Victoria's Secret

I have written this post because I am participating in the FFB round-up of this month. I had written a post earlier that I find better suited for the round-up, but you’re supposed to submit only recent blogposts (I think), so I have decided to join the club of people that nag about Victoria’s Secret.

I feel like Victoria’s Secret often is depicted as the enemy of women. It has turned into the symbol of how women are objectified, but I find this extremely exaggerated.

First of all, they have advertisements and catwalk shows with women in lingerie, because it’s a lingerie brand. I don’t know how else you’re going to show lingerie.

Secondly, they indeed use only beautiful women, but so do all other fashion/beauty brands and 90% of all non-fashion/beauty brands.

They could also indeed use more different body types, but they don’t make bras for different body types. Their bras only go up to DD. I don’t think they don’t make these, because they hate women with big breasts. I think it’s more likely because bigger breast have different needs. A larger version of a good bra for an A-cup is not a good bra for an F-cup, because it wouldn’t offer enough support. Bras for big breasts are another product and it requires another expertise, an expertise that Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have.

It also is true that only a few women can still feel comfortable with their own body after watching a Victoria’s Secret advertisement, but removing beautiful women from the streetview is not the right way to make women feel satisfied with their own bodies. You can’t blame beautiful women for making you feel ugly. There will always be people that are more beautiful than you and you should just get over that.

Victoria’s Secret sometimes is accused of exploiting their angels. These angels are usually already high-earning models. They don’t need to do a Victoria’s Secret runway show. They can easily say no. Compared to runway shows of other brands, Victoria’s Secret probably is one of the best employees. Other fashion brands use underaged models. Other fashion brands prefer models with a certain ‘aesthetic’ that you can only achieve by not eating. If a model doesn’t speak English it’s not a problem, because than she won’t be able to say she doesn’t want to do something or to complain she hasn’t been paid. That is what I call exploiting.

The Victoria’s Secret angels also are criticized for objectifying themselves, but I think if women want to walk around in their underwear it’s not wrong as long as it is their own decision. Some women want to wear a veil and some women want to wear mini-skirts and if you would ever have talked to either of them, you would know that both these women usually are blessed with an incredibly big mouth. What women wear says nothing about how much they submit themselves to men. It says something about where they draw the line on how much of their body they want to show to the world.

If you want to read the blogpost I had written earlier on fashion and sexuality, you can read it here.

Are there too little coloured women in magazines or too many white women?

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

The fashion industry often is criticized for not using enough coloured models. This lack of coloured models in the high-end fashion industry is merely a reflection of the racism in our society. And a reflection of how the fashion world is merely interested in capturing the time spirit and that it does not have any vision of their own on how the future will or should be.

However, I feel like black people are in a better way presented than white women in fashion magazines, because ...

Only smart and eloquent black models are featured

At first, one of the reasons the fashion industry does not like using black models is because black people are associated with poverty, violence and hip hop. Luxury brands and fashion magazines don’t want to become associated with these things in any kind of way.

So when a fashion magazine does feature a coloured model for a major fashion spread, usually the fashion spread is accompanied with an interview of the black model to explain that she do is rich, not violent and not into dancing like a **. 

Often the articles are written in such a manner that it looks like these black models are one of the few signs of intelligent life in the fashion industry. 

Only succesfull and responsible black women are used as a spokesperson

(Racist) people see black people as poor, lazy, aggressive and stupid. If a black person does something that only slightly does not confirm to the stereotype, (racist) people won’t notice it. Only when a black person does something completely the opposite of what (s)he would be expected to do according to their stereotype, (racist) people will see that black person as not poor, aggressive or stupid. 

So if a brand chooses for a black woman to represent their brand, they usually choose for a famous successful hardworking woman that would also be a perfect daughter-in-law, because otherwise she’ll be assumed to be poor, lazy and aggressive. White women that are chosen as spokespeople don’t have to be that much. Just being the daughter or girlfriend of someone famous or rich is already more than enough.

So for a black woman to be featured in a magazine they need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent, successful, hardworking and beautiful too. A white woman just needs to be 15 and beautiful or the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich.

This makes black women feel that you need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent and beautiful to get what you want or you would need to be white, while it makes white woman feel that only beauty matters and that beauty can give you anything you want, unless you're the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich. In that case you don't need to be or do anything at all.

Note: what does affect coloured people’s self image is how these coloured people that do are featured often have ‘a white face’ with another skin: black women with a more narrow nose and Asians with almond shaped eyes. What also affects them in a negative way is how these models often are more fair-skinned than other people from their race.


Note 2: Is the tide turning? Walter Van Beirendock used exclusively black models for his Autumn/Winter 2011 fashion show. He's not the most known fashion designer and might not be the first one to do is, but he do is  the head of the fashion department of the Royal Antwerp Academy of Arts, an academy that is educating the latest generation of fashion designers.