English 280: The Journalistic Essay

By Ashley Kompass

On June 18, 2007 Victoria’s Secret stores across the country closed early to prepare for the first day of the Victoria’s Secret Semi-Annual Sale. Stores are hectic as over flowing bins full of merchandise are pushed out of the back rooms and employees rush to finish the floor sets. Women wait at 5:59 a.m., the following morning, for the stores to open; each of them anticipating being the first one to find the perfect bra, for the perfect price, in the perfect size. The gates are lifted and the store doors are open at 6:00 a.m., a rush of women swarm every collection room of the retail store with shopping totes courtesy of Victoria’s Secret overflowing with discount merchandise ornamenting their arms. With a team fully staffed, sales associates dressed in elegant black suits and heels are right around the corner to assist, to urge, and to fully inform the clients of their product.

In a store lined with pink walls and white columns, where fine lingerie, sexy sleepwear, beauty products, and perfume cover every wall and floor space, women of every age, color, and size come to find a sexy independence. Since a movement started by Madonna, the “Material Girl”, in the early 80s, which aimed to change the public’s view of woman’s sexuality, woman have suffered and aimed to stay within the frame or image of this. By saying and/or portraying that it is ok to be open about one’s sexuality but only within the certain image of heterosexual beauty, many women live confused, uncertain, and disappointed with themselves and their body.

Using sexuality to empower is a key ingredient to advertising for almost any product out on the market today. However, this message, despite whether we as consumers realize it or not fails to do just that. Instead it leaves many disempowered and unrepresented. It is the thin, the beautiful, and the heterosexual women that Victoria’s Secret, along with many other stores, represent as the sexy, independent, ideal, and accepted. You will never see “tubby” or small breasted, and certainly not lesbian, women as representatives of their brand. However you will see those women along with many others in line next to you at a store located near you; all in hopes that they too will closer resemble an “Angel”.

“I can’t always afford to shop at Victoria’s Secret except during the Semi-Annual Sale but I do use their product as a guide for buying my lingerie at cheaper department stores. Victoria’s Secret always has the sexiest bra and underwear sets.” Paula Holden, 45, Mashpee.

Sexuality and the sheer meaning of sexiness are idealized through the Victoria’s Secret ‘Angels’. A young girl’s pajama party takes on a whole new meaning with the company’s new Christmas line of “pj” advertising. Supermodel Heidi Klum, along with fellow “Angels” Alessandra Ambrosia, Karolina Kurkova, and Adriana Lima, play and pillow fight during a slumber party, all dressed in the Victoria’s Secret “Pink” clothing line.  Even while lounging around, women everywhere still want to feel cute! Victoria’s Secret PINK, is one of Victoria’s Secret’s newest lines. The collection was created with the dorm-bound crowd of young college age women in mind and features fun, comfy lingerie, loungewear and sleepwear. Products range in color from pastel to bright.

Young girls drawn to these fun clothes with the word “pink” stitched across the backside are now receiving the message that no matter where you are in your development as a woman, sexuality is central.  The images of “sexy” women that fill their stores, TV commercials, and magazine ads give young girls across America the idea of what they should look like or where they can be if they buy their undergarments and clothes from Victoria’s Secret; to be transformed into the ideal.

Even though Victoria’s Secrets’ supermodels are mostly between the ages of 18-25yrs old, most could easily pass for a sexed-up 16 year old. Add onto that the ditzy limerick, cutesy-innocent poses and look of amazement and it seems a bit suspicious that Victoria’s Secret is appealing to certain male fantasies that exclude women over the age of 18.  Does this not sound like the same battle that Chris Hanson, of To Catch a Predator, is trying to fight? Their tactics may not be as direct but it is through these types of images presented to us through advertising, television, and publications that brand ideas of perfection and sexy into our minds.

Objectifying or giving attention to a particular body part or parts, is exactly what is done through pornography.  It takes away from women’s full humanity by focusing on specific body parts and saying that this is you, this is what makes women whole.  The ideal of what women should look like shapes what should be appealing to men.  It’s the characteristics that Victoria’s Secret portrays that men want.  The goal is to sell; in order to sell you need to get the appeal of a large range and group of people. How better to do so than to get the idea of sex and sexiness into the minds of men and make women strive for a perfection that is appealing to the naked eye yet completely unrealistic for the body’s of most.  Victoria’s Secret is made for women, purchased primarily by woman, and marketed to appeal to men.

“I feel like at Victoria’s Secret, as a guy, that I am the stereotype that they want, a boyfriend who doesn’t know what to buy—the inexperienced boyfriend shopper who needs to get something quick.” Jim Stolberg, 21, of Worcester.

As a former employee for the Limited Brands Company, I know first hand how important it is to target your customers. Attached to every sales associate is an earpiece and microphone with a manager on the other end enforcing credit card sign ups, bra sales, and beauty sales, all in order to create a competition of sales amongst her employees. So for a sales associate to find a helpless boyfriend, struck with confusion amongst bras of every color and design, is like striking gold. This is the customer that is the easiest to help, to please, to add- on purchases, and even to convince into signing up for a credit card (because he may just need help shopping for those other occasions). When it comes down to it she’s there to sell because if she doesn’t then she runs the risk of having her hours cut down until she’s no longer on the schedule.

Sarah DonFrancesco, an employee at the Victoria’s Secret in Taunton, says “I constantly feel pressured to sell and I don’t find it fair that more responsibility gets put on me than Kevin!”

When entering the Victoria’s Secret in the Silver City Galleria you may be surprised to be greeted by a tall, young man with long, dark, flowing black hair.  Kevin is a male sales associate at the Victoria’s Secret in Taunton. He is the only male that works at this particular store and is by far the least asset to the team.  While all the female sales associates remain in their zoned location –concentrated on their sales goal, keeping their designated room clean, and approaching everyone that enters– Kevin is chatting at the cash wrap or just standing around watching the clock pass by. At the same moment, Sarah is helping a young man around her age and asks him “What size do you need?” The young man replies, “What’s your size?” Sarah not being asked this for the first time says, “You’d have to know her bra size before you buy it or I can’t help you.”  This won’t be the last time this happens to her or any of the other female sales associates so long as they work in this business. On frequent occasions they will be asked to try things on or what they like to wear. Many stores have had times where a sales associate has been sexually harassed and asked bizarre questions about their underwear over the phone by a random horny pervert.

But for Kevin things are a little bit different, a little bit less direct. A female customer walking out of the store yells, “I can’t believe a boy works here! I avoided him like the plague.” Kevin pretends not to hear it and continues folding the endless amount of PINK panties that cover the large white dresser table in the front of the store.  Sexual tension and uncertainty fill the air like a fog clouding everyone’s vision. Perhaps, it was unrealized how men could feel the wrath of sexism brought on through this company?

Victoria’s Secret is much more than the gold standard for expensive lingerie but also the gold standard for beauty. In a store lined with judgment and idealized beauty, woman search for a more perfect version of themselves.  Where the standard’s raised high and the hopes of being transformed by a product are never ending. By attaching sex to the meaning of undergarments, Victoria’s Secret has made a remarkable marketing ploy and a profitable advertising approach.

Technically, underwear is made for support, hygiene, and comfort. Through marketing tactics like the one’s performed by Victoria’s Secret, our ideas of this mindless object have been altered. Now we look to them to support, lift, minimize, make bigger, or change whatever we don’t like about ourselves. So that when we go home at night, we’ll feel more desirable instead of overweight or not very pretty. As a society, we put so much emphasis on what is “attractive” instead of what is virtuous and kind.

“If [Victoria’s Secret] really wants to fully be open about sexuality and empower women then embrace a full spectrum of these things.  Marketing likes to pretend that it has an open range message, but it just wants to sell,” Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies Diane Fox, Bridgewater State College.

Embrace a full spectrum. Perhaps, this is the kind of philosophy not only Victoria’s Secret, but all of us, should take into mind.