Victoria Secret’s Damaging Effect for Women’s Beauty Standards

Hi everybody, today I will be talking about how Victoria Secret’s damaging effect on women today.

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/victorias-secret-has-a-body-image-problem-20141119-11pyqh.html

This article, written by Nicole Elphick, explores how Victoria secret has created harmful beauty standards. Elphick wonderfully shows how the actions of Victoria Secret as a company have become damaging to society. My blog post today will mirror the focus of this article.

Elphick begins by stating the simple fact that Victoria secret does not do a good job of promoting all types of bodies for women. She writes, “For a company that has built its fortune from hoisting up breasts and covering derrieres, Victoria’s Secret seems to not be very keen on the actual bodies of the majority of women.” This quote demonstrates how Victoria Secret’s motivation has never been to promote women and their images, rather, they have been driven by money and profits.

Next, Elphick references the Victoria Secret Angels — agents of destruction for women’s self confidence. These idyllic models who trot around with unreachable standards leave many women feeling supremely inadequate. Victoria Secret hopes to stir this inadequacy and then attempt to make women feel less inadequate only if they buy the products from Victoria Secret to make themselves more like these goddesses. It is a horrible practice and entirely immoral.

Later, Elphick mentions Victoria Secret’s “Perfect Body” campaign. This campaign featured only the same type of “Angel” model — supremely tall, busty, and extraordinarily skinny. Elphick explains the horrendous effects of this campaign saying, “No attempts at body diversity were made in the image and worse still the clear suggestion was that the models were what should be seen as ‘perfect’ bodies. Given that those models’ bodies are the result of a difficult-to-achieve combination of good genes and hard work, it seemed a little insulting to imply that women who didn’t share their exact measurements somehow have ‘imperfect’ bodies.”

After receiving abundant backlash for the campaign, Victoria Secret released a halfhearted apology video. In the video, a model explains that even she feels inadequate about her body. This video comes across as extremely tone deaf. What Victoria Secret should have learned is that every woman is beautiful in their own way — not everyone has to look like Amazonian goddesses. However, Victoria Secret chose to call everyone inadequate in a ploy to keep women feeling required to buy Victoria Secret to be less inadequate.

In conclusion, Victoria Secret needs to seriously reconsider their advertisement strategy. Their company has taken a completely immoral approach and should change as soon as possible in order to stop the damage the are causing. Hopefully, society can come together as a whole and show women that they all have beauty and should not need to chase stupid standards.