Victoria's Secret Angels: The Normalization of Type in Visual Advertising

 

For the most part, the advertising of these past few decades has occupied a very visual space. Print ads, television commercials, billboards - they're all a part of our day-to-day imagery. And I'm interested in how this day-to-day imagery influences our thinking, and in turn, our actions - because even if we're not hyper-aware of the particular ways that the totality of quotidian visual information - or we're not able to link specific images to specific thoughts - I can assure you that the link is still there, and the effect of advertising images is not trivial.

I'm going to use lingerie models to explain this.

Victoria's Secret was started in 1977 by Roy Raymond, who felt embarrassed when buying lingerie for his wife. Victoria's Secret was supposed to be a lingerie retailer that was comfortable for men to shop at, and it expanded from one store and a mail-order catalog to its chain store status today: there are more than 1000 Victoria's Secrets stores in the U.S. alone. But more than that, the models for Victoria's Secret (they're called "angels") are iconic: ask any college girl and they'll most likely be able to recognize at least one Victoria's Secret Angel and maybe tell you a first name as well. The Victoria's Secret annual fashion show (which happened a few weeks ago, coincidentally) is also a big deal. My point is, the image of the Victoria's Secret Model - deployed through mall advertising, online advertising, and mail order catalogs - is pervasive and very affective. And by affective, I mean that these Victoria's Secret ads affect how we think about women's bodies and essentially normalize a certain type of female body.

Of course, this type of female body is only one of many, and I'd say that it doesn't represent the majority of women's bodies. Tall, thin, huge breasts, long legs, blemish-free faces - but somehow, this type has been consecrated as an ideal? Why? I would argue that advertising is a form of normalizing images. Advertising sets standards, advertising affirms certain body types, and advertising gives cultural visibility to certain individuals. This cultural visibility can translate into public approval as well as public desire, and yet, public approval and public desire also feed into what is culturally visible - it's all a bit of a vicious cycle. We see celebrities in advertisements as much as individuals featured in advertisements become celebrities (e.g. the Subway guy who lost a lot of weight?). 

I'm trying to think about how this all happens - and what gives advertising the authority to engage in such a determining process of normalization. It's irresistible in many ways, but also subversive. Women begin to hate their bodies and strive to look like Victoria's Secret Angels - not necessarily questioning where that desire for that Angel body comes from. Accepting the "types" we see in advertising as the standard, as the ideal is certainly blind acceptance, and this blind acceptance limits the acceptance of diversity, of difference, of other types. Because exclusive acceptance of one ideal is the rejection of so many others. 

Advertising has given us a normalized definition of beauty and sexiness, but I think this can be changed by giving increased cultural visibility to a wide array of types and body types. So here's to the possibility of shorter Angels and larger Angels and squat Angels and curvier angels; to the possibility of more black Angels and Asian Angels and Hispanic angels. Advertising is normalizing, so why don't we normalize diversity?

The State of Advertising Address

 Let’s flush out the concept of advertising as it exists today.

In its purest form, advertising is a way to bring visibility to a product or a service. Its ultimate goal is some sort of conversion in which a person decides to buy a product or use a service or watch a particular movie. On a fundamental level, advertising attempts to steer our choices. It presents us with one specific choice which is accompanied by a message, no matter how subliminal, “choose me!”

But the state of advertising today is not merely a means to an end. In fact, I would argue that advertising is an end unto itself—not necessarily purposed as such by its producers and creators, but by its audiences who treat advertisements as products and more specifically, as entertainment. I’ll use myself as an example: as someone who has little to no interest in watching or understanding the game of football, the Superbowl has one main draw for me: the half-time commercials. Millions of dollars are spent every year on these commercials, and the airing of these commercials has become an event unto itself. If an ad is shocking or successful enough, it can even overshadow the “main” event—the football game itself.

Nowadays, we enjoy advertisements like we enjoy TV shows or movies. We pass YouTube links around telling our friends, “Watch this ad. It was hilarious!” When I go to the movies, I am as excited for the movie previews as I am for the movie itself, which is a testament to our affinity for the micro-narratives embedded into advertisements. I’ve been thinking about the psychology behind this advertisement-as-entertainment scheme, and I think advertisements function as short comedy sketches or vignettes that can fulfill our desires for new and interesting narratives without occupying too much of our time and attention. We are a distracted society, after all. But I think advertisements can also function as commentaries on our society in the way that they point out something we know about ourselves but would hesitate to talk about. Advertisements can be self-mocking; they can be absolutely ridiculous; they can be parodic; and they can be poignant. Advertisements as form do not need to conform to a specific genre to be functional or even successful—a fact which gives the producers of these ads room to be creative (I know there are corporations who place limits and constraints around this production, but I’m highlighting the fact that ads have the potential to be creative—not necessarily that all ads are creative). More and more, with the way that we spend so much time online or on YouTube, I think advertisements can begin to occupy an educational and innovative space—a space that would become interdisciplinary and multi-faceted, that would not solely be about a product or service or object but also include other kinds of commentaries and ideas. I see the advertising space right now changing with technology, and I think we will see the transformation of the medium of advertisements into a hybridized vessel that combines selling with other motives. The growth of technology is unpredictable and ever-expansive, and I’m excited to see how advertising will be changed because of it.