Every year, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show gets broadcast on TV. Cyber-women with improbable bodies in uncomfortable Swarovski crystal-studded bras prance down the runway on structurally unsound high heels and women around the country are all instantly body-shamed into an aggressive dieting regime. Or are we?
Though beauty standards are naturally rooted in society, it would seem the internet wants females everywhere to be deeply upset by seeing models with perfect bodies strut down the runway...As if we weren't all already aware that's not what real people look like.
Between the Betches (which has gone seriously downhill over the past few years) offering up ideas for "shame-eating" and organizations like Concerned Women for America and the National Organization for Women calling it a "soft core porn infomercial," it seems that everyone wants women to be both worn down and offended.
Well, according to the women I've spoken with, we're not. Sorry to disappoint you, women warriors, but we're plenty capable of understanding the Victoria's Secret fashion show is just that: a show.
"It makes me feel fit by association, I think because I watch it over dinner usually and it makes me skip my nightly dessert, so then I go to bed feeling like an athletic goddess," Claire Waggoner from Spoon HQ told me. "But then the next day is usually a downer and I'm like, 'wow, I look nothing like them.'"
Them: as in "listless, leggy dolls" that are "too thin, too young, too tired"? Au contraire, irate internet writer: these girls are athletes.
"This is their sport. It's like watching the Super Bowl or the World Series," says nutrition and dietetics student Sami Blumenthal. "I just heard on the radio actually that they prepared for the show eating egg white omelets and veggies but I was thinking how interesting it is that I maintain a very similar diet to these girls."
And in the age of Instagram, the Angels are transparent about just how hard they have to work in order to wear heavy wings and balance on teetering heels.
"I follow some of them on Instagram and I know that they've prepped for this by eating healthy for months," says Lauren Less who graduated in 2014.
It must be noted, however, that the Victoria's Secret Beach Body Workout exists, and Blumenthal, who runs a fitness-inspo Instagram disapproves of that entirely.
"When you do that workout, your motive isn't your health, it's to look like [a Victoria's Secret angel]," she said.
And yes, the fashion show does perpetuate society's standards of beauty where being thinness is akin to godliness, but the internet needs to give women some credit for knowing this isn't how the average girl looks.
"Certainly there is a societal standard of beauty that's rooted in how thin you are. But I take it with a grain of salt and also try to work out and eat healthy to be fit by own body's standards," says Caroline Cummings, a senior at the University of Maryland. "I'm not built to be a 5'10, size two. For starters, I'm 5'7 and no amount of starving myself will make me 5'10. I'll happily down a quarter pounder with cheese while watching."
That being said, all of the people interviewed for this article are either at the tail end of their undergrad career or have graduated, which affords us a more nuanced perspective of self-awareness and self-confidence.
"I think the overall consensus when my friends and I watch it is, 'ugh I wish I looked like that' but it's ultimately not going to change our eating or exercising habits or self-confidence that drastically," says UMD grad Sarah Polus. "It might be different for a younger and more impressionable girl, though."
So why do girls watch the Victoria's Secret fashion show? The same reason anyone watches anything on TV–for entertainment.
"Mainly I watch it for the fashion, the music and the overall atmosphere," says Illinois State graduate Emily Pagano.
A fan of Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, Pagano says, "The models that are walking in it, like Gigi and Kendall, have aspired to this their whole lives. There's a personal connection since I follow them on social media."
We have no illusions about what it takes to be a VS angel. It's obviously more than just good genes and legs for days, but we also know these aren't things to waste time obsessing over.
"Watching the show doesn't make me shame myself. Just like if I was watching football I'm not body shaming myself for not looking like those players. They are models, I am not. I watch this show like I would a sport," Blumenthal says. "I watch for the music, the celebrity gossip, and to see all of the clothes I know I'll never be able to afford."
Polus agrees, "Ultimately if it made me that depressed about my body I wouldn't watch it, and hey, they're pretty and it's entertaining and I like looking at pretty things and being entertained."
So internet, give women a break. We are so much stronger and so much more secure than you want to believe we are. While yes, we would all like gravity-defying boobs and legs up to there, we're not idiots: we know these things don't come along every day. So quit it with the think pieces and let us enjoy the freaking show.