After four years of absence, Victoria's Secret has finally returned! The newly exposed Victoria's Secret documentary slightly revealed that fans of this year's big show could not sit still and shouted: Victoria's Secret is mighty!
Victoria's Secret understands heat hype, and the pink blanket at the beginning of this month can be seen as a model's official announcement. Not surprisingly, Victoria's Secret still chose sugar candy, Lima and other old faces, and even took out the old rice at the bottom of the box. A strong comeback is bound to make a big wave.
In order to maintain the grandeur, the old supermodels are pouring out of their nests, and what really caused discussion is that Victoria's Secret intends to tie plus-size models on the corset and push them onto the stage this time, intending to redefine female beauty to subvert. But in my opinion, it is not as "beautiful" as it says, but there is a big reason behind it....
The abacus is knocked so loudly, to be honest, it is not to take care of the aesthetics of women of different figures, but more like to cater to the curves of the public to save the country. Somewhat with a bit of aesthetic brainwashing. It is also this kind of strong words that makes many viewers be taken out of rhythm.
Today, let's take a good look at whether Victoria's Secret is for diversified aesthetics, or whether it continues to continue its life under the banner of "aesthetic hegemony".
As early as 1995, Victoria's Secret held up the signboard of "women's freedom" and put girls wearing underwear with thin waists and long legs on the runway, until 2019, when the Victoria's Secret show was suspended, Victoria's Secret can be described as synonymous with women's aesthetic freedom!
In the golden age of Victoria's Secret after 2012, Victoria's Secret's aesthetics were quite unified, from their own big shows to magazine advertisements if they did not make a "glamorous man killing" is considered a failure, blonde, blue-eyed, plump breasts and thin waist female tension has never existed "diverse".
Dominating aesthetic hegemony is brainwashing, and the influence is so great that countless girls dream of becoming Victoria's Secret supermodels. Every year, Victoria's Secret's model interview is a long-legged event, and signing Victoria's Secret has even become the gold standard for supermodels. Victoria's Secret gave these girls a nice "angel" title:
Victoria's Secret's aesthetic hegemony is also reflected in its own product design, I specifically turned to the manuscript drawings at that time, leaving aside the clothes, this head ratio is almost not far from the comics:
At that time, Victoria's Secret's extreme pursuit of body proportions reached the point of requiring one-to-one reproduction of manuscripts. This shows Victoria's Secret's strict requirements for unified standards:
It was precisely by relying on the manipulation of aesthetics and the domination of supermodel selection that Victoria's Secret at that time could be described as covering the sky with one hand. Lindsay Wixon Pig Girl, who was handpicked by Lafayette, was rejected by Victoria's Secret after 5 interviews, precisely because she is too beautiful and does not meet Victoria's Secret's definition of "white rich beauty" image...
Such an encounter was also fulfilled in the goddess Miranda Kerr, and after marrying Orlando Bloom, Miranda was dismissed by Victoria's Secret the following year because she gave birth to a child and gained 10 pounds....
Such a strict standard-setter advocates "diversity" is somewhat of a sheep's head, I don't believe you open the official website of Victoria's Secret now, the product model is a water blonde big wave white girl ~ As a rule-maker, how to convince the public to be pluralistic by overturning the rules themselves?
"Victoria's Secret-style aesthetics" has taken such a great effort to unify standards and attracted the hot eyes of the vast majority of the crowd! First of all, the sexual attraction of supermodels with fat buttocks to straight men is fatal, and I saw the Victoria's Secret show rolling in the gym. Not the goal of the gym girl, but the motivation for straight men to lift iron~
Before Victoria's Secret, no brand linked sexiness to glamour. Victoria's Secret boss Wexner explained: "It is not a shame to accompany your wife to the underwear store, we need to turn this into motivation."
A wave of good operations successfully won the hearts of straight men, and the Super Bowl Victoria's Secret commercial, which had little to do with women, attracted millions of straight male clicks, causing servers to go down, and the 2014 London show broadcast once crashed Internet servers. Enlisting seemingly unrelated straight men has won a huge traffic and public opinion advantage for Victoria's Secret.
Of course, Victoria's Secret's main consumer army is still women, and Victoria's Secret's grasp of women is textbook level. It can be said that the secret of Victoria's Secret's success is to use perfect aesthetic standards to "create dreams" for women.
This move instantly distinguishes its products from ordinary underwear and alludes to becoming the embodiment of sexy perfection. Let the women watching the big show unconsciously have a sense of substitution, even the iconic big wings are to highlight this dreamy sense of accessories:
Victoria's Secret understands women and knows the integration of dreaming and products. The fantasy Bra fantasy corset, worth tens of millions of dollars, is designed to capture women's yearning for jewelry. While taking advantage of women's vanity, it also indirectly raises its own brand value, and practicality is less important.
There is also a very obscure point is the binding of sexy images and attracting the opposite sex, and the singers invited by each Victoria's Secret show from Boss Jia to Ricky Martin are the most popular and handsome images, as if wearing Victoria's Secret is their target prey.
Adam Levine and Anne V Victoria's Secret show kissed and determined to make Bai Fumei's dream of marrying Gao Fumei handsome come true, and now everyone can probably understand the lethality of the original strict Victoria's Secret aesthetic on women.
Such a booming transaction came to an abrupt end when the big show stopped in 2019. Of course, there are many reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that Victoria's Secret products cannot be sold.
Victoria's Secret's 2022 financial report shows that Victoria's Secret's net profit has nearly halved in the 12 months to January this year, falling nearly 48% to US$337 million.
Victoria's Secret itself does not rely much on products to make money, relying on a good mass base to reach 25% of profits by relying on big show broadcasting rights.
But what made this deal impossible was the exposure of the power trading scandal between financier Epstein and Victoria's Secret boss Ronles Wexner. Originally, this matter was just lace news for capitalists, but it did not expect to become the last straw to overthrow Victoria's Secret's aesthetic.
The perfect image of Victoria's Secret is instantly bound to the negative product of patriarchy. It was boycotted by more than a hundred supermodels and denounced by the whole people, and even the big show could not be sold. If you want to save traffic, you must first wash your reputation, so you have to comply with everyone's call to put on bras for plus-size and transgender to hold "diversified aesthetics", as for whether Victoria's Secret really agrees with this view in his heart, it is estimated that there is a big question mark.
No matter how unconvinced I am in my heart, if I want to make a comeback, I must draw a line with the past. Victoria's Secret officially announced the spokesperson for diversity:
There is nothing wrong with Victoria's Secret's "diversity" starting point, and the recent "political correctness" factor in the West has led to a big turn in the direction of many brands: this view is nothing more than freedom and equality, and any body and skin color should be accepted.
IT'S NOT UNCOMMON FOR POLITICALLY CORRECT PLURALISTIC AESTHETICS TO APPEAR ON THE RUNWAY, AND RIEHANNA'S FASHION BRAND FANTY HAS LONG PULLED TALL, SHORT, FAT AND SKINNY MODELS OUT FOR SEVERAL SEASONS:
But what we're going to discuss today is whether the "pluralistic aesthetics" advocated by Victoria's Secret are politically correct and "beautiful." I still have great reservations about this.
For example, in Hollywood, which is also deeply influenced by political correctness, "Mermaid" thundered because the redefined beauty was too far from the traditional impression.
Back in 2018, Victoria's Secret director Edward Lazek was asked if he needed to push transgender and plus-size models to join the Victoria's Secret show, and answered the negative in the affirmative: "I don't think we should do that." Because the Victoria's Secret show is for men and women to dream. ”
It is no wonder that the Victoria's Secret tradition at that time, in fact, human beings have always been unprecedentedly unified in the matter of aesthetics. The definition of "beauty" is the emotional state in which human beings directly appreciate the beauty of objects in aesthetic activities and arouse interest and pleasure, and are a reaction to the beauty of things.
This definition of beauty is the same in modern fashion aesthetics. Regardless of whether to objectify women, the aesthetic scheme given by women in the 80s for pleasure in the 80s of women's self-liberation is still the unchanged gold standard today:
So now looking back at the "aesthetic diversity" advocated by Victoria's Secret, at most it can represent personality, and personality does not determine beauty. Besides, personality may be fashionable, but it does not necessarily exist aesthetically. Using free personality to define beauty is a bit of aesthetic rape. Kanye is a living example:
From the perspective of aesthetics, the process of enjoyment is the premise of appreciating "beauty". Can a plus-sized model wearing sexy lingerie make you feel a sense of appreciation and yearning?
Why is it said that Victoria's Secret's diversified aesthetic has problems, and the plus-size model is rigidly put on the stage just to cater to word of mouth, and it is a bit hard brainwashing with the rhythm of being forced to overturn their previous theory, and they have to pull the masses to advocate together.
Of course, we must look at beauty with an inclusive and non-narrow attitude, insist on defending the rights of women of different genders and different figures, and at the same time insist that our aesthetic views are not led away by brand interests.
Distinguishing the right value from the fashion aesthetic is a mature aesthetic.
Such a problem not only exists in Victoria's Secret, but now too many brands have rigidly applied this "aesthetic freedom" formula in order to make money, as if standing on the moral high ground can block everyone's mouth.
Saying goodbye to aesthetic hegemony is to defend women's passionate and free rights. But don't be brainwashed to the rhythm, if you believe it, you are the least free one trapped by the capital routine.
This article was edited by Bennet
Art Editor: Jaya