I did not get to watch the Victoria’s Secret fashion show this year, but I wanted to. There’s cheesy male musicians made up to attain a very girl-friendly beauty and tons of “hotties” prancing around in their underwear on a brightly colored stage. It’s cheesy, it’s stupid, it’s pretty. What’s not to like?
I’ll tell you what’s not to like: the immediate and overwhelming surge of Facebook statuses and tweets that tend to fall under two incredibly irritating categories.
The first category contains the girls who are lamenting that they wish they looked like Adriana Lima — which is pretty much impossible unless you already won the genetic powerball and spend your whole entire life being a slave to your appearance. These girls say they’re throwing away their cookies and carbs and hitting the gym the minute it opens in the morning as if that’s the key to becoming a smoldering hot Brazilian babe with celery green eyes and legs that are five feet long.
The only reason those kinds of statuses are annoying is because they’re so frequent. Otherwise, this reaction is totally understandable. Those models are out of control. They’re just so… hot. They have perfect faces, luscious, flowing hair, and anatomically admirable bodies. It’s hard not to look at those gorgeous girls and feel a little insecure, but the majority of the population knows that most people don’t actually look like that and the people who do are the people who literally live to look like that. They dedicate a huge portion of their lives to their good looks and while that can be a great lifestyle and career choice for some people, it’s not what most of us want or are able to do with our time. But to compare regular girls to those models is comparing apples and oranges. Regular girls don’t have a makeup team prepping them every morning and a strict diet and exercise routine. Also worth noting: regular girls aren’t strutting up and down Shortlidge Road in stilettos and bras and feathery wings.
The most annoying reaction to me personally, however, comes from the male “feminist nice guy” population. These are the guys who post “good guy” reactions to the show, saying, “Girls, you are all beautiful!” or whining that the Victoria’s Secret angels aren’t curvy enough for their liking. They then give the general female population permission to eat so they don’t look like the Victoria’s Secret angels because most guys “aren’t into that look.” Excuse me, what?
It is so unbelievably offensive to girls everywhere to even suggest that there is one “better” body type to have, whether that “better” body type is the thin body of a Victoria’s Secret angel or a curvier build. Both are equally offensive because there are girls who are built both ways. There are girls who are built thousands of different ways. No body is a better body than any other body as long as the owner of it takes good care of it, and to proclaim any build as the “right” build as a male speaking to females in general is a disgusting representation of male entitlement. Eating is not something girls just decide to do every day because they want boys to think they’re attractive. Girls don’t work out because they want to appeal to men. Girls don’t put on makeup in the morning or not put on makeup in the morning because they want any specific reaction from the guys they encounter during their day because — shocker — girls don’t exist to please guys. We exist to be happy with ourselves, and we are entitled to the right to make ourselves happy however we see fit — and it would be really, really nice if we could be free to tend to our appearance however we want without coming home and logging onto Facebook only to be told that we are still not good enough because we don’t fit every guy’s idea of the “right” kind of woman.
Bottom line is this: the Victoria’s Secret angels are hot. They’re hotter than anyone I’ve ever met. But I still know many attractive people who all have successful relationships and find peace and happiness in their lives even though they don’t fit everyone’s idea of “hot.” So next year, it would be cool if we could all keep that in mind and enjoy the Victoria’s Secret fashion show for the cheap entertainment it is.
Sarah Moesta is a junior majoring in English and is the Daily Collegian’s Friday columnist. Email her at smm5793@psu.edu
