An analysis of Victoria's Secret Lingerie Marketing
Today, Victoria Secret models have by and large become a benchmark of female beauty. They posses what society deems beautiful: mesmerizing eyes, sexy lips, flawless skin, big voluminous hair, and perfect bodies, complete with unusually long and toned legs to complement their beautiful faces. While on the one hand, Victoria Secret’s primary purpose is certainly to utilize these army of girls to sell their products, it is important to look beyond this and recognize that they inevitably sell values, images, and concepts (eg: sexuality). The overpowering presence of these models in the in the media provides a benchmark telling us who we are and who we should be. It also tells us how to look and how to be beautiful. It tells us in order to be acceptable we have to be unnaturally thin.They promote a very unrealistic idea of body image, which are inadvertently translated into "normalcy"- providing audiences with a sense of what is supposedly normal. Either consciously or subconsciously we internalize these values, which then fuels us to strive to become exactly what we see. For instance, we feel ashamed and even guilty if we fail to have stick thin bodies akin to these statuesque models. This "thin inspiration" is clearly apparent when almost immediately after the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2011 aired, many girls set their Facebook statuses to lines such as: “Better go to the gym! Just watched the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show!”
The great emphasis Victoria’s Secret lingerie advertisements emphasize beauty and thinness causes young women to be perpetually unsatisfied with their body. There is a disjuncture between their real weight and their perceived weight, in that most women deem themselves to be too fat. This comment is commonly thrown around by women to express their dissatisfaction with their bodily appearances. This perpetual "im too fat" mentality has greatly contributed to the rise of numerous health problems- namely but not limited to- Aneroxia and Bulimia. Women's decision to succumb to these 2 harmful disorders is in large part to do with their extensive exposure to the dominant message that to be thin is beautiful, which is more often that not, most effectively delivered by advertisements and other sites of popular culture. In “‘The More You Subtract, the More You Add’: Cutting Girls Down to Size,” Jean Kilbourne (a prominent critique of popular culture) states, “This tendency to view one’s body from the outside in—regarding physical attractiveness, sex appeal, … and weight as more central to one’s physical identity than health, … —has many harmful effects, including … the development of eating disorders….” (260). Indeed, by constantly being exposed to images of thin, attractive, and impossibly perfect models, women feel pressured to live up to these beauty standards, so much so that many physical attractiveness takes priority, even at the expense of health. While many women realize they will never achieve these standards, this realization will not stop them from striving to fulfill this constructed beauties as these standards is reinforced through basic daily interactions. In the lecture, Professor Eric Thompson pointed out how men themselves are pressured to date women who looks immaculate as these advertisement seem to indirectly put across: Look at me (the women being advertised) and look at your girl. This undoubtedly puts men in an uncomfortable position, as it indirectly implies that dating a girl any less attractive than these models will make them less masculine and less successful.

From the images (the advertisements, not the bare faced ones!), it is evident that Victoria’s Secret lingerie is marketed on the basis of gender - heavily relying on female sexuality to sell their products. In almost every advertisement, each women are featured in a very seductive position, often with suggestive facial expression - projecting a strong sense of sex appeal to reach out to customers. It is apparent that a strong sense of women's eroticism is used, to appeal to buyers. One effect of this hyper-sensual representation is the "eroticization of commodities" as argued by Sut Jhally. He states in his book, “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture,“The end result is that the commodity is part of an increasingly eroticized world—that we live in a culture that is more and more defined erotically through commodities” (253). Yet another effect of such portrayal is the objectification of women- whereby the cumulative effect of marketing women as sensual objects inadvertently lead to them being perceived as mere objects. As such, women in these advertisements are subjected to the male gaze. More than just being an object of a gaze, the women in the advertisements becomes what’s being bought and sold: The message that is repeatedly hammered by the advertisement continues to be: Buy the product, get the girl; or buy the product to get to be like the girl so you can get your man.” While one the one hand this reassure women of their sexual power vis-a-vis men, on the other hand, it effectively deny any sexuality that diverges from the male construction. This reinforces male's domination and female's subordination, with men perceiving women as sexual objects, worthy of little respect. It confers men with a sense of power over the women subordinates and this goes a long way in explaining the prevailing sexual violence, domestic violence and rape that plagues society.