Stock up on your Halo Top ice cream pints and boxes of tissues, the self-loathing train is approaching with a vengeance. Tonight is the self-hate night of the year: the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Gone are the days of curvy Tyra Banks and NEVER are the days of human-looking women walking the catwalk, tonight is the night for unattainable body goals and 89 million dollar bras with so many diamonds they are sure to cut open your woman parts with one wrong sashay at the end of the runway.
Personally, I LOVE watching the show. In fact, I watch it ever year. I love to hate it. Maybe I just hate myself so deep down to my core that I force myself to watch how ugly I am compared to these fineee ladies, pushed in my face for an entire hour. Maybe I just like women walking in 6-inch high heels and 50-pound wings, waiting to watch them fall. (This never happens, it’s pre-recorded and you can only find the bloopers online). Maybe it’s because I can’t wait to see the musical guests, Leslie Odom Jr., Harry Styles, Miguel, Jane Zhang and Yundu Lu. Ok, it’s definitely not that because I only know one of those people. I really don’t know why I watch it, but it’s like a car accident and I am the worst rubbernecker of all time. I can’t help myself.
In these trying times, when the news every day is about yet another man abusing his power and treating yet another woman like a useless piece of chattel, there is no reason why I should enjoy yet another man (Ed Razek) in charge of throngs of underwear-clad ladies.
But again, I can’t talk too much sh*t because I f*cking love every second of it. Not only do I watch the show in its entirety (one of the only live TV events I watch all year long), but I also follow the news stories and events leading up to the show. As I mentioned before, the show is taped a week before it airs, so there is plenty of news and hype for weeks before the TV affair.
There were a few major pre-show news stories this year. The first was that since it was held in Shanghai for the first time, there were multiple people whose visas were denied, Katy Perry and Gigi Hadid being two of them. Katy Perry was banned for wearing a dress with sunflowers, and Gigi Hadid for apparently mocking Asian facial traits online. They are serious online stalkers over there in the visa office. I’m actually pretty impressed with their research techniques.
The second “major” news story was when Chrissy Tiegen tricked the internet into thinking she was going to walk in the show. The whole thing unfolded on her Instagram story, beginning with saying how she was nervous about the show, and then how she was getting in one last quick gym session. Then began her hilarious pleas that she was in Shanghai ready for her fitting but no one was answering her calls or emails. But then the best thing yet happened, she asked the twitterverse to photoshop her into a pic of all of the Angels. And the internet delivered in the best way possible. Times like those make me love the world wide web.
Anyway, the third and biggest story was that, yet again, the VS show will not have a single plus-size model. And by plus-size, I mean anyone over a size 6, maybe over a size 4. You know this is a problem because even Fox News is talking about it. This year, Ashley Graham, super famous plus-size model with 5.7 million Instagram followers, photoshopped a picture of herself with wings on, captioning it “Got my wings!” and the internet freaked out, thinking that perhaps VS had changed its ways. But no, no such luck. As Fashionista writes, it “seems so silly when you consider that the plus-size market here at home is growing at twice the rate of its straight size counterpart.” In fact, their main competitor, Aerie, is in the middle of a huge campaign to post photoshop-free ads by using the hashtag #AerieREAL. Victoria’s Secret’s only hashtag that comes even close to that is #TrainLikeAnAngel, which I think was meant to bring attention to physical fitness and healthy lifestyles. In my humble opinion, it just brought attention to the fact that VS Angels have 10 hours a day to work out, because it’s literally their jobs, as opposed to us “real people” who sit at desks watching their workouts on Instagram. Not exactly the same thing.
Again quoting Fashionista, and maybe I’m biased because the writer of the piece (Hey Tyler!) lived in my college dorm, “[Victoria Secret’s] entire marketing scheme is built upon tapping beautiful young women with millions of even younger, highly-impressionable followers. No one is asking Victoria’s Secret to give up its bevy of statuesque Angels — but perhaps it is time they consider widening their view of who is worthy to don their lingerie.”
And I agree. I think it’s time. I’d sure watch it! Then again, I watch it anyway.
In summary: Guys, I’m not sitting here telling you I’m not going to watch tonight. I’m going to watch the hell out of it. And I’m going to cry salty tears until my self-loathing turns my caramel chocolate Halo Top Ice Cream into salted caramel chocolate Halo Top Ice Cream. I’m going to live tweet the whole thing (Follow me on Twitter!). I’m going to talk about it all day tomorrow. And I’m going to swear that I will take up a new gym routine and #TrainLikeAnAngel for real. And then the next day I’ll give up because that’s what always happens, and I’ll make a new resolution on January 1 to train more, and hate myself less. And the vicious cycle continues.
But then I will remind myself that it is not my job to look like an Angel, it is my job to live the YOLO lifestyle like a regular 30-year-old millennial in New York, and to eat ramen every day because I don’t have a personal chef and that’s all my student loans payments will allow. And I’ll have to settle for that. See tonight on twitter, hopefully Adriana winks at me.
