Why we shouldn't be mad at Victoria's Secret

Confession time: As a tween girl, I was wildly embarrassed to go bra shopping in public.

I had a wonderful mother and an older sister to help introduce me to the wonderful world of bras, but it took me a while to get over my tween angst about it.

If I’m being completely honest, that embarrassment didn’t totally die, because just planning on writing about my bra shopping experiences in the newspaper made me shudder at first.

I can understand why I was so embarrassed when I was younger.

Puberty and the items of clothing that come with it are naturally sensitive topics for a lot of people, which is why I wasn’t surprised to hear that more than 13,000 people have signed a petition against Victoria’s Secret’s new line marketed towards young teenagers.

Many parents are outraged, arguing that this is part of a larger social trend of increasingly sexualized young girls.

I get the hesitation and anger surrounding this issue.

That trend is a pervasive part of our culture of which we should be wary.

But the more I thought about the petition and my own experiences, and the more I read the actual facts regarding the Victoria’s Secret “line,” the more I felt the rage was misguided.

Firstly, there seems to be a lot of misinformation about what exactly Victoria Secret’s new line is or who it is being marketed toward.

This is something many media outlets are gleefully taking advantage of. “Bright Young Things” is the (admittedly unfortunate) tag-line for a new Pink collection that came to stores in time for spring break.

The pre-existing Pink line was created in 2002 and was geared toward younger women, aged 15-22, as it continues to be.

Before I researched this column in-depth, opponents of the line gave me the impression that this was a line for much, much younger girls, something that simply isn’t true.

But this goes beyond the issue of age.

What all this outrage seems to really boil down to is fear that, if teenage girls wear pretty bras, if they don’t feel ashamed of their bras, they will become sex-crazed fiends.

Of course, none of the opponents say this directly.

They talk about how women need to grow up in a world where clothing doesn’t define them, in a world where they can become anything.

Of course that isn’t a woman who wears Victoria’s Secret bras, because that would make them a tramp.

Often, the critics turn it into a painful dichotomy — you can become a successful, intelligent young woman, or you can become a young woman who wears pretty bras. Take your pick.

I certainly wouldn’t want my young daughter (or myself for that matter) to have her butt decorated with clever witticisms or sexual jokes. I think there is a line where certain styles of explicit lingerie are not age-appropriate.  

But I also don’t think 15-year-old girls and older should only have the option of wearing pancake-colored, misshapen training bras.

Having a bra that is pretty, something that they like wearing and aren’t ashamed of, won’t turn them automatically into a girl gone wild.

Part of this stems from the pervasive misconception that bras (and to a larger extent, breasts) exist entirely for a sexual purpose.

That idea has extremely damaging repercussions, as likely any mother who has faced wrath over breast-feeding in public could tell you.

Virtually all women wear a bra every single day.

They wear them for a whole host of reasons: comfort, added support, fit under clothing, etc.

But for some reason, as a tween, I still felt wildly embarrassed to acknowledge a bra’s very existence and given my familial support.

I think a lot of that has to do with the way society talks to young women about their bodies.

Victoria’s Secret is certainly not a perfect store. There’s no denying that they’ve had legitimate conflicts with both conservative and liberal feminists in the past.

But it is completely ridiculous to condemn them just for making necessary bras and underwear marketed toward girls 15 and older.

If girls are younger than 15 and shopping at Victoria’s Secret, it’s likely their parents who either gave them the money or the transport to buy things there, something only those households have control over.  

All across America, Victoria’s Secret exists as a relatively cheap, accessible place to buy bras and underwear.

Especially with girls going through puberty younger and younger, it is vital that we try to combat the culture of shame that surrounds puberty and the clothing that comes with it.

­— gwinslow@indiana.edu