This article includes mentions of disordered eating and may be distressing for some readers. Helplines can be found at the close.
I haven’t thought about undies in years.
Obviously, I still wear them every day, but it’s an autopilot action where I yank on a pair from my trusty top drawer and then go about my day. I never consider why I’ve picked that pair. They are just my undies.
But if I rewind to 2015, I was in a very different state of mind.
I was working in a newsroom at the time and one of the biggest ‘events’ of the year was the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. We did weeks of coverage, from the model auditions to angel announcements and, of course, the fantasy bra. I counted and we had 77 articles on the site about the show in 2015. It was a huge deal, and so for about six weeks of that year, I looked at pictures of thin, shiny women in their underwear every single day.
I zoomed in. I took stock of the gap between their thighs. I noticed that their skin didn’t fold over the back of their bras. I googled ‘Victoria’s Secret model diet’. I went to an incredibly dark place when I looked in the mirror.
The VS Fashion Show was my annual reminder of what I needed to look like to be beautiful, as well as a nudge to invest in stringy, sparkly knickers and push-up bras to decorate my underwhelming body.
I was so in the depths of my own negative self-talk that I barely clocked what the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was actually all about: men.
The brand itself was created by a dude named Roy, who wanted to have a nicer experience when buying lingerie for his wife. Yep, he made a women’s underwear empire to make his life easier. Knowing that Victoria’s Secret was built on the premise of the male experience and male gaze makes it so much easier to understand why their undies are so uncomfortable. The knickers aren’t there to make you feel comfortable, they are designed for Roy’s pleasure.
And this stance has followed them up every catwalk, and flutters in the feathers of every VS angel’s wings.
Which is why, despite it being the pinnacle of my news calendar in 2015, every year since has seen it slip out of the limelight. Conversations of excitement for the show switched to critiques about it being out of touch, not diverse enough or just plain odd.
The question of “Why do we watch one type of woman walk in a bra and thong with a pair of gaudy wings to their back every year?” suddenly only had one answer. “I really don’t know anymore.”
And then it was gone. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show hung up its wings in 2018 after a New York Times investigation exposed the misogyny at the brand’s HQ, including a whole host of accusations against its then-exec, Ed Razek. And while the stores continued to flog undies, the show didn’t fill up our feeds for six whole years. And I didn’t think about undies, or what my body looked like in them, the entire time.
So when it was announced that it was coming back, I recoiled.
It felt inherently wrong for them to return, but I wanted to give them a chance to prove me wrong. Perhaps they would be back with a purpose, an agenda for change. Perhaps trans angels, POC angels, elderly angels and disabled angels would be seen on the catwalk. Perhaps girls who looked like me would be there.
So I waited.
But what arrived in my social feed on October 15th were pictures of the same old pink-hued catwalk, speckled with Victoria’s Secret angels that I’d seen the decade before. Some literally the same (the Hadid sisters were back, along with some OGs like Tyra Banks) and other new faces were simply a clone of what I’ve seen before.
The only differences I could spot were that there were two “plus size” models (Ashley Graham and Paloma Elsesser, who are both a size 16) and one trans model – which was a surprise given Victoria’s Secret former exec Ed Razek’s infamous comment that he would never include trans or plus size models as they ruin the “fantasy” of the brand.
All of the performers at this VS Fashion Show were women this year – with Cher, Tyla and BLACKPINK’s Lisa singing on the catwalk – which I guess removed the leering nature of previous male performers like The Weeknd and Adam Levine, both of who have dated Victoria’s Secret models.
Despite these teeny tweaks, the return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show honestly felt like a step back in time. It certainly looked the same, but I felt differently about it. This time I didn’t watch the models stomp down the catwalk and immediately mentally compare their bodies to mine. I didn’t see the teeny tiny push-up bras and think that they were better than the daggy nana bras in my drawer. I simply… didn’t really care.
And while I’d love to boast and claim that was thanks to a lot of mental growth on my part, it’s not. Instead, in the six-year hiatus of Victoria’s Secret, we seemed to make a collective decision to give less of a shit. About lingerie, about upholding patriarchal beauty standards, about believing that a woman’s underwear is something reserved for her husband and it’s a ‘cheeky treat’ for us to all snoop at models in wings and thongs.
Now, if anything, I see more undies worn as outerwear – bras worn over t-shirts, corsets added to loungewear and g-bangers casually peeping out the top of baggy jeans. They aren’t a ‘secret’ anymore, they’re just fashion arsenal to add to an outfit.
Which is why Victoria’s Secret felt all the more disjointed. Detached from the conversation. Lost in the discourse and playing a cringy catch-up, sharing their dated take on underwear when we’re living in a post-lingerie world.
If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, 24-hour support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.
If you need help or support for an eating disorder or body image issue, please call Butterfly’s National Helpline on 1800 334 673, chat online or email support@butterfly.org.au. Confidential and free support is available seven days a week, from 8am to midnight (AEDT). For more information please visit www.butterfly.org.au
Image credit: Getty + Punkee
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