Victoria’s Secret – annual p**n show

By: American Decency Staff

It’s not a new phenomenon.  Sex sells – at least to a certain segment of the population.  And no company has used that adage more than Victoria’s Secret.  That’s obvious from their in-your-face, larger than life store window displays that bombard your family when shopping in the mall.  Or then there’s the Victoria’s Secret TV commercials that are more like a soft-core porn flick than an ad for merchandise.  

However, Victoria’s Secret “crowning achievement” in their quest to foist flesh upon the public is their yearly “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” televised on CBS – which aired last week.  However, it’s not “fashion” being sold – it’s not even lingerie so much, (for what woman actually would buy, let alone wear, the gaudy and ostentatious underwear bedecked with everything from feathers, jewels, and “angels” wings?). 

What Victoria’s Secret is selling is an image.  An image to girls and young women that being sensuous and sexy is their ultimate goal.  Like proud peacocks the women strut down the runway as the camera focuses on their body parts.  Isaiah 3:16 could very well be describing the Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show:  “the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet …” 

Behind the scenes interviews with the models give the sense of “female empowerment” – that gaining the lustful adoration of leering men is the highest achievement to which young women can aspire. 

However, Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show has seemingly two target audiences – and ironically neither are adult women.  The first target group is obvious evidenced by the camera shots of the audience – row upon row of ogling, cheering men.  If you look close enough you can almost see the drool dripping from their chins.  Young men and old.  The rich, the famous, and the not-so-famous – with the front row reserved for male celebrities such as Paul Levine (singer and judge from the singing show, “The Voice”) and Charles Kelley (lead singer from the country singing group, Lady Antebellum).

Victoria’s Secret is hoping every ordinary Tom, Dick, and Harry will rush to Victoria’s Secret to buy lingerie for his wife or “significant other,” fantasizing about the image Victoria’s Secret has planted in their minds.

The other target audience is teen girls.  Victoria’s Secret attempts to nab them young, knowing that young consumers tend to stick with the brand of products they buy for decades.  If we bought Colgate toothpaste in our youth, statistics show there’s a very good chance that 20 years later we’re still buying Colgate toothpaste.

In recent years Victoria’s Secret added their “Pink” line of lingerie – supposedly marketed to college-age girls.  However, as we reported last spring, Victoria’s Secret has announced it is now marketing to an even younger group – middle school-aged girls also referred to as “tweens.”

Interspersed with women’s push-up bras, G-strings, and erotic lingerie, Victoria’s Secret is selling sexy lingerie to sixth graders.  As BusinessWeek reported:  “Forget Training Bras.  Girls Are Buying Lingerie.”

Chief Financial Officer Stuart Burgdoerfer of Limited Brands, of which Victoria’s Secret is a subsidiary, announced the company’s new marketing demographic claiming about young girls: “They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.”

That is also what Victoria’s Secret is doing with their “fashion” show.  For the last three years the headline performer at their televised lingerie parade has been a teen singer whose fans are mainly middle school and high school girls.  Three years ago it was singer Katy Perry, followed last year by teen heart-throb Justin Bieber, and singer/teenage sensation Taylor Swift this year.

Sadly, Taylor Swift, who has for the most part maintained a wholesome and scandal-free image, has now seemed to have bought the lie of Victoria’s Secret herself.  As she performed at the Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show, she engaged in the same sexualized posing and antics as the models.  Her erotic displays had the feel of showing the world that she was no longer a girl.  However, it will be the young girls who idolize her who will receive the destructive message she sent that equates femininity with being sexy.

Sadly, it is no surprise when we hear of very young teens (and even younger) involved in sexual activity – not when the entertainment and retail industries bombard them with such sexualized messages.   Children at younger and younger ages becoming concerned about body image.   Little girls dressing and acting provocatively.  Young boys involved in pornography. 

Children victimized by a culture that sees their worth only in dollars – robbing them of their innocence.  To put it bluntly – a culture teaching little girls to act like sluts and teaching little boys to treat them as such.

There will always be a market for sex in advertising and entertainment.  It is the nature of unredeemed man to gravitate toward sin rather than purity.  The ratings for the Victoria’s Secret “Fashion Show” attest to that.  Victoria’s Secret won the ratings war for the hour it aired – gaining the highest ratings for its timeslot against the other networks.

However, there will also always be a remnant of God’s people (and others who respond to God’s law written on their hearts) who will speak up against the degrading of innocence and the display of eroticism within our culture.

We ask you to be one of those speaking up. 

Each year we target the advertisers sponsoring the Victoria’s Secret lingerie show, asking you, our readers, to send a message to the advertisers.  As a result of you standing with us each year in holding sponsors accountable, each year we see fewer and fewer mainstream corporations associating with the Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show. 

We were pleased to see that this year there were very few national companies sponsoring the Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show.  The majority of advertisers were movie companies – Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema.  Other sponsors included:  Xbox, Intel, Canon Camera, Revlon, and Pandora Jewelry.

However, there was one major company which had 6 ads during the hour program – Procter and Gamble.  P&G advertised Herbal Essences shampoo (an erotic ad itself), as well as Pampers diapers and Always feminine pads.

Click here to send a message to Procter & Gamble and the advertisers which empowered the Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show.

 

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 American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

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