underwear. As I took it all in, a single word emerged from the depths of my brain, straining towards the surface, until it finally emerged, squinting into the sunlight and formed on my lips: why?

Why are we still doing this?

Now, obviously I know why Victoria’s Secret is doing this – this annual extravaganza of G-string clad ‘Angels’ is its biggest marketing moment of the year. No, this was more of a philosophical question – why are we still paying attention to this spectacle? Why does it even still exist?

Having cancelled the show in 2019 due to falling viewership figures and growing criticism (its then chief marketing officer was ousted not long after an interview in which he stated that plus size and trans women did not fit the Victoria’s Secret ‘fantasy’), it appears the brand has now spent enough time in the doghouse to be able to profess having seen the error of its ways. The Angels are back, promising a more diverse and inclusive line-up than before.

And yet this, the second show since it returned, was nearly indistinguishable from the nightmarishly horny original. From where I stand (or scroll) it looked like the same old formula of rigidly thin bodies, plucked and tweezed to within an inch of their lives, with the odd surgical intervention stepping in where human willpower or genetic good fortune fall short. Sure, there were a few token nods to body diversity, courtesy of the perfectly proportioned curves of mid-size models like Paloma Elsesser and Ashley Graham – but overall the brand’s definition of beauty remains strikingly narrow.

Not that you’d have known it from the The ‘Angels’ parade the VS runway wall-to-wall media coverage, much of which seemed to accept the brand’s assertion that its show is somehow revolutionary. Could it be collective amnesia, or perhaps a mass hallucination, I wondered as I scrolled past the same images that had elicited a largely uncritical reception from the fashion industry.

And the more I scrolled, the more questions I had. Exactly who is the Victoria’s Secret show for? Because while it caters to a distinctly male fantasy of sexuality (supposedly), they’re not the ones buying the product. So it’s for women, then – women who want to appeal to men? Except the message the show sends out – about femininity, about sex appeal, about beauty – doesn’t appeal to me as a woman. It feels hollow and damaging, not to mention outdated.

So I ask again – who is this for? Why are we doing this? Aren’t we all tired of going round in circles when it comes to body positivity and beauty standards, only to end up right back where we were a decade ago?

Society has long evolved beyond the need for the Victoria’s Secret show. What a shame its marketing team hasn’t yet got the memo.