Controversy surrounds Victoria’s Secret spring line ‘Bright Young Things’
Victoria’s Secret is a brand that is synonymous with sexy, flirty underwear that caters to all women whatever their shape or size. However, they have recently come under fire with angry parents not taking kindly to the ‘Bright Young Things’ spring line. The collection is part of their PINK line targeting college girls.
What’s the fuss?
According to reports in Bloomberg, Stuart Burgdoerfer, Chief Financial Officer of the Columbus, Ohio-based company, was quoted as saying, “When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be ? They want to be older and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.”
This comment, when viewed through the lens of the ‘Bright Young Things’ collection seems to suggest that Victoria’s Secret is targeting the pre-pubescent or tween market. According to the site’s Facebook page, many parents felt that cheeky slogans such as ‘Feeling Lucky?’ and ‘Call Me’ on the back of their popular underwear in the ‘Bright Young Things’ collection simply crossed the line from cute to sexually suggestive.
Courting parents’ ire
Parents have been up in arms since the launch of the collection bombarding the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page with demands for the giant to take down the line and have set up a page expressly to boycott the Victoria’s Secret brand. Evan Dolive, a concerned father of a three-year-old, went as far as to write an open letter to Victoria’s Secret on his blog, saying the ‘Bright Young Things’ line sent a wrong message to all young girls.
“I don’t want my daughter to ever think that her self-worth and acceptance by others is based on the choice of her undergarments,” Dolive wrote. “I don’t want my daughter to ever think that to be popular or even attractive she has to have emblazon[ed] words on her bottom.”
Another parent, Diana Cherry, a Seattle mother of four who started the online petition against Victoria’s Secret, wrote, “I don’t want a brand like Victoria’s Secret telling my daughters what sexy should be and my son that girls have to look or dress a certain way. Sexualisation of girls by marketers has been found to contribute to depression, eating disorders, and early sexual activity — and this new ad campaign is a glaring example of a culture forcing girls to grow up too fast.”
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Are they or aren’t they?
According to latest reports, Victoria’s Secret has issued a statement on their Facebook page that explained that despite recent rumours and online hoo-ha, Victoria’s Secret had no plans to introduce a collection for pre-college women. The statement read, “In response to questions we recently received, Victoria’s Secret PINK is a brand for college-aged women [and that] ‘Bright Young Things’ was a slogan used in conjunction with the college spring break tradition.”
Sexualising children
The issue of early sexualisation of kids is not new, especially since kids are maturing much faster now and are being bombarded with images of scantily clad individuals on a daily basis. Thus, is this just a case of parents overreacting or are companies to blame for targeting and perpetuating the over-sexualisation of our children. So much so, that our kids are being inadvertently robbed of an untainted childhood?
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