Victoria’s Secret Needs to Read the Room

Those of us who are raising young women would sooner leave our daughters alone in Donald Trump’s dressing room than let them watch the Victoria’s Secret runway show.

Until last night, there was no such danger.

My daughter Frankie was 9 years old when the show ended. She’s 15 years old now, but if I were to watch Return of the Angels with anyone, it would be her. The moment she came home from school, I hugged her.

“Mom, please. I have a lot of homework.”

“Sorry. This is more important than homework. This is a cultural moment.”

I ignored her sideways slash eye roll and turned up the volume.

“I guess they only do thin models,” she said. I was proud that she thought that and was disappointed.

Here’s a spoiler: They didn’t. only “Do a skinny model.” But the model wasn’t exactly a cross-section of America either.

The only thing that caught my daughter’s attention was the music playing.

“Who is that?” (Myself.)

“I’m Lisa.” (Frankie)

“…” (again)

“Remember when I was in seventh grade and loved Blackpink? She was in that band.” There wasn’t.)

When Tyra appeared, it was the black and gold lingerie and wing piece of the night. Frankie stopped paying attention to the model at all and wanted to see if Tyra would do something “highly inappropriate” called the Tyra dance. (She didn’t.)

“I’m impressed they got Tyra and Lisa.”

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

“Okay, but is this a good thing for women?” I mean, the whole show. ”

“Are you sane?” (I think she said this affectionately.) “Obviously, this is not good for women. will never be held.”

“But it’s good to have women of all different sizes, isn’t it?”

“Mom, you know that’s bullshit, right?” Usually she doesn’t swear. i swear. “They’re not celebrating women’s bodies. They have some models who aren’t that skinny and they pretend to be body positive. That’s tokenism. That’s bullshit.

The 2024 Victoria’s Secret runway show was a parade of Kate Moss, Tyra Banks, Carla Bruni, thin models, not-so-skinny models, and a slew of people who looked genuinely retired. The runway looked like an abandoned airplane hangar or maybe a really big high school gymnasium. Despite the towering wings (they still had wings), the model looked small. Maybe I’m projecting, but they looked really uncomfortable.