LP Post #3, Intro to Fashion Studies

The above image is an advertisement for Victoria’s Secret depicting their “perfect” body, advertising for their Body by Victoria line– meant to be accessible and comfortable for a wide demographic. However, the range of bodies that appear in the image are extremely limited. They are all white or white-passing with the exception of a single light-skinned black model, mid-20s, with hyper-thin top model proportions, made-up, and similarly posed. In this description alone, they’ve alienated the vast majority of their customer base, as almost none of their target demographic fits all of the categories depicted. This male-produced (as Victoria’s Secret is owned and operated by men) fantastic vision of a “perfect” body excludes the vast majority of women, let alone other identities.  As women often make selections of clothing based on “informants”, as explained in Sophie Woodward’s Why Women Wear What They Wear, this male fantasy packaged into a female body acts almost as if it’s a woman peddling this image of perfection to other women, encouraging them to wear VS merchandise in pursuit of similarly unattainable perfection. The overall presentation of the advertisement suggests that the creators of this image (read: men) have a very limited perception of what’s deemed attractive to (male) viewers, which they are trying to push women to conform to. However, this concept is not a new one in fashion at all, unfortunately– it’s basically the story of fashion. Victoria’s Secret just is more transparent about it than most other brands.

This exclusionary vision among other claims of abuse and misogyny have, in fact, led to a major decline of the brand over the past few years that have pushed VS to make much more diverse casting decisions in recent ad campaigns (hiring transgender models, models with more diverse bodies, more models of color, etc), but whether or not they can recover from the image they’ve constructed remains to be seen.