trying things out

The popularity of Victorias Secret has been declining to the point of near irrelevancy in the early 2020s after years and years of criticism for culturally offensive runways, fatphobia, problems with sizing, and pushing their models into severely disordered eating habits in fear of being dropped as ambassadors over half an inch of fat. Things got so bad for the brand that in 2021 they announced plans to change their concept entirely to a more subdued, low-key, neutral collection showcasing their new ambassadors and shifting focus onto the success of these women as opposed to their body type.

The brand of Victorias Secret has been predominantly centred around the fantasy of the angel- women so ethereally beautiful that brings a developed sense of elegance, seduction and glamour to their shows. Part of this desire to rebrand was to escape this idea of the male gaze and this male centred fantasy created by their runway shows in that these women were designed to be the 'perfect' woman oftentimes forgoing the actual opinions of what women wanted to see from the brand. This is where the critique of the new-wave VS collection begins.

Thousands of people have taken to tiktok to spread the entirely fatphobic rhetoric that the reason there has been such little support for VS even into their rebranding because they have abandoned the original idea of the angel.

This mindset that models for VS must adhere to a specific image of femininity is not only disrespectful to the women currently involved as brand ambassadors but to the very Angels they claim to defend as hoards of familiar VS Angels including Adriana Lima, Erin Heatherton and Bridget Malcolm have all come out and discussed the ways in which their modelling careers have affected their eating habits and body image, with Lima commenting (same article) that she would refrain from eating solid foods for nine days prior to a VS runway show.

To wish for Victorias Secret to be this unattainable display of the peak of feminine beauty and sexuality is to push the women involved to unhealthy extremes, damaging their bodies to the extent of chronic exhaustion and missing periods due to extreme weight loss . The push for body inclusivity was a desire to see beautiful women represented by all body types but also a movement to protect the women already involved in the agency and allow them to be and feel healthy and glamorous.

so what happened to the glamour? The recent 'my wings my way' campaign has received a lot of flack for its sense of casualness, embracing a new kind of natural beauty reminiscent of the pages from a 90s magazine as opposed to the high feminine glamour of the 2010s era. Similarly, the new VS collective underwear release has focused on more neutral, subtle styles with a large range of nude colours to appeal to all skin tones almost identical to the Dove body inclusivity campaigns from 2017.

These concepts are both beautiful in design, but the 180 degree turn from the original concept has left fans wondering if the iconic Look of the brand has been entirely abandoned upon its movement to become more inclusive to age and body type. It's a decision that has subsequently prompted more criticism, this time focusing on the ideas of 'why cant my body be glamorous?".

Why did body and age inclusivity mean that the ideas of femininity, glamour and angelic beauty had to be forgotten? Is VS sending the message that plus sized bodies are not sexy? Is this an attempt to cater to 'what women want' without actually acknowledging what women want (again)?

Natural beauty is a wondrous thing, it's something that everyone possesses and that needs to be celebrated- but thats not the point of Victoria's Secret. Brands are allowed to adhere to a certain aesthetic. Brands are allowed to have a target audience based on selling a specific type or style of clothing. Women appreciated VS garments for feeling glamorous and hyper feminine- what needed to change was the ranges of sizes they carried and the way in which the shows were run (and their intrusive in store measuring lets be real) to ensure that all women of all sizes and ages had the opportunity to experience that high feminine fantasy.

That's where Selkie comes into play. For the past two years selfie has presented absolutely phenomenal spring/summer collections at NYFW with models of differing shapes and sizes- and their 2024 collection featuring their first disabled model (whose name I have not been able see featured in any articles on the runway).

Selkie embodies what people wanted to see of a VS rebrand. Maintaining the essence of who the brand is- for VS as a hyperfeminine, classy and sexy underwear brand- and feeling that fantasy within inclusivity. The strive towards appreciating that all bodies are beautiful should not have to sacrifice the aesthetic of the garments and in such sacrificing the core audience who appreciated and anticipated their designs.

the resurgence of the 'bimbo' aesthetic in the early 2020s embarked as a movement of reclamation, a way to assert that there was actually nothing demeaning about a barbie-esque appearance and to remove the power from stereotypes used against us, essentially centring the Bimbo in a queer, left-wing ideology.

If you were to ask a modern Bimbo why hot pink? Why bedazzled? Why perform this exaggerated caricature of femininity? You might end up in a seemingly unrelated discussion about the modern Western political landscape. Bimbo culture has essentially emerged upon the heels of the controversies surrounding feminine experiences and bodily autonomy across the United States- women feeling that they are being confined to a specific performance of femininity, that the government is regulating their femininity, may tell you that the idea of bimbo culture is a satirical backlash to the ideas of what a modern Western woman should be and what she is expected to be. She is nothing more than a doll to the culture that surrounds her and her response is to take what is expected of her and make it a performance a juxtaposition of what she is expected to be and what she is and make them hate her for the femininity she is presenting. And thats exactly what Lauren Pantin said in her short update newsletter - ' If you’re going to punish me for being a woman anyway, I’m going to be the silliest, brattiest, potty-mouthed no-no of a woman you’ve ever seen. I’ll be the dumbest bitch on earth! Where’s my crown!"

Ask another bimbo and she'll tell you that her bimboism stems from the movement to satirise consumerist culture and misogyny, aiming to remove the stigmas around hyper-femininity. Essentially, allowing women to empower themselves through their femininity (rather than the popular idea of in spite of their femininity cough cough inlog cough) and giving women ownership over their sexuality and their body in ways that actively combat the misogynistic standards held against them- oftentimes gearing it towards queer people. It's a new-wave feminist movement designed to avert the male gaze through women appearing as these caricatures of traditional femininity whilst emphasising their own dominance and independence as support for women's right movements.

So it's a kind of sartorial rebellion against oppressive politics and culture? Well, it was at first. And to many it still is, however, as with all trends rooted in a sartorial culture the meaning tends to get lost in the shares and reposts as it expands across social media. Those who just happen across the culture or see nothing but images of it scattered across the internet arent likely to understand that this aesthetic is also a political performance, it will become a bimbo resurgence!... but not effectively hold the same weight and meaning that the movement was intended to hold.

One way to look at this is the trend of " girl [activity]" . Trends like girl maths, girl dinner, explaining things to the girlies. Now let me get it straight theres nothing wrong in finding a little fun in these trends- girl dinner was cute, as someone who loves cooking I loved seeing what everyone was making for their dinner until it got overrun by the 'I only had iced coffee today' brigade. Sometimes I'll see a girl maths video about how if I pay in cash its basically free since the number on my bank account didn't change and I laugh because thats logic I have applied to purchases before. There's little funny things and behaviours that people will have in common, and they're being labelled as 'girl [blank]' because it is predominantly groups of women discussing them and finding a little fun in it. But again, as trends reach a wider audience their initial intention becomes lost along the way and generalisations start to set in. TV shows and radio hosts have entire segments explaining girl maths, it has become cute and quirky to explain political landscapes in terms of shopping and makeup, and bimbo culture has become less of a satirical performance and instead commonly assumed as a Karen Smith- esque personality reminiscent of the 'dumb blondes' of the early 2000s.

Removing this sartorial protest from its context can be seem as damaging, especially in the way that social media currently presents aesthetics surrounding sexuality to young people. As bimbo culture reaches a wider audience it's likely to fall into the hands of young people who are, let's face it, not going to care about the deeper meaning. Young people are likely to see celebrities, tiktok personalities, attractive people in general donning their hot pink promiscuous outfits and feel inclined to join in on what is presented to them as nothing more than the newest fashion trend.

One of the key movements of bimboisim is to embrace feminine sexuality and overcome the stigmas about women expressing their sex and sexuality and sartorially this is represented by the micro mini skirt and the skimpy shirt. Society has had no difficulty pushing teenage girls to grow up rather quickly by presenting them with teen magazines in the y2k era talking about how to get a bigger bust or butt, social media promoting the attractive body type the attractive face the attractive makeup the attractive style of clothing that will settle their pubescent insecurities and validate them in the eyes of a society run by men. Young women are ridiculed for their bodies not being developed enough at 15, for not being sexually active at 16, must have lived the life experiences of drugs and alcohol and sex and heartbreak at 17 and are then turned into high school girl fucks random guy porn at 18. Removed-bimboism has become part of the problem in which young girls not only feel the need to dress promiscuously and express a sexuality that they still haven't fully explored in order to feel validated as an active part of society but also have to present themselves as stupid in order to seem funny cute and quirky. The idea that women are only able to understand complex theories if they are presented in terms of fashion and shopping and makeup is a stereotype enforced by tv and movie comedy that women have worked endlessly to overcome, and the reclamation of bimbo culture should not actively counteract the progress of feminist activity. You don't have to be smart to be a modern bimbo by any means, in terms of intelligence the movement is centred around a more relaxed approach to success that counters the ideology of the girl boss movement- you don't HAVE to be a huge success or overwork yourself to hell and back to validate who you are as a woman.

Modern bimboism set out with the comfort of knowing there is no pressure to understand everything, you might need something explained in your own terms, you might just be a little fucking stupid sometimes but there is no active harm in not always understanding. That, however, has been twisted through these trends discussed prior to make it seem like all bimbos (and by misogynistic extension, all women) are just not as smart as men. Which, as we know, is likely to be emulated by young people as it reaches a wider audience.

So it's understandable why there is concern over bimboism. But at what point does critique of bimboism begin to drift into the right wing? Blaming women who dress provocatively simply for being women who dress provocatively is not the answer, in my opinion, to the issues with the bimbo culture. There is (to the chagrin of many) nothing wrong with an adult women expressing the ownership of the sexuality that she was granted the right to express through the liberation of women, sex and queerness.

Tensions have been rising within more radical groups, or groups who are of the tendency to reject feminine presentation in regard to what they perceive as an active threat to the reputation of women. There has been a desire expressed across social media sites by these women that 'all women' should refrain from direct expressions of femininity and reject all social norms expected of women under the assertion that it 'makes us all look bad'. There is a lot to be said about the ways in which misogyny utilises stereotypes and generalisations of what is considered 'feminine behaviour' to degrade women, however, it is highly pretentious and internally misogynistic a notion that the very idea of feminine expression is to be at fault. The ideology begins to attack individual women, expressing that their online content is to blame for the ways in which men treat women, or that children have become so oversexualised.

In a way this reflects the puritan standards of online censorship frequently weaponised by the right wing in order to oppress further marginalised groups. 'Think of the Children' has been used time and time again as a way to bastardise protests of queerness, of sexual liberation of racial equity and it is being weaponised now again just as it was across the 70s against women who dare to be 'immodest' . It goes without saying that people who create content online are not responsible for the actions of teenagers who in the midst of discovering their sexuality, may seek out more mature content- not just for sexual gratification, but a newfound interest into how adults express their sexuality as a way to help them navigate expression themselves. To place limits on how women are allowed to dress or express sexuality is to revert to the ideas of puritanism that existed prior to the (well, partial) liberation of the marginalised people.

The Regency Dandy is oftentimes associated with the practise of a masculine femininity or androgyny, an obsession with vanity that could rival y2k's metrosexuality.

You might think of iconography like this bastardised mimicry of aristocracy, perfect tailoring and an attitude so arrogant he aims to astonish and to stand out. He exists in defiance, an 'aesthetic form of nihilism centring the self as the world', as coined by Jean Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation, 1981). This kind of aestheticism caught behind the act of rejection is thought to have fizzled out as the industrial revolution conquered Europe, yet looking- not even closely, looking broadly across western society dandyism as a sociology and artistic aesthetic appears to ebb and flow, constantly circulating through our society.

As we know, the traditional dandy aimed upwards- he was a common man acting in the place of an aristocrat- perhaps better described as acting above an aristocrat, or above society. He wore neatly pressed coats of dark blue, always found himself powdered and perfumed and inserted himself into the circles of the elite yet never becoming one himself. Their defiance of the social norm lead to innovations in fashion in cultivating an appearance that was astonishing yet elegant, daring yet enjoyable- distressed clothing.

Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly's biography of the iconic British dandy George 'Beau' Brummell reveals that its likely that Brummell and his circle often distressed their clothes using a kind of glasspaper- "they had their clothes distressed before they put them on, all over the cloth, to the point where it was no more than a sort of lace- a cloud."

The distress of clothing has always been an integral part of the way in which we experience personal fashions and aestheticism- purposeful wearing on denims in- for example- punk and grunge movements of the 1970s acted in the same way that the distressing of fine fabrics did for the British dandies, only in the opposite direction.

This new dandyism, the act of a defiant vanity, has shifted to push the wearer into commonality instead of aristocracy whilst maintaining that integral obsession with visual appearance and capitalistic tendencies of the ideology. Designer apparel mocks the common man- for example, denims are constructed and designed to allude to the agriculturalists of early twentieth century America with wearing, discolouration, rips, frays and tears etc but are only available to those who have no need to labour. Clothing is purposefully designed to look worn in, think of the controversial 'destroyed' shoes designed by Balenciaga in 2022. The purpose of garments like these is to give the impression of commonality whilst distancing themselves from the experience- they have the ability to give the impression that they are like you whilst maintaining a materialistic capitalistic mindset that allows them to feel above the society they suggest to be living in.

The contemporary dandy is ironic, they are conscious of their clothing, elegantly dressed and massed produced. They act towards the creation of an illusion of individualisation. Where dandies like Brummell sought influence over a handful of people within the aristocratic realm, the modernisation and mass production of the contemporary dandy aims to set precedent over millions.

This illusion of commonality adorned by the pop star, the influencer, the celebrity creates a sense of kinship and relatability for those 'beneath' them (for lack of better term) that allows them to maintain an extremely particular fascination over their vanity and a nihilistic facade of humility that allows them to set trends mimicked by millions. They are their world centre, living and dying before the mirror unable to keep up with the consumer imperative, reinventing themselves constantly to maintain their idolatry.