Okay, I am going to be real honest about this whole Victoria’s Secret runway model thing. Since the Victoria’s Secret Chief Marketing Officer, Ed Razek said to Vogue:
“We attempted to do a television special for plus-sizes. No one had any interest in it, still don’t. It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy.”
I’ve been angry. Really angry.
Here is a women’s lingerie brand for ‘female empowerment’ and yet they market and campaign very out-dated sexist ideals of beauty. The whole Victoria’s Secret runway has always bothered me, like a beauty pageant, a uniform of tall, thin model beauties walking down a catwalk, saying in one way or another, this is the standard of beauty. No voluptuous beauties, athletic women, no petite women, no transgender women. This is a standard of beauty prescribed by superficial, sexist men, pushing that age-old patriarchal agenda. And I am tired of it, so tired.
Victoria’s Secret Runway show
In this changing climate of body positivity and inclusion, women want representation. Countless women voiced their anger at the comments of Victoria’s Secret CMO and took to social media and the web including the Victoria’s Secrets Instagram to voice their disapproval and disgust. Not to mention declining store sales in the past financial year as consumer tastes and awareness has changed. Women most certainly won’t be sold no ‘fantasy’. This is not the 1950s, women will no longer spend their money on brands that take them for doormats or support brands that prescribe sexism and discrimination.
We now stand in solidarity; we want change, we want representation.
And you know what else, women are not ‘entertainment’, do not reduce us to that. We have been objectified long enough. I hope this is the last year of the show, that there is enough public pressure on the company that they make some significant changes to the messages they are sending to women.
In complete opposition, what Rhianna is doing with Savage X Fenty lingerie is a beam of hope and inspiration. A truthful and beautiful representation of women of all shapes and sizes, a celebration of womanhood and diversity. We need more Rihanna’s in this world and less Victoria’s Secrets.
Rhianna’s Savage Fenty lingerie runway show
Victoria’s Secret is so out of touch because they are a bunch of sexist, narrow-minded men sitting around a table making all the shots. Am tired, I am full of rage of been dictated by the soulless, sexist patriarchy. You know what I want, I want a seat at that table, with those dinosaurs selling women feelings of ‘not good enough’, so I can shake things up, change things for the better. And so can you, choose not to buy Victoria’s Secret, choose to have a voice, be an activist. Hustle and unite, put pressure on these big corporations via social media, and keep hustling until we have change.
Until I get there, I won’t stop. Female rage and all.