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December 11, 2019 - Image 11

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Text
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The Michigan Daily

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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facing criticism for its outdated portrayal of women.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

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