My friends and I have a tradition in which I do not believe we are alone in. Every year my friends and I gather around the television, usually around Fall final exam week, with a plethora of junk food and wine, and we watch the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. We bond and laugh as we analyze and critique each model's physical features and their elaborate outfits, as well as the numerous celebrity cameos and performances. I must confess that we watch the two-hour television spectacle in its entirety with a mix of emotions ranging from shock, to awe and envy.
However, it is incredibly difficult to not feel ashamed in confessing how much I enjoy this annual ritual. Quite frankly, this is due to the fact that I oppose almost everything that the Victoria Secret Fashion stands for, most specifically the message it sends to its viewers. Unrealistically thin and beautiful women strutting down in barely-there lingerie, with an exorbitant amount of makeup and their bodies on full display for everyone else to view, admire and critique (case example: my friends and I). The $50 million televised, and incredibly edited, catwalk evidently sends out a horrifying message to both its male and female viewers about body image and the sexuality and role of women in society.
Therefore, when my friends first started watching the Victoria Secret Fashion Show our freshman year, I refused to partake in the viewing. I felt like I was betraying my female gender and my own personal morals by watching and enjoying the fashion show. I wanted to proudly and firmly say that I despised the show and show my strong, empowered, feminist side in which women had a positive body image and were not betrayed as solely sexual beings.
Yet, I couldn't turn a blind-eye to the highly publicized show. I truly and wholeheartedly loved watching the Fashion Show. Tall, beautiful, fit and thin girls strutting down an elaborate glamorous runway in dazzling, sexy clothing that I dreamed of wearing and being able to pull off so gracefully. How could I not see it as appealing and entertaining? Watching the show provided me with a fantasy world in which I would feel empowered and had enough self-confidence to do something so bold.
I am sure that there are hundreds of girls and boys out there like me that feel the same way. The Victoria Secret Fashion Show is an annual event that we all really love to hate. We know the negative consequences that follow the televised event including a highly poor and morphed body image, which in turn can lead to eating disorders and over exercise, as well as the augmentation of the sexualized view of women. However, it is an event that is not easy to ignore or not secretly admire.
Since taking such an adamant position my freshman year, I have learned that the event is not something that I have to completely despise, as hating something so passionately is not healthy nor realistic. Rather, the lesson I gained from my experience as a spectator of the Victoria Secret Fashion show is to enjoy and watch the show, but with caution and awareness of its distortion of reality.
The entertaining and bonding event for my friends and it provides a nice fantasy world that we all wish we could live in. However, the truth is that these women are not the real image of the average woman, and only about 1 percent of the global female population are so lucky to be genetically blessed. As long as one keeps that ideology and fact strongly in their mind, The Victoria Secret Fashion Show, and other events alike, can be enjoyed without such contentious feelings and without being viewed as a vicious crime against feminism and women. The catwalk is entertaining and it is fun to watch and to imagine yourself in these women's shoes, but it must be taken at face value. We are not all angels, and that is perfectly okay.
