Words by Varsha Yajman
“I’ll wear it when I have a thigh gap…And a flat stomach…and a toned body.”
“Just eat like them, work out like them.”
“Try harder.”
At 15, the recommended section of my YouTube page was filled with videos titled What I Eat in a Day, 10 Min Abs, the radiant faces of those like Romee Strijd, Karlee Kloss, Sanne Vloet beckoning me to click, as if one watching a few minutes would turn me into them.
What those three women have in common of course is their global status as being beautiful, achieved as they strut down the catwalk at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
Of course, the Fashion Show was just one part of their success. Along with it came the behind-the-scenes series Train Like an Angel, where the models shared how they prepared for the show—mostly by depriving themselves of food and water. They said it, and I followed—or at least tried to.
I put off wearing certain outfits, sucked in my stomach whenever I was in public, and by 14, I was deep in an eating disorder. While Victoria’s Secret wasn’t the only factor contributing to the hellscape I entered at that age—calories and kilograms consumed my thoughts—being a brown teenager who saw herself as anything but beautiful or desirable made it worse. So, when the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was canceled, it felt like a breath of relief. “Things are changing,” I thought.
The last show before their cancellation took place in 2018, featuring 60 models on the catwalk. Although it was praised for its racial diversity, not a single plus-size or curve model was included. In response to the criticism, Ed Razek, the architect of the show, stated in a Vogue interview that the company would not cast plus-size or transgender models because “the show is intended to be a fantasy.”
After 23 years, the Fashion Show was canceled due to immense backlash over size and gender inclusivity, allegations of abuse and harassment, and a decline in sales. At the time, Stuart Burgdoerfer, the chief financial officer of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, L Brands, stated that the decision was made to “evolve the messaging of the company.”
Since then, Victoria’s Secret has made multiple attempts to embrace the new-age world of corporate body positivity—though their words often don’t align with their actions. In 2021, the brand launched “The VS Collective” to shift away from the “fantasy” narrative, featuring American soccer player and LGBTQ2S+ icon Megan Rapinoe, along with Paloma Elsesser, a biracial model and advocate for inclusivity.
For instance, in a 2022 ad, the brand featured clips from its highly criticized show alongside a voiceover declaring, “We’ve changed” and “Welcome. You’re accepted here no matter what you think you’re supposed to do or look like, or how your body’s supposed to be.”
While this appears to be a step in the right direction, a glance at the brand’s website reveals that only three of their bras are available in the largest size, a 44DD. Furthermore, these larger sizes are often not carried in stores. When it comes to their underwear, VS states that its XXL corresponds to a size 20. However, this does not reflect a true plus-size offering, leaving many women unable to wear any of the clothes shown on the catwalk. It’s hardly a radical shift for a company that has long claimed to embrace change.
To their credit, the Fashion Show took on the criticism they had for the exclusion of trans models. Two trans models, Alex Consani and Valentina Sampaio, strutted down the runway and, more broadly, in the 2019 Victoria’s Secret special titled The Victoria’s Secret World Tour, which featured trans artist Edun Sodipo, musician Honey Dijon, and models Ceval Omar and Consani. However, this, of course, is merely one small step in a brand that has a legacy of trans exclusion.
The show has also been praised for showcasing age diversity for the first time, featuring Kate Moss (50) and Carla Bruni (56). However, the irony in this mass rebrand that Victoria’s Secret aimed to create lies in the platforming of Kate Moss and Tyra Banks. Notably, Kate Moss once stated in 2009 that “nothing tastes better than skinny.” While many credit Banks with changing the fashion industry by platforming plus-sized and trans models and advocating against racism, her stints as the host of America’s Next Top Model and The Tyra Banks Show have been heavily criticized for her dialogue around women’s bodies.
In one episode of ANTM, Banks, while judging a woman’s body says “she’s not plus size on the top but she’s plus size on the bottom…I just wish her upper body was bigger so it matched her lower body.”
Although she has since apologised, the damage done to several people’s relationships with their bodies, food, and, in some cases, race and sexuality cannot be fixed with a few words.
All this to say, while everyone is, of course, capable of change, it is an interesting choice to cast two women who spent years profiting off belittling women who were not thin enough.
This brings us to body diversity. From my research, a total of four plus-sized/curve models graced the catwalk. While this is a step up from its last show in 2018, where there were ZERO plus-sized/curve models, it fails to uphold the promise that Victoria’s Secret made to us five years ago. It also appears that some of the lingerie modelled by the mid and plus-sized catwalkers are not even available on the VS website.
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show ultimately shows us that being anything but young and thin is an “other”. What stuck out to me was a piece of commentary I heard on a podcast where the hosts stated the VS Fashion Show is about advertising lingerie, and people need to just see it as empowering women and not look too deep into it.
However, for many of us, and personally as someone who has lived with an eating disorder for almost a decade, the return of the infamous show is not about empowerment, particularly when coupled with the return and rise of the indie sleaze aesthetic, low-rise jeans and ozempic. The exclusion of mid- and plus-size models is not merely a coincidence but a choice.
While the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was not the catalyst of a diet culture, it certainly did and appears to continue to platform a beauty standard and an ethos that is ultimately exclusionary.
