In its prime, Victoria’s Secret was the golden standard: their angels stood lean, tall, and flawless, intentionally setting an insurmountable bar of beauty. In the most recent fashion show on October 15, 2024, they featured a far more diverse repertoire of models than they have historically, but is it just a calculated move to save a brand that is failing in this changing society?
Until the mid-2010s, Victoria’s Secret remained at the apex of its retail sector, but with growing external demands for inclusive promotion of female bodies, they soon faced backlash for the unrealistic and harmful conventions they spearheaded. The most recent show did feature plus-sized and trans models, yet the majority of models still exemplified the original Victoria’s Secret image. The few diverse bodies sprinkled throughout allowed the company to curate a false image of “wokeness”, allowing them to appear as rebranded while staying true to their structural norms.
Victoria’s Secret attempted to twist the previously criticized narrative of their show by manipulating the public’s perception, thus allowing them to avoid having to address the foundational ideals on which the brand is built and avoid appearing out-of-touch with new societal norms. These diverse additions are positioned as a feminist counterpublic to the idealized feminine body that has been valued so highly in society. Akin to the action taken during the #FreeBritney movement, the public engaged in digital activism criticizing former practices, and through online discourses tackled a prominent real-world issue, leading to the company’s attempt at conformity to a new social order to appease the public (Vaidya and Lingel, 2024).
Though the fashion show appeared to have submitted to the public’s demands for better representation, the efforts at diversity remained surface-level and, therefore, were unsuccessful at supporting the upliftment of those newly represented subgroups and instead, it highlighted the disparity between performative inclusion and genuine impact. “The rise of digital feminist counterpublics has not eliminated historical issues within feminism coalition building,” and Victoria’s Secret’s failure to support genuine empowerment underscores the importance of provoking meaningful reform (Vaidya and Lingel, 2024).
Victoria’s Secret holds high corporate stakes in the fashion show, and so Poe’s Law regarding ambiguity of intent becomes relevant; the company’s financial goals raise questions regarding the company’s true intentions for its diversity initiatives. While their efforts to reinvent themselves as progressive could be interpreted as genuine, they are desperate to rebrand themselves to keep up with the ever-changing social climate, and so the ambiguity surrounding their motives leaves room for skepticism (Marwick and Lewis, 2017).
The new diversity creates a juxtaposition with Victoria’s Secret’s historical beauty standards, making it possible for audiences to view the models whose bodies do not fit that standard as satirical, especially when the majority of models in the show still fit their original ideal. The new diverse bodies go against the “dream/fantasy” that the company is known for crafting. In this circumstance, Victoria’s Secret plays the role of the digital troll, and such ambiguity surrounding the true reason behind their actions exemplifies the essence of Poe’s Law as it challenges the audience’s discernment (Marwick and Lewis, 2017).
Due to society’s heavy reliance on online sources, the attempt at evolving Victoria’s Secret’s fashion into a truly representative, inclusive event capitalizes on digital narratives to rehabilitate the brand image. Without addressing the deeper systemic issues, there is alignment with the hypermimetic logic of contemporary culture. Digital memes tend to employ narratives and align them with shifts in societal culture; they hold significant cultural influence for “memes shape the mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups” by taking small-scale acts of communication and applying them more broadly (Shifman and Saltus, 2015). Victoria’s Secret has behaved similarly by taking the surface-level optics of inclusivity and manipulating it as a tool to morph the public’s perception of them. Digital culture enables a participatory culture, and that standard does not hold participants, such as Victoria’s Secret, accountable for hiding their truth with a veneer. Thus, this strategy by Victoria's Secret confirms that their appearances, public opinion, and profits are prioritized far more intensely than authenticity.
While outwardly promoting inclusivity, the most recent Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show highlights the difficulties in separating performative acts of progression from impactful representation. Due to societal pressures stemming from the normalization of diverse body types, the brand has attempted to reposition itself, and by taking advantage of digital culture, curated an ambiguous narrative that merely depicts the cessation of their exclusive standards. In doing so, they prioritized optics over authenticity, but they must extend beyond shallow changes to transform their efforts from being seen as marketing tactics to being truly reflective of the inclusivity that they claim to champion.
Works Cited
Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2017). Media manipulation and disinformation online.
Shifman, L., & Saltus, K. (2015). Memes: In Digital Culture. Gildan Audio : Made available through hoopla.
Vaidya, A., & Lingel, J. (2024). #freebritney: Strategies of counternarratives and self-regulation in digital feminist counterpublics. Feminist Media Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2024.2394514
Aitalia, I found this to be an interesting read as a long time fan of the Victoria Secret Fashion Show and I will say my expectations for the show did not exactly fall in line with what was aired. I agree with your analysis of Victoria Secret’s attempt to salvage their reputation / brand from consumer critiques, especially with how they’ve employed “surface-level optics of inclusivity” to make up for their early portrayals of unattainable beauty. I would like to add to your point, in relation to the prompt, that the VSFS is an exemplification of popular culture in how “they paradoxically align themselves with the forces of domination… ignoring the complexity and creativity by which the subordinate cope with the commodity system and its ideology… and thus devalue the conflict and struggle entailed in constructing popular culture within a capitalist society” (Fiske, 1989). In this instance, Victoria Secret infringes on the ideology of people who have created their own spaces to celebrate and construct their own portrayals of poorly-represented body types, races, and queer identities as a way of receiving applause and solidarity from those same groups they once failed to include. By doing this, Victoria Secret is able to create a façade of its company’s ‘improvement’ with inclusivity in order to sell their products and thus the image of “diverse” beauty associated with them. I believe that this tokenized portrayal of the brand’s inclusivity is emblematic of Adorno and Horkheimer’s idea of incorporation, where “anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it” (Adorno &Horkheimer, 1944). This makes it difficult for consumers to differentiate authentic inclusion from forced catering to specific demographics, often done in attempts at being in good political / societal standing.
ReplyDelete- Cesar Murillo
Hi Aitalia,
ReplyDeleteI truly agree with your critique of the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. Their ‘progressive switch’ seems superficial and as you said, a way to specifically address the root of the problem—the fact that their show upheld deeply hurtful depictions about women’s bodies. Maybe some people saw through that but the majority of people on social media criticized it for being ‘too woke’ and wished for the old Victoria Secret Fashion that glorified unattainable beauty standards and objectified women under the guise of celebrating femininity. This backlash highlights a troubling nostalgia for a time when the brand perpetuated narrow ideals of beauty, ignoring how harmful those standards were to countless women and girls.
While reading this, I thought of the Adorno and Horkheimer reading where they claimed that because the Culture Industry is so driven by money, they can never truly do anything progressive with integrity. Victoria’s Secret’s attempt at rebranding seems to align perfectly with their argument — the shift feels less like a genuine commitment to change and more like a calculated move to appeal to a broader, more socially conscious audience while still maintaining profitability. This commodification of progressivism reduces meaningful change to a marketing tactic, undermining the authenticity of their efforts and leaving the underlying issues unaddressed. It seems like a way to get back in people’s good graces and continue to sell their products. Even though their show is ‘progressive’ that same energy is not embodied in the stores, where the progressive bodies are nowhere to be seen and images of their old models remain on their windows.
Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the Culture Industry underscores how consumer capitalism tends to absorb and neutralize resistance by transforming it into a product. In this case, the brand’s “progressive” rebranding doesn't challenge the system that created those harmful beauty standards but instead repackages it in a way that still prioritizes profit over social impact.
It’s a reminder that while cultural shifts are essential, they need to be accompanied by systemic changes that prioritize the well-being and empowerment of those who have been marginalized, rather than simply paying lip service to the ideals of inclusivity and diversity.