As frequent, self-appointed cultural critics, if there’s one thing men on the internet can’t stand, it’s women they’re not attracted to being visible in any way.
Once catered entirely to straight, male wish fulfillment, the lingerie company announced this week that it would switch out its famous mostly white, cisgender, size 0 models for new spokespeople, who will include U.S.
To say Victoria’s Secret was “slow to respond” to cultural changes is putting it lightly.
It will be because, in the time it took Victoria’s Secret to realize catering to a more expansive market of diverse women and diverse bodies is actually highly profitable, Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty and other women of color-led brands beat them to it.
In the years, perhaps decades, that Victoria’s Secret spent peddling one, singular standard of beauty and attractiveness — and, to be clear, a distinctly racist, sizeist and boring standard — other brands, notably not owned by white men, knew this wasn’t what actual women wanted.
Ultimately, as the male executives behind Victoria’s Secret are beginning to discover, the nagging problem with creating brands for women is that doing so requires you to make products that actual women want to buy for themselves.
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