Many of us grew up mesmerized by the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. It was a spectacle broadcast nationwide on American cable television. Established networks showcased impossibly fit, outlandishly beautiful women strutting down a cotton candy-colored catwalk. For young girls, these models embodied the fantasy we’d been told to aspire to. Decked out in glitter, adorned with angel wings, bedazzled with gems, these women were phantoms projected into our living rooms, populating our everyday lives with the reminder that our Barbie-doll daydreams could leap into reality. With social media, the Victoria’s Secret extravaganza was amplified. However, by the late-2010s, there was an increasing understanding that the unrealistic standards being advertised on television screens, in ads, and on our social media pages were inherently damaging. In 2019, the Victoria’s Secret show was cancelled amid a firestorm of controversy. But recent criticism of the VS Show’s revival has made me wonder if perhaps girls have fallen back into the rabbit hole of this sinister, skinny ideal. Why is it that girls fantasize about attaining a standard that tells them they’re not good enough? Why do even Gen-Z girls, who grew up throughout the now-dying era of body positivity, feed into this archetype, perpetuating their own harm? It connects back to the idea of “fantasy,” and makes us question who, exactly, constructed the fantasy we so covet.
It’s 2018, smack-dab in the middle of the body positivity era and a youth culture embracing “wokeness.” Runways increasingly featured women of color and plus size models, even in the customarily stubborn, thinness-oriented world of high fashion. In the midst of growing criticism for Victoria’s Secret’s lack of inclusivity and failure to represent trans and plus size models on the runway, a bombshell interview with Ed Razek irrevocably disrupted the Victoria’s Secret empire. Following declining sales and show viewership, Razek, the then-chief marketing officer of L. Brands, rebelled against the backlash VS had been facing in an interview withVogue’s Nicole Phelps. Alongside Monica Mitro, who at the time served as Victoria’s Secret’s vice president of public relations, Razek emphasized the fact that VS models had been considered “too fat” for high fashion runways in the 90s; his method of deflecting the questions about inclusivity. He responded to public censure of the brand’s skinny-centered image by insisting that Victoria’s Secret was not marketing to “everyone.” Razek stated, “We market to who we sell to, and we don’t market to the whole world.” He emphatically voiced that the brand wasn’t worried about being “politically correct,” and shocked social media users with this blaisé retort: “Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special.”
It was this last comment that ignited a whirlwind of controversy, which ultimately culminated in the cancellation of the 2019 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Razek was blatantly asserting that trans women and plus size women were not included in the Victoria’s Secret “fantasy” – they weren’t the ideal, and they didn’t get to be decorated with jewels, hailed as angels, or propped up as women to admire. At the time, Kyle Muzenreider aptly wrote for W Magazine, “To imply that using a trans model or plus-size model would ruin a “fantasy” and then to expect to get no criticism for it is its own kind of twisted fantasy.” Despite Razek’s subsequent apology, his comments had set off a domino effect which created a lasting impact on the brand’s image. To walk a VS show had been considered the pinnacle of the modeling industry. Victoria’s Secret had become an icon of pop culture. The VS brand amplified the thin ideal; to engineer a more inclusive image would be the cementing of a cultural shift, one that made sexiness and desirability attributable to everyone. But this wasn’t the direction Razek and other VS top-dogs wanted the brand to go. Razek later resigned from his post shortly after VS’s first transgender model, Valentina Sampaio, was cast in a photoshoot for VS Pink.
Despite VS’s attempt to revive the brand, a succession of revelations beat the dead horse of the company’s image. Les Wexner, the then-CEO of Victoria’s Secret, was exposed for having ties to Jeffrey Epstein. In 2020, the retired Razek was accused of creating a toxic work environment and promoting “bullying, harassment and misogyny” according to Vogue. Following an ad campaign with plus size model Paloma Elesser and a Mother’s Day campaign celebrating pregnant bodies, VS announced the revival of their Fashion Show in 2023. The company affirmed its commitment to “championing women’s voices and unique perspectives,” with a new focus on inclusion, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The brand immediately faced online skepticism. Many thought, like Razek’s original offensive comments, these moves were a way for Victoria’s Secret to anxiously compete with Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand, which had been celebrated for the diversity in its campaigns and catwalks.
One corner of the internet sat waiting with arms crossed to judge whether or not Victoria’s Secret had truly made strides towards inclusion. Another was poised to judge if VS could live up to the “fantasy” it had presented in the years of its peak viewership: one that centered glamour, sparkles, and skinny bodies. Sure, there were critics hoping that VS could present a show that employed fairytale romance and honored a diverse range of bodies and identities. But there was a vocal faction of the internet that wanted the return of the thin, supremely fit models of the 2000s and early 2010s, models that Razek had admitted fought with each other to attain standards of physical fitness. (In that original interview with Vogue, he implied that competition was a form of sisterhood. Ew.) Following the premiere of The Victoria’s Secret World Tour in 2023, and its subsequent live-streamed fashion shows in 2024 and 2025, VS has faced consistent backlash. In 2024, one X user, @intothesaturn, posted “so yeah we are never getting this victoria secret back after watching tonight’s show” with an attached gif of several thin models sporting blow outs sashaying down the runway. The tweet received 29,000 likes. In answer to a reply which stated “Literally like what was with all the fatties on stage?,” the original user commented “omg like don’t get me started on all the woke shit.”
In October of this year, after the premiere of the 2025 Fashion Show, a TikTok went viral with 2.7 million likes. It’s white text emblazoned over a young girl, “Victoria Secret Angels should have impossible bodies made through lots of hard work.”
When did we go from railing against the fact that a wide range of women weren’t represented on screen, to agreeing with men like Ed Razek that the fantasy we want is an ideal that depends upon a combination of ridiculous fitness routines, admittedly-restrictive eating, and the lottery of genetics? There was a point in time in which influential women in pop culture embraced the body positivity movement. And embraced a new vision of fantasy along with it.
While Victoria’s Secret has capitalized upon the idea that they are the brand that sells fantasy, designers have been doing fantasy – in a way that celebrates women – for decades. Alexander McQueen harnessed the gothic fairytale in his collections. His runway shows blurred the lines between performance art and the catwalk, using his fairytale themes to make cultural commentary, especially on the experience of womanhood. McQueen specifically played with the fantastical archetype of the warrior princess. According to Andrew Wilson, author of Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin, speaking to the BBC, “He wanted to dress women in a way that scared men. The women that walked his catwalk were in creative armour. It explains everything.” Lilia Destin wrote for LACMA that McQueen designed specifically for the ‘femme fatale,’ a vision of womanhood that emerged from anxieties rooted in 19th century first-wave feminism. As women became economically and sexually independent, the femme fatale figure represented a threat to patriarchy. Whether McQueen was designing for highlander widows, the victims of the Salem Witch Trials, or humans who adopted aquatic attributes as a result of climate change-induced rising sea levels, he aimed to make his women look powerful. He wasn’t designing looks that appealed to men or that made women look demure. He wanted his models to inspire fear, to be slightly uncanny, imbuing them with the power of the unknown. His aims stand in marked contrast to Victoria’s Secret’s fantasy. VS sent women down runways with angel wings of innocence and brightly-colored pinwheels and pom-poms, symbols which toe the line of problematically evoking childhood in lingerie designs. While the VS fashion show worked to make their models the patriarchal feminine ideal – toothless, innocent, meek, and thin – McQueen exercised the power of the femme fatale, the threat against patriarchy, in his.
But let’s say you didn’t want to explore fantasy through a lens of uncanny feminine power. You want a fantasy that doesn’t have to do with revenge or physically challenging male dominance. Look no further than Selkie, a brand that works to empower all women through their fairytale-like designs. Selkie’s Kimberley Gordon proves there’s a way to achieve feminine fantasy for all. Gordon doesn’t just uplift a select group of women capable of attaining a near-impossible fitness ideal. In 2022, Selkie’s “Puff Dress” reached viral status on TikTok at a time when cottagecore was all the rage. Gordon, one of the co-founders of Wildfox, established Selkie in 2018, desiring to break free from marketing campaigns that perpetuated the thin, white ideal. The Selkie is a fantastical creature of European folklore capable of turning into a seal. If a man steals her seal-skin, she can be duped into marrying him, but upon retrieving her seal-skin, she can return back to the ocean. Gordon used this figure as inspiration, seeking to design dresses that evoked a childhood fantasy that also empowered the princesses she dressed, rebelling against the male domination of the fashion industry. Selkie aims to teach women how to take back their power, their mystique, their personal fairytales, through their dresses. And Gordon means all women: Selkie’s designs go up to size 6X.
Particularly, Gordon wanted to fight against the idea that plus-size consumers were a faceless crowd of women seeking clothing that hid, instead of celebrated, their bodies. Let’s contrast that brand vision with Razek’s, who insisted that VS “wasn’t marketing to everyone.” Instead, plus size customers could buy from VS’s significantly less feminine, more reserved sister company, Lane Bryant. In an interview with Elle’s Kristen Bateman, Gordon stated, “When I started the company, I knew that I wanted to have size inclusivity. But that means to me having silhouettes that actually can be worn universally. I realized, I have to look at my own self. Like, what’s my fatphobia?… I think a lot of us have such severe fatphobia, so driven into us from such a young age, that we actually can’t see that it’s there.”
Gordon’s approach to design, prioritizing the customer, sought to reach and encourage all women, regardless of size or identity. While VS pursued only one kind of customer – skinny, toned, the cis-gender white girl with the blowout – Gordon wanted all women to feel comfortable in her dresses. This led her to the Puff Dress’s signature cut, the empire-waist dress, aka the Baby Doll Dress. The Baby Doll has its own feminist history. The design has traditionally been associated with female liberation: the empire waist was first established as designers sought to move away from corsets. The Baby Doll became enshrined as a symbol of sexual liberation as its cut was used in lingerie in the ‘40s. Balenciaga then brought the Baby Doll to high fashion with his Baby Doll Dress line. Givenchy also adopted the shape with his “sack dresses,” stating, “I’ve dreamt of a liberated woman who will no longer be swathed in fabric, armour-plated. All my lines are styles for quick and fluid movement. My dresses are real dresses, ultra-light and free of padding and corseting, garments that will float on a body delivered from bondage.”
With the Baby Doll, these designers sought to allow women breathability, movement, and expression; treatment as a human being, celebrating the body. Compare Givenchy’s emphasis on physical freedom with the restrictions imposed by the Victoria’s Secret angel wings, often tens of pounds, and the lingerie itself, tightly fitted to these women’s bodies, not made to be worn. Do these designs allow for the movement of a woman’s body? To celebrate it and its physicality? Couple that with the culture of dieting, restriction, and laborious physical fitness that Ed Razek proudly asserted the VS models of yore engaged in. Does that scream sisterhood, even if it’s your ideal? And if you’re a woman, why is your ideal for your life reliant upon restriction? In routine, in lingerie, and in your fantasies? Could you challenge the limits of your creativity? Could you ask if your fantasy – one in which your everyday lived experience is de-centered for the sake of an image – is in fact a male fantasy? Ed Razek told us what kind of women we should want to be through his VS marketing. Forging a new vision of feminine fantasy would be a way for women to take back control.
On October 15th of this year, TikTok user @geniusgirlalert posted a video with the text, “If you think the only girls who can serve are underweight Slavic queens I fear you have a serious lack of imagination and respectfully I don’t want your creative shortcomings to affect my subconscious.”
While I never want to comment on someone’s body, especially in terms of whether or not they are healthy, I think the most important message of this video is questioning our “lack of imagination” and “creative shortcomings” when it comes to imagining our fantastical ideal. We look to women who have achieved a kind of body we deem impossible, one that is extremely thin, taking up less space, and adheres directly to the patriarchal, feminine ideal. By aspiring to be like these women and only like these women, we are directly feeding into a male fantasy. One where women compete with one another to be one standard of “beautiful.” And one where women buy men like Ed Razek’s lingerie to attain it, believing that they inherently lack, and they have to fill that void with consumption. Even if our inclinations toward nostalgia embrace this image, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it. We challenge narratives our childhoods taught us all the time, even if this image is considered “fantastical,” or even comforting for us. Think about the backlash a childhood favorite like the Harry Potter series has garnered in retrospect, as we learn more about the narratives that perpetuate harm as a culture. We have to have the imagination to develop an image of feminine fantasy that encompasses all embodiments of femininity, which fundamentally includes all women’s bodies. It’s time we get critical, and creative, about our visions of fantasy – and create one that affirms that all women can be angels, princesses, and powerful.
Kira Manelski 
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