Victoria's Secret is having a hard time. The brand is out of step with the times and frankly I am of the view that any thinking woman should boycott it because the dream it sells is an actual nightmare. It's the twenty first century and this is a lingerie brand whose chief marketing officer Ed Razek - more precisely he is the marketing officer of LBrands, Victoria's Secret parent company - dared make disparaging remarks about curvy women and transgenders.
Victoria's Secret touts its Angels as athletes. Let's get some perspective. These girls are not Olympians, they are young women undergoing a punishing gym routine and subsisting on near starvation.
The brand imposes strict measurements for its girls and they are as unrealistic as can be.
They are out as far as I am concerned. Can they survive? yes, if they are prepared to make structural changes.
Meanwhile Rihanna's lingerie brand, Savage x Fenty is all the rage, raunchy and inclusive: what women of today want. The launch show was amazing, the ads were a celebration of women of all races, body shapes and sizes.
Victoria's Secret is a lingerie brand. I do not want a lingerie brand to dictate beauty standards. They do have larger sizes, because they need to sell, but their hypocritical attitude is, to put it mildly, irritating. A brand that thrives on making women feel inadequate will never have my custom. Plus the products are as trashy as can be. Let's not even get into how sustainable they are. They are not. So, girls, what are you waiting for? Do not buy their products.
If you are committed to sustainability you are also committed to inclusivity. There is no other way of putting it. All women have the sacrosanct right to feel beautiful and sexy. Lingerie should be something that allows this feeling. I cannot have a lingerie brand telling me that I am too old or too fat to wear its products. I want organic fibres next to my body. I do no want to have to worry about how my knickers and bras are made and under what conditions.
Mary Hanbury has written a critique of Victoria's Secret commercials for the Business Insider. It is worth reading.
As the Victoria's Secret annual show nears, on 2nd December, remember this: no brand should ever make women feel disempowered.
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