In light of the highly anticipated Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the long-loved undergarment brand launched its “Perfect ‘Body’” campaign. The campaign is an advertisement for their new body bra line. Unfortunately, Victoria’s Secret has done more damage that it probably had ever intended with this campaign.
Victoria’s Secret is known for its Angels, and among them are the infamous Candice Swanepoel and Adriana Lima. They’re known for starring in lingerie commercials as well as the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. What all these Angels have in common is a shared, incredibly thin body type, and the willingness to walk down a runway, prance around a photo-shoot or on a commercial set scantily clad in nothing but a bra and some lacey underwear. What Victoria’s Secret is not, and has never been known for, is using diverse body types in any of its ads, commercials or fashion shows.
The “Perfect ‘Body’” advertisement has dropped some jaws because it shows, once again, a group of stick-thin, typical Victoria’s Secret models, wearing nothing but their skivvies, with the words “The Perfect ‘Body’” across the image.
Although the goals of the advertisement may just be to promote a new bra line, the advertisement itself distorts the image of the perfect body. The advertisement even goes as far as to put the word “body” in quotations, as if to suggest that a body must look like the models’ in order to be perfect. Let’s get something straight right away: there is no perfect body type.
Yes, Victoria’s Secret is known for its models who are completely and utterly slender. However, they send the wrong body message to young girls. If no one has noticed, the Victoria’s Secret PINK brand is popular among many young girls. Unfortunately, a lot of girls walk away with a distorted body image of what the “perfect” body is.
Victoria’s Secret promotes their model body types so much that buyers often walk away thinking that there is such a thing as the “perfect body.” Well, if the “perfect body” did actually exist, then women wouldn’t come in a variety of wonderful shapes and sizes.
This new “Perfect ‘Body’” campaign received a variety of responses. One of the more visual, and probably most endearing, responses was the underwear brand Dear Kate’s response. The brand took women of all different looks and copied the Victoria’s Secret ad. The women posed in a similar manner as the VS Angels, again with the words “The Perfect Body” in bold written across the image. No extra words in quotations, no suggestions of one perfect body type. Dear Kate did exactly what the original ad should have done; it embraced all women’s body types.
Now, don’t expect to see any change in any Victoria’s Secret ads in the near future. Do expect, however, to see a change in “The Perfect ‘Body’” advertisement. The ad still has the same scantily clad, leggy, stick thin models standing in a line formation across the advertisement, but now it has a different slogan. Now, the ad reads, “A Body for Every Body.” That’s right Victoria’s Secret, every body is perfect, and it’s time to acknowledge that once and for all.