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.

War and fashion

“…the charming full skirts falling to just below the knee did suggest a decorous army wife in olden times…” I think the person at style.com that commented on the Burberry Spring Summer 2012 doesn’t have a clue idea of what it’s like to be an army wife. If someone you love is at the battlefield, you couldn’t possibly care less about being ‘decorous’.

I don’t understand why the fashion world keeps on referring to the military and occasionally even glorifying it. War is something awful and if you would actually understand what it is, you couldn’t possibly feel ‘inspired’ by it. War only leads to the suffering of innocent people, while those that started the war hardly ever go to the battlefield. They rather enjoy their newly acquired status by surrounding themselves with bodyguards and women that are drawn to their power or women that know they don’t have a choice other than pretending they care about that.

Another example: the Michael Kors spring/summer 2012 fashion show seemed to be inspired by Africa and the military. Knowing how much the people in Africa suffer from armed conflicts, I find it two things you can’t put together. A few of the outfits of Michael Kors even looked very much like the uniform of Congolese soldiers: not really the greatest defendants of human rights. On top of that, the handles of his handbags reminded me of bullet belts for automatic guns. Even though I suspect he’s oblivious enough not to know whose look he’s copying. I still don’t understand how you can be inspired by the look of Congolese soldiers, even if it’s not consciously. The people from Congo that you should be inspired by are the ones that don’t carry guns.

Fashion, drugs and fair trade

This month’s theme on the Feminist Fashion Bloggers’s website is ethics. And I’m a good girl so I always do as I’m told, unless I do the exact opposite. So below is my opinion on fair trade.

I think there are two things that don’t go together and that is: telling people they should buy fair trade and taking drugs. There is absolutely not a single industry in this world that causes more harm than the drugs industry. And I’m not talking about drug addicts. I’m talking about the people that make it and that bring it to you.

Below are some reasons why some people seem to think that the drugs industry isn’t that bad:

It’s not my fault. It’s because it’s illegal. If drugs would be legal, we could also make fair trade drugs.

• Using drugs is not going to make them legal.

The money from drugs trade is used to support rebel armies that try to overthrow the violent, cruel regime of their countries.

• They use violence to (try to) overthrow this regime. History will tell you that rebel armies that overthrow a regime with violence hardly ever become a democracy, if never.

It creates opportunities for a lot of people that really have no other solutions.

• So do sweatshops.

I also think it’s very suspicious that there is more demand for fair trade clothes and food than for fair trade oil. The oil industry is in my opinion the number two industry responsible for human suffering. And it do is legal, so there is no reason why oil can’t be made fair trade. I think it’s because clothes and food are seen as an expression of your personality and that oil isn’t: ‘You are what you eat’ and ‘Fine feathers make fine friends.’ There is no saying about how the kind of gas you tank says something about who you are. I think the reason people buy fair trade often isn’t because they are someone that wants to change the world, but because they want to be someone that tries to save the world.

I still think it’s a good thing to buy fair trade food or clothes, but if you want to change the world, you’re going to have to do more than just buy stuff. Buying fair trade food or clothes do are steps in the right direction, but it are small steps and you can take bigger ones.

What you want and what you can get

I want clothes

That flatter my body

That’ll always stay with me

That express how I’m feeling

That respect the world I live in

What you can get is clothes

That only fit some people

That only last a season

That are what everybody’s wearing

That above all, respect profit-making

Clothes made for average looking women

And here is the second thing that goes wrong in the process: when designers want to try out how their clothes look in real life, they don’t only envision them on unrealistically tall creatures.

They try them out on a perfectly proportioned tailor’s dummy. The breast, the waist and the hips of these dummies are a skinnier version of the average breasts, waists and hips of all women.


The irony is that as good as no woman has these average proportions. They have more curves or less curves. They are apple shaped or pear shaped.


So clothes are made to fit the average woman. The average woman has 2.5 kids. The average woman does not exist. We’re all wearing clothes cut for this average women, while it doesn’t fit any of us.