The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is often criticized for promoting unrealistic body-image, creating standards the vast majority of collegiettes like ourselves can never, ever reach. The show features women who probably don’t look like you, or your best friend, or even any of the girls in your classes.
You probably watched the show sitting around with your girlfriends eating snacks and complaining about your bodies. You may have woken up this morning vowing to cut out carbs and go to the gym at least four times a week. If nothing else, you watched the show and felt unattractive, unsexy, and unsatisfied with your body.
What is important to remember, however, is that the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is selling a fantasy. You can’t go to the VS on the corner of Post Road and buy a set of glittery wings, and you can’t buy a membership to the Edge and expect to look like Erin Heatherton by Clam Jam. And that’s okay.
The Victoria’s Secret Angels are paid an obscene amount of money to look the way they do. Kloss is outrageously gorgeous. So are Jourdan Dunn and Alessandra Ambrioso. And they work their asses off to maintain and enhance the tall, svelte body types they’ve been genetically blessed with. Even more than that, these Angels have teams of nutritionists, cooks, trainers, makeup artists, and stylists trained to keep them looking so beautiful.
These women represent only a certain body type. It’s super problematic that their bodies are marketed as the “ideal,” but the fact that they are so gorgeous doesn’t make you any less gorgeous, and that’s the most important thing for all collegiettes to remember.
You’re super hot at a size 2, and you’re super hot at a size 12. Another woman’s beauty doesn’t take away from your own. All bodies are sexy, and all bodies are beautiful.