I

n November, Victoria’s Secret announced the 
cancelation of their 2019 fashion show, citing 
increased competition, rapidly declining profits and 
a disconnect with their consumer base as reasons for the 
end of this decades long tradition. For a company that built 
an empire by selling sex, it seems as though sex has gone 
out of style. 
Victoria’s Secret’s downfall is a reflection of social and 
cultural change in the United States, which is moving 
further away from the characterization of women 
as needing to be sexy for men. Women are replacing 
Victoria’s Secret’s overpriced, poorly-made push-up 
bras for alternative brands and start-ups, that aim to be 
comfortable and inclusive. But the distaste for Victoria’s 
Secret represents something much deeper than the quality 
of an underwire or the lack of proper sizing.
It’s the experience of walking into a Victoria’s Secret 
store that goes against to the contemporary women’s 
movement; the stores exist as the perfect example to what 
society decided women should be. Each store is sickeningly 
pink and lacy, the walls covered with slow-moving images 
of thinly-clad, pouty-lipped women strutting to deafening 
house music. As a 120 year-old girl or a 20-year-old 
woman, the impact is the same: You feel small, insecure 
and unsexy. 
Perhaps the demise of Victoria’s Secret is promising 
for how our culture is changing, but today it still remains 
a market leader. Yet, lingerie is not the only sector 
facing criticism for its outdated portrayal of women. 
In Hollywood, where many gender constructions are 
reinforced through television and media scripts, women 
and women of color are still underrepresented and 
hypersexualized. 
Of the 100 top-grossing movies between 2017-2018, 

only nine percent of Hollywood movies had a gender-
balanced cast and only 33.1 percent of all named, speaking 
characters were women. Only 11 movies had a woman of 
color as the lead. There is 29.2 perecent of women being 
shown in revealing attire including teenage girls. Latina 
women, who make up only one out of 1,200 directors, are 
the most likely to be hypersexualized or shown nude in 
feature films. This misrepresentation shows that without 
women to write, direct or spearhead creative works, the 
female narrative becomes skewed. 
How does this erasure and subsequent fabrication of 
the female narrative impact viewers? For young girls, 
the internalized adherence to gender roles is almost 
impossible to fight off. Even I, who was raised in the same 
way and with the same opportunities as my brother, felt 
the immense pressure imposed on me through television 
and movies. In the action movies I would watch with my 
brother, there was always a male lead – the hero – and a 
female love interest, whose sole purpose was to look hot 
on the back of said hero’s motorcycle...and that’s about 
it. She would be lucky to even have a line. This kind of 
representation (or lack thereof) conditions women to 
the idea that we have to be quiet but sexy, powerful but 
secondary, active but objects. That our purpose is to please 
men.
It’s obvious that our institutions, brands and culture 
are rooted in patriarchal traditions, and though they are 
being reformed, change takes time. Meanwhile, a parallel 
process to that of culture and policy is occurring in social 
media, a free platform where women can take authority 
over their own bodies and rewrite the narrative. When 
I entered high school, social media like Instagram and 
Snapchat were beginning to take on a new life. I had been 
accustomed to posting awkward photos of myself throwing 

up the peace sign on Facebook or using Instagram for the 
“cool” filters. But in parallel to my budding adolescence, 
Snapchat and Instagram were now places where you 
could post pictures of your body – however exposed – and 
receive praise for it (most of the time). 
This ranged from girls posting selfies in low-cut tops 
for their 300 followers or to the popular body-positive 
movement, which overtook the media’s standard of beauty 
as thin, white and unblemished and was replaced by more 
realistic representations of women that they created 
themselves. The latter redefined the image of women in 
the media, but the former is where social media platforms 
and their place in empowerment becomes questionable. It 
is clearly unfeminist to judge a woman for her sexuality 
and confidence, but some question if social media is 
causing women to contribute to their own objectification. 
Even though women use social media more and use it 
as a place to build their sense of self, apps like Snapchat 
and Instagram are largely owned by males, and images 
posted by women are subjected to the male gaze without 
compensation (of course, sponsorships exist, but only 
for those with lots of followers, and not every photo is a 
sponsored deal). And we’ve all seen the terrible, cringey 
Instagram accounts that serve to only post photos of 
attractive women – most of which are through submissions 
from the women themselves. 
It would be easy to write off social media as another 
failed place of honest representation for women – or even 
blame women themselves – but the male gaze is inevitable. 
It doesn’t matter if a woman posts a seductive photo online 
or just walks down the street – she will be objectified 
either way. 
From a young age, women are taught that our bodies 
are inherently sexual. In sixth grade, I was dress-coded 
for “provocative clothing”, back when I thought a boner 
was a literal reference to a bone (so I obviously had no 
understanding of what “provocative” even meant). In 
the early summers, my soccer team sweated through 
our shirts because we weren’t allowed to play in only a 
sports bra in case a boy walked by the field (the boys were 
allowed to play with their shirts off). In high school, there 
was an online dropbox for boys to post nude photos they 
had received from girls in our town. The list goes on and 
on and on.
All forms of media will create a space for sexualized 
imaging and characterization because we are human 
and find bodies attractive. Some people know how to 
capitalize on this phenomenon and make a profit off of 
it. The question is not whether social media is holding 
us back from the social change we are seeing with more 
representation of women in the media or brands like 
Victoria’s Secret starting to lose their appeal. The question 
is how can we reconcile representations of women and 
sexuality in a way that allows for them to be their most 
sexy selves when they feel like it, or vice versa, without it 
being exploited for the male gaze and for male profit.
How can we teach a generation of young girls that 
they too can be the hero while being proud of having big 
boobs or long legs? It is not as simple as making the lead 
of an action movie a woman and dressing her in a skirt. 
Yes, it is empowering to know you can save the world in 
heels, but the reality is deeper than that. The only way to 
have complex stories that show women and our sexuality 
in a true way is by having women write and share them, 
whether it be in a Tweet or on the silver screen.

3B

Wednesday, December 11, 2019 // The Statement 3B

BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Has sex gone out of style?

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

