My opinion might not be shared by all, but it needs to be said. Since the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was
broadcast this past Tuesday, I have seen multiple articles discuss the detrimental effects the fashion show is having on teenage girls, in particular this Onward State article entitled Victoria, We’ve Got Our Own Secret.
In the article, written by a man, we see examples of the types of things girls were tweeting during the show. The tweets included, “NEVER. EATING. AGAIN.” or, “BRB, starving myself. Thank you, VS fashion show.” In response to these tweets, the writer says, “I quickly realized that this is a BIG American issue.”
You could probably guess what I’m going to say. We eat! Just because girls ended up tweeting over and over again about the fashion show, and how they now refuse to eat, does not mean that this will necessarily become a reality. I am %99.9 sure that most every girl who tweeted something to that effect woke up the next day and had cereal, or eggs, or waffles for breakfast. They didn’t have some revelation that caused them to change their whole life style to become this “ideal thin.”
I even asked one of my close guy friends to get a male opinion, just in case I was clinging to a skewed view of this issue. After I asked him what he thought, he responded by saying,
“You should want to aspire for profession reasons, and to better yourself. What’s wrong with that? Obsession is the issue, and girls who are mislead to think starving themselves to get this body. These girls don’t realize the amount of working out and strict healthy diets these girls must be on. Everyone has different body types, different frames, different sizes; you cannot become an exact replica of some tall model. It is ok to look the best you can look as a person, and to want to better yourself rather than stay unhealthy and out of shape. Guys see how athletes in their sports look. It’s just like a guy doing steroids and not putting in the hard work.”
I feel as though for as many girls who tweeted they hated themselves after watching the fashion show, there were just as many girls who tweeted how much they enjoyed watching the show and how cute all the outfits looked. There are worse, more dangerously thin looking models who walk the runway in fashion shows all the time, and just because the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is so amplified and widely publicized doesn’t mean we should condemn these models for the way they look. This isn’t a larger than life issue. It is the girls who don’t speak out about starving themselves that we need to worry about; the girls who become introverted and less social because of the way they look and how they feel about themselves. Those are the girls that need the attention, and chances are it is not the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show that caused these girls to become that way. Rather, it would likely be an accumulation of many things.
In my ending thoughts, yes I believe body image and the ideal thin are issues, but I also believe the aforementioned article exaggerates the impact the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is having on teenage girls in the world.