Maie D. Smith
Decoding Victoria's Secret: The Marketing of Sexual Beauty and Ambivalence
Since the l97l opening of a single store in San Francisco by Roy Raymond, the underwear business dubbed'Mctoria's Secret" has evolved into a chain of about nine hundred stores, achieving a phenomenal finan- cial share of the $12 billion women's lingerie market and fransforming the image of intimate apparel on awider scale than any otherretail operation. Like many other successful businesses, its long-term success was based on a timely idea: to induce women themselves to replace their girdles and plain, practical white cotton bras and to indulge on a regular basis in the glamorous lingerie supposedly reminiscent of the frilly, fancy undergar- ments of the victorian Era. True, this was what men had been buying for them all along, but only as the occasional christmas, valentine, or birth- day gift. Although Raymond opened his original store in r97i asan envi- ronment caterin gto mnlebuyers, this vision was rejected by kslie wexner, who bought the chain (which had grown to six stores) for $4 million in 1982. According to Dan Finkelman, senior vice president at Intimate Brands, Mctoria's Secret's parent company, Wexner geared his strategy toward women-the sex that buys more thang\vo of intimate apparel in the form of underwear, but that, he believed, secretly aspires to buy linge- rie. Finkelman asserted that "If we gave women a chance to make them- atruln) toyndo6 ut satpnls
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qllus 0, Decoding Victoria's Secret 4l els with enticing new names, so VS models the ultimate female body, improved annually by the invention of buzzwords such as "mfuacle bras," water and gel-filled bras, "seamless body," "a body for your body." Ag- gressive, wide-scale promotion of the right image at the right time might seem to account for VS's success. Like most other women's apparel ads, VS ads are apparcntly based on three assumptions: (1) awoman's physi- cal beauty is an instrument for selling any product, including herself; (2) a woman is always struggling to get or hold onto the right man in order to give meaning to her life; and (3) a woman's self-image is largely based on a male perception of her physical beauty. But a closer look at the contents of the typical VS image, and the language used to sell it, will reveal hidden messages based on these assumptions that are at least as powerful as the obvious ones mentioned above. It can be argued that VS's marketing is more effective than that of other companies because these hidden mes- sages play into the ambivalence, insecurity, and contradictions, both in- herent and society-based, which characterrze male/female sexual rela- tions. The frst assumption, that a beautiful female body can sell any prod- uct, is based on the idea that men respond first to a woman as a visual object and only later as a person, that is, "themale gaze," said to objectify a woman as a commodity for the pleasure of an absent male spectator. When this arguably'hatural" male response is overlaid with societal norrns which say that sex is bad, wrong, or dangerous except in very resffictive conditions, then the visual attraction takes a strong swing in the direction of the voyeuristic": the vision takes on added enticement because it is forbidden and prurient. Consider, for example, this description of the February 1999 VS fashion show webcast by Edward Rothstein inthe New YorkTimes: The medium has met the message: delay, provocation, unpredictability, furtive flickers of something hidden-these ele- ments of the Webcast are also part of the appeal of Victoria,s Secret. Gazing at this Webcast was like watching a striptease through a keyhole, catching glimpses of a fuller world that one
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desirability, its mass-marketing both nurtures the existing stereo- types . . . and fertilizes their future growth. Worst of all, it is a very specific . . . stereotype that is presented as "sexy." Put it this way: Do you look like a Victoria's Secret model? No? Then you don't look sexy (Redd 3). As deplorable as promoting a stereotyped image may be, it is obvi- ously enormously successful in reaching the female consumers thatVS has targeted. Redd's article does concede that "The models are not the anorexic type that women tend to idealize. The image of the curvaceous woman is therefore healthier, but the underlying effect is that women are sensing this is what men want" (2). Unlike the anorexic or boyish-looking models in most magazines, wearing clothes that fit them like sacks, the typical VS model reveals her curves in undergarments or clothes that typi- cally mold to the body, a button or two discretely undone, a thumb per- haps tucked into her bikini bottom or jeans-as if to ask, "Wouldn't you like to take this ofP" Curves are much more in evidence than bones, and there is actually more variety of shape-at least bust shape-than the usual assumptions about stereotypes would suggest. The one resfiction is that the customer be a size fourteen or under. For the small-breasted woman, VS has small-breasted models who succeed in being erotic and provocative, their cleavage emphasized by gel, airlift, underwire, or re- movable pushup pads. These supports are mentioned only in small print, while the large, attention-geffing letters---often printed on the upper chest- proclaim that the cleavage-producing bra is simply a "Miracle." The VS models, fifteen of whom were listed on a web-site called "Who2 Loop," represent types from sultry/exotic to cooVsavvy to angelic/divine. Like a well-stocked dessert tray, there is something to suit any taste in the inter- national array of beauties with avariety of nationalities: Ausfralian, Czech, Polish, Belgian, Dutch, British, American, French, Brazilian, German, and so on (A Who2 Loop 1). The conclusion must be that VS wants to garner as many women as possible, worldwide, who are small ormedium-sized and who want to look like what men presumably want. Indeed, VS's latest sales pitch is "A body for your body," which is apparently meant to suggest to women that VS can remodel whatever they've got.
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qIFIS ', Decoding Victoria's Secret 45 sex was normal. All other forms of sexuality were treated with "an injunc- tion of silence" except when referred to in a "clandestine, circumscribed, and coded type of discourse" (144). Sexual repression still exists, in spite of the erosion of belief in Prot- estant authority as well as the sexual and feminist movements. In fact, modern advertising, according to Jackson Lears, fills the void left by the erosion of belief in divine authority: "[T]he advertiser [is] a modern re- placement for the priest . . . permit[ting] the individual to consume and still be absolved of guilt and sin" (Quin-oy 1). Mirroring this repression, the reaction to Victoria' s Secret seems enthusiastic and, at the same time, slightly guilt ridden. Among the typicat chatroom comments that I encountered on the Internet, both male and female reactions were ambivalent. One male reviewer enthusiastically de- scribed his favorite VS models and then, in an abrupt about-face, ended his article with the following acknowledgment of his un-liberated male- ness: "Notice I have been a very good boy and did not refer to these women as chicks although I treat them like objects which I appoligize [sic] for" (O'Collegian l). In a similarvein, a female fan of VS had this to say about her conflicted attitudes: "I don't think I'm a fan of the Miracle Bra. Sure, it's . . . a cool thing to . . . strap it on and ta-da,have instant cleavage." But she follows this up with the disclaimer: " I'm pretty com- fortable with my average cleavage, thank you very much, and I don't feel I must increase my bust to look . . . more 'womanly.' 'Cause after al 1, breasts are not whatbeing a woman is really all about" (Abbagirl 1). VS catalogues cater to and reassure both men and women who want to be "good" and "bad," safe and daring, at the same time. To ac- complish this, a sfrange, oxymoronic language is used that simultaneously strokes the id and soothes the super-ego. Accompanying the all-impor- tant image, the very infrequent but prominent messages have a double appeal to the reality of a woman's actual body and to the miraculous transition that VS will help her achieve: women who want to be "more" are promised a "natural miracle," "bare solutions," "glamorous support," "beyond basics," "new classics," and a "second skin." An interesting ex-
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qllurs 9, Decoding Victoria's Secret 47
- Christie, James. "Victoria's SecretReveals Skimpy Web Strategy." (l0llzl00)http/ ^ lwww .redherring.com,/indez.asp?layout - pouglas, Adam. "Flesh Merchant: Victoria's Secret Catalog." (llt3t99)http:lt ' formen.ign.com/news/11795.htrnl Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, VoL l: An Introduction. Trans. Robert - Hurley. NewYork: Vintage/Random: 1980. . Howell, Donna. "Victoria's Secret Trusses Up Webcast History." (2OOl) hrtp:ll . netculture.about.comflibrary/blvictoriassecret.html . IGNForMen. "Babes of Victoria's Secret." (12106/00) http://formen.ign. com/news/ 28672.htn1
- main ,. O'Collegian Staff. "What is Victoria's Secret?"(7/16197)http:ll www.oco I 1 y.okstate.edu/issues/1997-Summerl9T 07 l6lhtnl - auin-oy, Luisa. "Therapeutic Ethos." http://www.lc1ark.edu/-soan370/ - modemity.te.combo.htrnl Redd, Rene. Quoted in "Victoria's Not-So-Secret Strategy." (9127199) http:ll ' societypolitics.chickcick.com/articles/570pl.html Ronzoni, Tony. "How to Draw the Nipples Back on Victoria's Secret Catalogue Models Using Adobe Photoshop 4.0." http://www.zug.com/ad-htmUsecret.html -' Rothstein, Edward. "A Sex Metaphor, by Victoria's Secret." (215199) http:ll www.nytimes.comflibrary/tecVggl02lbizrech/articles/05roth.htmt " Victoria's Secret. "Christmas Dreams and Fantasies." (Christmas 2000) www. Victoria'sSecret.com - Who2 Loop. "The Girls of Victoria's Secret. (2001) http://www .who2.com/ .. ,ictoriassecret.html
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25.1 October 2002