Victoria's Not-So-Secret Pandering to Lecherous Men

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 8, 2003 | by Shmuel Boteach

Byline: Shmuley Boteach, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

I was standing on a Manhattan street corner recently speaking to a friend when our conversation suddenly was interrupted by a giant pair of breasts unlike any I had ever seen. Gargantuan and incongruously sitting atop a New York City taxi cab, they looked like giant bowling balls invading the Big Apple from another planet.

To be sure, exposed breasts are a penny a pair on billboards all around the United States, and we have grown so desensitized to them that they at most evoke a momentary and instantly forgettable rush, like a field-goal kick in a professional football game. But what made these particular breasts so memorable was that they were unattached to any face. Like a prosthetic leg lying on the floor or a wig thrown on a woman's dresser, the breasts were hovering there, disembodied and alone, as if someone had left them there by accident. They were restrained by a little piece of flimsy gold and black lace, evoking images of a bursting dam struggling against a mighty sea. And on top were the words, "Don't miss the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on CBS."

Fast forward a few days later to the Sunday New York Times where readers needed no coffee to wake up as they were confronted by a full-page color ad of three supermodels in sheer, almost see-through underwear, standing in a provocative pose of legs open and outlines of intimate body parts showing. This time, the caption read "The Sexiest Night on Television: The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show."

What struck me in both these ads was how Victoria's Secret which, unlike Hustler and Playboy, is a clothing company no longer was promoting undergarments or lingerie. Rather, like porn, it was highlighting body parts. I once admired Victoria's Secret as a store that could enhance the attraction between husband and wife by giving "ordinary" women the tools to feel desirable and look sexy. But not a semblance of that early innocence remains. The ad campaigns now are designed not for well-intentioned women but for lecherous men not to make women feel good about themselves, but to make men salivate after the supermodels who wear their clothing. Rather than enhancing women by giving them lingerie that can make them feel feminine, they are degrading women by catering to the most base male demographic.

Like cheap pornography on the Internet, the clear message from the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is that women are the libidinous man's plaything, created by God to entertain men by parading around in their underwear. Adorning the outside of Victoria's Secret stores are window displays replete with the most explicit pictures of women in half-wire bras with their breasts spilling out and thongs that barely cover their private parts. The fact that pictures such as these are being displayed on Main Street U.S.A. rather than being consigned to so-called adult bookstores where they belong is astonishing evidence that the degradation of women has gone mainstream and that Victoria's Secret has gone from highbrow to low gutter.

When a spokeswoman for Victoria's Secret came on my radio show to promote romantic gifts for Valentine's Day, I told her that the company's message promoting romance was belied by its advertising campaigns depicting women as brainless bimbos and horny harlots. But what's even worse is the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," prostituting itself by publishing these pornographic pictures for money and CBS deciding to become the Playboy Channel in prime time.

A close male friend of mine told me excitedly that he had bought tickets to the taping of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on eBay for $2,000 and that a whole bunch of his guy friends were going as well. And all along, I stupidly thought that Victoria's Secret was a retail store for women.

Shmuley Boteach is an internationally famous relationship expert and cultural critic who has authored 14 books, including Kosher Sex. His upcoming book is Hating Women: The Degrading Depiction of Women in the Culture and the Scandal of Feminine Indifference. His e-mail address is shmuley@shmuley.com.