Victoria’s Secret Irreparably Damaged Our Culture

A new documentary follows billionaire Leslie Wexner and his iconic brand’s influence.

Three Victoria’s Secret models posing in front of an explosion of fire
FX

I generally don’t believe in justice. When I was in college, I was taught a rhyme scheme to remember what the word means in the context of harm: “Justice” is “just as if” the harm never happened. It applies well to petty crimes, like a stolen bike or damaged property. But we can’t restore a lost life or recompense for trauma. And we can’t undo the effects of companies that grow large enough to hurt countless people.

Purdue Pharma won’t be brought to justice. Neither will WeWork and Adam Neumann, or Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, or those responsible for the 2008 housing crisis. Justice is impossible.

The closest I can get is schadenfreude.

Perhaps that’s why I gravitate toward rise-and-fall documentaries about famous companies. The latest one is Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, which premiered Thursday on Hulu. The title is a reference to the company’s famed “angels”—models who walked the stage in the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show wearing designer-made wings; the demons are the wealthy men behind the brand, who either participated in or tolerated misogyny and abuse. Many of Victoria’s Secret’s misdeeds are unsurprising for a company run by men selling a fantasy of their ideal woman. But Victoria’s Secret had a cultural impact that extended far beyond its customers, helping make blatant objectification and narrow beauty standards the norm.

In many ways, the three-part docuseries is a predictable, paint-by-numbers retelling of a brand that—similar to Abercrombie & Fitch, another disgraced company with a recent documentary—sold a harmful fantasy that eventually led to its downfall. If you’ve seen one of these docs, you’ve seen them all: Leslie Wexner is a “genius” who built a brand and made himself a billionaire, before that brand was eviscerated by scandals and fell out of public favor. But I found Angels and Demons worth watching if only as a postmortem on an aspect of culture I just recently realized is dead. In the early 2000s, a battle started brewing between companies that used thin, young, tall, predominately white models to sell products (“tits and glitz,” as one interviewee put it) and companies that began to push back with marketing campaigns featuring diverse women with varying body types. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” started in 2004 to remarkable success. The underwear retailer ThirdLove was founded in 2013, and built its brand on body positivity and a wide range of sizes; Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty launched later that decade. The peak of the #MeToo movement was the nail in the coffin. The underdog won, and early-aughts supermodel culture joined the graveyard of embarrassing mistakes of our collective past.

Hulu

I came of age at the height of supermodel stardom and the kind of open misogyny that feels unthinkable post-#MeToo. My first magazine subscriptions were to Maxim, Stuff, and FHM (“For Him Magazine”), each with their version of the 100 sexiest women in the world. Jimmy Kimmel’s The Man Show aired from 1999 to 2004 and ended episodes with its recurring feature of supermodel-looking women jumping on trampolines; the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show reached the peak of its popularity in 2001. My favorite example of the male-fantasy culture of the early aughts is the infamous Coors Light “twins” commercial, which turned 20 years old this year. There was the original commercial, the full song with rapping twin models, and numerous NFL spin-offs. I still know that fucking commercial by heart, as much as I wish I could forget:

I love playing two-hand touch

Eating way too much

Watching my team win

With the twins.

I love quarterbacks eating dirt

Pom-poms and short skirts

Fans who won’t quit

And those twins.

In 2017, the writers of that song, now in their 50s, said they were unsure how the song and marketing campaign would’ve been received had it been released later. But if the answer was unclear in 2017, it’s certain in 2022, now that overt male-fantasy-based marketing of “perfect” women is no longer acceptable in popular culture—especially for products marketed to women. Victoria’s Secret–style marketing has become a parody, one that the company itself has abandoned as it struggles to regain some of the relevance it once had. You can check out the Victoria’s Secret website if you want to see a laughably sharp turnaround from the brand you once knew.

“I think they do have a lot of work to do to prove they are changing,” said one former model in the film. “But I guess only time will tell.”

“Is it reactive? Probably,” said one former designer, of the company’s attempt to rebrand. But “should you do it? Yeah, you should. I mean, so it’s kind of like, what are the options? To get criticized for changing or don’t change?”

Personally, I have no sympathy for scandal-ridden brands that have made billions. I worked for one of them. I wish for them to fail, and for well-intentioned people to leave toxic businesses for someplace better. The decline of businesses like Victoria’s Secret is the most comforting outcome I can hope for—a consolation prize in lieu of actual justice for their part in a culture I am embarrassed of.

“If you look at influencers, it’s an extremely homogeneous look: the lips, the post, the hair, the butt, the breasts. I think that Victoria’s Secret’s legacy is very present there,” says Ashley Mears, a former model and the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model.

It will not be “just as if” Victoria’s Secret never happened—or The Man Show, or Maxim magazine, or that Coors Light song. I’ll remember them forever. I want them to fail, if only as a symbol that culture has moved on from what made them popular. Justice is a comforting fantasy that I stopped indulging long ago.

***

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last Humans Being, about The Bear and the ethics of staying in a toxic work environment. My favorite response came from Brian, who wrote:

“I think it really describes most of life, not just workplace dynamics. Who is going to make this world a better place? We all know the stuff that we're told growing up. So many ideals, so much innocence. Then you hit real life and it is just incomprehensible how much worse it is … The idea of organizing with others to make change is always possible, but I think it mostly leaves you just where you described, burned out and leaving while the next earnest warrior makes the powers that be look good by pretending to change. I think it's just the nature of humans, and it will just have to all fall apart all at once. Not to say we can't find something to live for. Maybe, as Taoism insists, it's the ideals that are the problem.”

I don’t have a clever response to that one, Brian. I’m just gonna have to think on it for a while.

Unrelated, for those who haven’t read it yet, my memoir came out this year and is called Piccolo Is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture. For those who have read it already, I love hearing your thoughts.

This week’s book giveaway is a hardcover of The Awesome Human Project, by Nataly Kogan. It’s about how life is messy and full of challenges, but how we can reduce struggle and burnout to live a little better. Just send me an email telling me whether you trust Victoria’s Secret’s rebrand, and I’ll send the book to a random person who hits my inbox. You can reach me at humansbeing@theatlantic.com, or find me on Twitter at @JordanMCalhoun.

Jordan Calhoun is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.