BACKGROUND

In October 2014, Victoria’s Secret came out with a new campaign advertising a bra called Body. The advert displayed 10 Victoria’s Secret supermodels with similarly thin, toned bodies captioned “The Perfect Body” in large white text. Victoria’s Secret has been infamously known for their “Angels”, tall, skinny supermodels who model the lingerie that the brand sells. Following the release of this campaign, a huge backlash resulted which lead to the online advert eventually being retracted and rebranded “A Body for Every Body”.

THE PROBLEM

The main problem with this campaign is that it promotes unhealthy ideals for body size and fails to acknowledge the diversity of real body types.

This ad utilizes the word “Body” to both convey a message about the “Body” lingerie collection and what the “perfect body” of women should look like. Victoria’s Secret suggests to the consumer that the “perfect body” must look exactly like the supermodels pictured in the ad: largely white, young, extremely thin and with proportions that are unattainable for most of the general population. For a company whose demographic ranges from teenage girls to women in their mid-to-late 40s, this outlook is extremely damaging as it advertises the perfect body as something unachievable. It fails to acknowledge the vast diversity of women’s bodies and instead focuses on one “perfect” body type. This perpetuates low self-esteem and contributes to eating disorders in women when they don’t fit this narrow standard of the perfect body.

Following the huge backlash online, Victoria’s Secret changed the tagline from “A Perfect Body” to “A Body for Every Body”. However, no efforts were made to increase the diversity of the women pictured in the advert, nor were there any apologies or official statements made by the company.

 

Note: unfortunately the image editor drastically reduced quality so the transcript is:

The “Perfect” Body

Photoshopped. Unrealistic. Unattainable.

Buy our collection so that you too can feel like a beautiful anorexic woman conforming to the male gaze.

JAMMING PHILOSOPHY:

The alterations I made to the advert were done to make the subliminal message of the original advertisement glaringly obvious. By keeping the original title and changing the text of the subheadings, I kept the original message of the advertisement the same but mocked the unrealistic standards that it set for women.

The first thing I did was change the quotation marks from “Body” to “Perfect”. This removes the original double entendre of the word “Body” and suggests that the advert only promotes Victoria’s Secret’s idea of a “perfect” body.

Secondly, I changed the subheading from “Perfect fit. Perfect Comfort. Perfectly Soft.” to “Photoshopped. Unrealistic. Unattainable”. This change was done to highlight the unrealistic and unhealthy ideals that the women in the advertisement display. The women pictured in the advertisement are mostly white, extremely skinny, and uniform in body shape. In order to maintain this ideal body shape, Victoria’s Secret supermodels must undergo an extremely intense diet, complete with physically exhausting workouts and personal trainers. These models have access to a huge amount of resources that enable them to stay in this condition– things that the majority of women cannot afford or have access to. In addition, heavy photoshop and cosmetic surgery warps their bodies into unattainable figures for most of the general population.

Under the subheadings, I replaced the explore button with the statement: “Buy our collection so that you too can feel like a beautiful anorexic woman conforming to the male gaze”. This refers back to the double entendre of “Body” which suggests buying the collection would help the consumer to achieve the perfect body pictured in the advert. It also relates to the extreme weight and body requirements that the supermodels must achieve in order to walk the runway at Victoria’s Secret, which encourages widespread anorexia and eating disorders in the modeling industry. In addition, the conformation to the male gaze relates back to how the brand generally caters to the male gaze, especially in relation to the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Just by looking at the hypersexualized bodies, the marketing, and the portrayal of women’s bodies, it is clear that it is designed for the male gaze. In one interview with the chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret, it was stated that the company did not want to hire transgender models or more diverse body sizes in the show because it would spoil the “fantasy” for men. This shows the unrealistic standards that Victoria’s Secret sets for women and their resistance to promoting more diverse and healthier body sizes in advertising their products.