I Was Finally Represented in a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and I ...

If I had seen last night’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show when I was a tween, I might have cried tears of joy. I might have felt empowered watching Ashley Graham’s thighs flex and jiggle as she strutted around in a lacy leotard. As an average albeit slightly chubby girl, I might have felt a little less unworthy in the flock of thin friends with whom I sometimes watched the show during sleepovers, all decked out in PINK merchandise I could barely fit into.

In reality, sitting there alone in front of my TV at 30 years old, I felt absolutely nothing at the sight. Honestly, I was bored to tears. In fact, I thought the show was so bad that it wound up healing something within me.

Like many, many, many people, I’ve been pissed at Victoria’s Secret for decades for excluding me (and more so, people bigger than I am) not just from buying pretty bras in its stores but from its formerly-annual Fashion Show. Thin models had been the standard from its inception in 1995 all the way through its cancellation back in 2018 (which, you’ll remember, was caused by an irredeemable downfall in ratings, the company’s just-revealed connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and backlash to transphobic and fatphobic comments made by its CEO at the time). To a skeptic nation, over the course of the past few weeks, the brand promoted its grand comeback with a vague promise of inclusivity, teasing the presence of curve models like Graham and Paloma Elsesser in advance.

But what we got was ultimately more of the same: a parade of concave stomachs and thighs with gaps so wide I could live in them. In addition to Graham and Elsesser, there was a limited selection of curvy or small-fat (size 14-18) models mixed throughout the fifty-something others, all of whom were dressed in comparatively demure pieces for the runway—even Tyra fucking Banks was covered from head to toe for the show's outtro.

Had Victoria’s Secret opted to do this bare-minimum body diversity back when the annual Fashion Show’s ratings first started to plummet, it would have been welcomed—applauded, even! But in the year of our Lord 2024, the blatant tokenism of plus-size women it delivered felt downright outdated. And seeing a few women there who looked kind of like me for the first time didn’t make me feel beautiful or empowered at all. All it did was comically emphasize just how out of date and out of touch the Victoria’s Secret beauty standard is and has always been.

(It should be noted that Graham herself said she was hesitant to participate in this show due to Victoria's Secret's history but was ultimately convinced by the brand's leadership that it is committed to “embracing body diversity in a lasting, meaningful way.”)

Every single time a curve model walked down that runway, my hopes would perk up just a little bit, anticipating that the next model might be even bigger or have a non-hourglass figure or maybe even a double chin—but they were consistently followed by models that were so thin, so snatched, so airbrushed, and so increasingly naked that I had no choice but to laugh.

Because how did I ever watch something like this and think it was cool back in the day? How did I ever look at these glitter-coated women in their unstable strappy heels, scratchy synthetic lace, and back-breaking wings and think, “I need to be skinny so I can wear that for my man, Chad Michael Murray, when we’re married?”

And there’s the real kicker: men. No inclusion efforts on Victoria’s Secret’s part will ever mean anything because it is a company made by and for the male gaze—one that is clearly struggling to convince now grown-up viewers like me that it is “celebrating women” in any way. And as we’re all uncomfortably aware at this moment in political and social history, men haven’t been living in reality with the rest of us for quite some time. Why would I ever let them dictate for me what is beautiful? You’ve seen what their bedrooms look like when they decorate without supervision.

I can’t remember ever seeing something from the Fashion Show in an actual Victoria’s Secret store, and that’s because little if none of that lingerie was ever for sale in the first place; the show might have begun as a way to sell real lingerie to real women but quickly and predictably became a place for straight men’s fantasies about supermodels to run wild—with scissors. And hairspray. And body oil. Inclusivity “efforts” aside, that hasn’t changed a bit.

As a kid, I would have spent the days, weeks, and months following the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show policing my diet and exercise in a desperate attempt to fit into those adult male fantasies (yuck! Can you believe?). With the images of thigh gaps and six packs burned into my mind and stirring up shame in my little gut, I’d try to convince myself that one day I’d get there if I just worked hard enough. This time, I turned my TV off with a chuckle, cracked open a beer, and shoveled a few spoonfuls of ice cream into my mouth, feeling like I won.