Controversy Over VS's Perfect Body Campaign

Who Needs a “Perfect Body?”

Victoria’s Secret is popular among young women mostly because of their reputation as a sexier bra and underwear store, but they are also famous for their clothing line, Pink. This clothing line includes a wide selection from sweatpants and sweatshirt to casual t-shirts and long-sleeved shirts. Often, women buy from Victoria’s Secret (VS) because they see the ads from VS and they feel self-conscious so they go buy their merchandise thinking that it will make them look better. Many of these advertisements people are exposed to, since VS’s founding, have successfully drawn people into the store. Most of these advertisements have drawn attention to VS mainly for their sexiness. However, a recent advertisement campaign, called the “perfect body” campaign, has managed to deter many people from the stores because of the condescending message put into the advertisements. People have criticized this campaign due to the fact that very few women have the so called “perfect body” that Victoria’s Secret portrays. These perfect body advertisements have made people angry at VS and made them stop going to the store. Although these ads kept buyers away, VS later fixed their wording mistake, which made a many of their buyers come back, but not all of them. Even though it seemed like they fixed their problem, it did not really change. They did not even change the picture in the ads, they only fixed the wording on top of it. Through VS’s controversial “perfect body” campaign, it is evident that VS is not inclusive of everybody because they recognized that they did something wrong, but they were not worried enough to really change the whole ad.

A Lingerie Store...For Men?

In the mid-1970s, a man named Roy Raymond walked into a department store to buy his wife some lingerie, but instead he found ugly floral-print nightgowns, which were made even uglier under harsh fluorescent lights, and a saleswomen who made him feel like a deviant just for being there. Realizing that many of his other male friends felt the same way, the 30-year-old saw an opportunity to create a market where none existed: a lingerie store designed to make men feel comfortable shopping there. Raymond imagined a Victorian boudoir, complete with “dark wood, oriental rugs, and silk drapery.” He chose the name Victoria to evoke the propriety and respectability associated with the Victorian era; outwardly refined, Victoria’s “secrets” were hidden beneath. In 1977, with $80,000 of savings and loans from family, Raymond and his wife leased a space in a small shopping mall in Palo Alto, California and Victoria’s Secret was born. Victoria’s Secret was founded to appeal to men shopping for ladies lingerie and became a multi-million dollar business. Later it became a multi-billion dollar business when new owner Leslie Wexner changed the focus to appeal to women, not men.Victoria’s Secret is now wholly owned by publicly traded Limited Brands Company. The inspiration for these “perfect body” advertisements is their bra line, Body by Victoria. This is a collection of bras ranging from "Long Line Demi" to "Push-up." They are many different colors and styles and are claimed to make your body look better with them on.

A Not-So-Perfect Campaign

Victoria’s Secret’s target market is the middle class woman, or a man shopping for a middle class woman. Victoria’s Secret PINK line, however, often attracts people slightly outside of that market, such as the younger, college age woman. The product selection of that line often inspires young teens and high school age girls to shop at the store as well. Many of VS buyers and many other people around the U.S. saw the perfect body advertisements, and most people who saw these advertisements were completely outraged when the ads became public. These advertisements used sexual appeal, which people were used to and mostly okay with, but after adding "The Perfect 'Body'" on the front, their appeal stopped working. The “perfect body” added to it made women very emotional and very self-conscious about themselves and many started to complain to VS about the “hurtful” words put into their advertisements and demanded that the ads be removed. Many women and men on twitter used “#iamperfect” to show that they think all body types are perfect, not just the one body type portrayed by VS.

"Perfect Bodies" and Controversy

All of these ads have the same type of woman in them. The women in these ads all look to be about five foot ten inches tall, have either no body fat or very little, and look like they have nothing to lose. It seems as though they are factory made and cut out of the same mold. However, according to VS, you cannot be perfect unless you look like this, which is out of the norm for the every day woman. Many women may not even want to look like this, they may think it is too skinny. Though most women do want to lose weight, they probably do not think that this is what they want to look like.

In this ad, there are two tall, white, blonde women. The women are very skinny and have unnatural looking curves with almost no body fat. It would not be such a bad advertisement if  VS had not added the words “the perfect body” on top of it, since the rest of their ads have the same type of women. However, since they added those words it makes it seem as though they think this is what the "perfect body" looks like. In the words underneath they tell about the bra collection, but they never mention the word bra in the ad so it makes it seem as though they ARE talking about the women being perfect.

This ad shows the entire line of bras from Body by Victoria. This ad shows the same type of woman as the other ad, though there is a little variation. In this ad, there are some women with brown hair, and there are two women that are not white. However, they are all still tall and unnaturally skinny. This ad still has the words "The Perfect Body" across the middle and underneath they talk about the bra collection but they still do not mention that it is a bra that they are advertising.

    This advertisement has the same women from the above advertisements. This has these women in the bras that they are advertising (of course) and they are just doing different sexy poses throughout the ad. The background music ads to the sexiness of the women and no one speaks in the ad which helps the people watching focus on just the women. The words that show up later are new words that they used to make it less offensive, though it was still offensive because they did not use women with different body types. 

Because of the uproar, Victoria’s Secret decided they needed to change their advertisement. But instead of changing the ad altogether, they just threw some new words on top of the old ad. This ad has the same women from the other ad so many people were still upset because they were not inclusive of every body type. underneath the new words, they just have the same words from the other advertisement, and they still do not mention that they are advertising a bra line.

Though VS changed their ad a little bit, there really was not any change. The image was primarily offensive but they changed the wording thinking that everybody would be okay with the new words. VS did not understand that the entire ad was offensive, not just the words that the threw on top. VS must be very careful on how they present themselves because they advertised the idea that their models are the only beautiful ones which was offensive to many women so of course they lost some business.

The End...?

  Victoria's Secret, a company based on mostly image, has done nothing but tarnished said image by trying to "woo" customers with a false re-branding of the previous perfect body advertisement. Simply put, they cannot change an image by plastering new words over the same skinny girls, if they really want to "appeal" to a broader customer base, they need to INCLUDE that customer base, not just throw a one size only fits several patch on to a biased ad campaign.If VS really wanted to recruit more customers to their fan-base they should have tried something without the skinny girls for once, or possibly just added other body types in with the one body type they already had. However, they are too concerned with their image to add other types of women to their ads and that may very well be their downfall in the future.

Works Cited

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Stump, Scott. "Victoria's Secret Changes 'Perfect Body' Ad Slogan in Wake of Backlash." NBC News. Today Health. 6 Nov. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://www.today.com/health/victorias-secret-changes-perfect-body-ad-slogan-wake-backlash-1D80271468>.

"Victoria's Secret: Body by Victoria Online Commercial." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 1 May 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EdH9mHO-c>.