Careful. That Victoria’s Secret Model Might Be Holding Victor’s Secret.
/It happened! Lingerie company Victoria’s Secret has caved! The political correctness police won another round!
The one place where men were actually happy to go shopping with their wives or girlfriends (or in some cases both) has hired its first transgender model.
If you doubt Victoria’s Secret caved to the PC police, just look at the headline on the website Jezebel.com “Transphobic Company Victoria's Secret Suddenly Hires Openly Trans Model.”
Transphobic! I didn’t even know that was a word.
Victoria’s Secret, the one retail outlet where men never complained about having to go is now ruined because the lingerie company will now feature at least one model with an Adam’s apple.
The move is a complete reversal of what Ed Razek, told Vogue in November 2018:
It’s like, why doesn’t your show do this? 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. That’s what it is. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and any other fashion brand in the world would take it in a minute, including the competitors that are carping at us.
Needless to say he took a lot of heat for that statement at the time and apologized.
What folks chose to ignore is that Razek, before the above remark, in the same interview said:
I don’t think we can be all things to all customers. It is a specialty business; it isn’t a department store. I’m always asking myself: If we do that, what is the reason we did it? Why did we include that person? And did we include them to shut up a reporter? Did we include them because it was the right thing to do or because it was the politically correct thing to do? Do they take the place of somebody who worked for a year for the opportunity and cried when they found that they got it? Yeah, we made some fashion mistakes. We were late to the party on bralettes; we were late to the party on downtown influences in our looks.
Razek was right, Victoria’s Secret can’t be all things to all people. Unfortunately, thanks to the PC police, now they’re trying.
They couldn’t leave well enough alone. Might as well change the name to Victor’s Secret.
The company was founded by a man, a heterosexual man who was shopping for his wife in the 1970s. According to Time.com:
The company got its start when businessman Roy Raymond was trying to shop for lingerie for his wife. He’d gone to a department store to make his purchase, only to find himself deeply uncomfortable—and made even more so by saleswomen scrutinizing his presence there. “When I tried to buy lingerie for my wife,” Raymond told Newsweek in 1981, “I was faced with racks of terry-cloth robes and ugly floral-print nylon nightgowns, and I always had the feeling the department-store saleswomen thought I was an unwelcome intruder.” The Stanford MBA grad saw an opportunity in his discomfort and in 1977 borrowed $80,000 to open Victoria’s Secret as a store designed specifically to make men comfortable when buying lingerie for their wives.
Since the company was founded “to make men comfortable when buying lingerie for their wives,” doesn’t it make sense that when looking at models wearing lingerie those models are actual women?
Apparently, Bob and I are not the only people upset by this move. Here is a sample of comments on one of Victoria’s Secret’s Facebook posts:
Maybe, I’m just getting old and am set in my ways, but I was taught you are born male or female. I learned this at an early age and it was confirmed in science class, specifically biology in high school. You know, the class where you had to dissect a frog.
Never in any class were we taught that one could decide what gender one is. There was never a choice.
Maybe it’s me, but I think this political correctness stuff is getting way out of control.
At least Roy Raymond isn’t around to see this, but he’s probably turning in his grave.