Victoria's Secret Finally Reveals Victoria's Secret: Its Regressive Marketing Sucks

Victoria’s Secret, perhaps in light of years of bad press around being a sexist, Epstein-friendly garbage company that makes ugly, uncomfortable, and overpriced undergarments, is finally toying with the idea of focusing its advertising on women possibly in the market for new undergarments. This new direction would be a pivot from their previous target audience, such as my college boyfriend who once bought me some sort of ill-fitting pink string in a size extra small for Christmas, likely because he had once masturbated to a catalog image of a model wearing it.

The New York Times reports that Victoria’s Secret is parting ways with its “angels,” those decades of tall, incredibly thin, usually white, and undeniably gorgeous women who once shilled its weirdly-fitting garments in catalogs and on televised runway shows. Taking their spots will be other, also gorgeous women:

“In their place are seven women famous for their achievements and not their proportions. They include Megan Rapinoe, the 35-year-old pink-haired soccer star and gender equity campaigner; Eileen Gu, a 17-year-old Chinese American freestyle skier and soon-to-be Olympian; the 29-year-old biracial model and inclusivity advocate Paloma Essler [sic], who was the rare size 14 woman on the cover of Vogue; and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, a 38-year-old Indian actor and tech investor.”

While the Times seems to think this pivot is a “sharp change,” acknowledging that there are beautiful celebrities not named Jenner or Hadid and that most women’s husbands and boyfriends buy bad underwear in the wrong size hardly seems like the leap into the 21st century that it is being touted as. Although Megan Rapinoe, as always, makes a good point about the brand’s image:

“It was, Ms. Rapinoe said bluntly, “patriarchal, sexist, viewing not just what it meant to be sexy but what the clothes were trying to accomplish through a male lens and through what men desired. And it was very much marketed toward younger women.” That message, she said, was ‘really harmful.’”

And to the fact that the brand’s product isn’t that good and doesn’t feature undergarments in the size or shape of a wide portion of human breasts or booties, newly-minted ambassadors like Rapinoe and Essler both say they’re going to work to change that too, with Essler saying she’d like to see sizing go up to XXXXXL from where it currently ends, at XXL. Guess we’ll see!