Victoria’s Secrets a modern-day emperor’s new clothes
The underwear brand is an unrivalled example of marketing masquerading as empowerment for women, says .
If I ever bump into Victoria, remind me not to tell her a secret because we’ve seen what Victoria does with her secrets — she puts them on display and shares them with anyone who happens to pass by.
This week, it was 500-plus Irish women — and a few brave men — who queued on Grafton St to welcome the American lingerie brand to Dublin.
And why not? Who wouldn’t want to deliver a céad míle fáilte to a flashy new underwear emporium with a “unique store design” that — wait for it — takes “sexy to a whole new level”.
To be fair, I did a virtual tour and the sweep of the new silver staircase is indeed impressive. It does, as the press release claims, reflect the building’s original mid-century character.
After that, though, I was entirely at sea and wondered whether it was the building’s design or its must-have
contents that were responsible for reinventing ‘sexy’.
I went up and down the wonderful staircase (again virtually) to try to find out, but all I could see was a masterful modern rendition of the empress’ new clothes.
In this new version there are “angels” who appear on a video loop of Victoria’s Secret (VS) fashion shows.
To the uninitiated, a VS angel is another name for a honed supermodel who takes to the catwalk in brightly coloured, often barely-there underwear, and makes us think that women need to wear something similar if they want to feel beautiful, worthy, empowered and/or strong. (Tick the box that feels most appropriate).
You should not be judged a good or a bad feminist by your choice of underwear. If spending over-the-odds on bombshell bras makes you feel any of those things, then good for you.
For the record, a bombshell bra (starting at €58.80) will give you “extra hourglass oomph with sexy push-ups that add two cup sizes”.
But let’s not pretend that being in a position to choose a lacy ensemble over a sensible M&S two-pack is a victory for the sisterhood. If that’s empowerment, my name is Hans Christian Andersen. What a pity the Danish author is not alive today to explain what is going on. Why, for instance, did VS angels appear in their sweet nothings at the 2017 Victoria’s Secret fashion show in Shanghai last month while a fully dressed Harry Styles performed alongside them?
He opted to wear two of his signature 70s-inspired suits rather than strip down to his boxers. Can he not see that exposing what lies beneath is the key to self-expression and self-fulfilment, or some fantasy mixture of same?
I can already feel the wrath of thousands of women who say they love their underwear and are happy to
celebrate by forking out on a brand that has made it big by selling smalls.
But VS are also selling something else — the idea that women are now the ones pulling the strings, even though the VS fashion show looks very much like the beauty pageants of yore that so offended.
Can you put your hand on heart and tell me that the VS angels don’t reduce women to how they look, what they weigh and what they eat?
I didn’t think so.
Cue more rotten-tomato throwing and opprobrium. All the same, let’s thrash it out because it’s never been more necessary to have an honest and heated discussion on how women are viewed in our society.
On Tuesday, we saw hundreds queueing to buy a product that is made by a company that cynically allows its marketing strategy to masquerade as empowerment for women.
In the same week, Time magazine named the women who broke the silence on sexual harassment as its person of the year.
The #MeToo movement has gained unprecedented momentum and has given thousands of women the courage and space to speak up about sexual harassment.
It has been dubbed a cultural tipping point and hailed as the start of a revolution that has been quietly simmering away under the surface for decades.
It would be wonderful to think that the time has come when workers, of either sex, no longer have to subscribe to what Time calls “the code of going along to get along”.
We’ve seen the mighty fall. Few are sorry to see the demise of Harvey Weinstein who relied upon on a well-oiled complicity machine of enablers and silencers to hide his systematic abuse of women.
But what of the other men who have been tried and found guilty by social media? Just where do you draw the line?
There are those who argue that the sisterhood is making victims of women by blurring the lines between assault and flirtation.
Men have been victimised too. All you need to do to bring a man down is to say that he touched your knee over a decade ago. That can’t be right.
The time has clearly come to renegotiate all of our relationships; between men and women, between women and women and between men and men.
To start, let’s try to join up the dots on how women are portrayed in the world around us, starting with the media.
On one side of the figurative page, there are stories about men sexually harassing women (and other men) yet on the other, we strip women down to their supposedly sexy underwear and call it empowerment.
How can we stand strong and call out men on inappropriate behaviour when we fail to see anything wrong in pretending that a woman’s sense of worth and strength can be enhanced by a bombshell bra?
Bring on the bombshell bra, by all means, but for cup size let’s look for one that overfloweth with opportunities for women, a shattering of the glass ceiling, an end to the pay gap, affordable child care, female directorships, a new generation of bright, talented young women who don’t feel they have to modify their physical appearance — and, finally, a reimagining of Victoria’s reductive little secret.
