Well. You all know how I feel about Victoria’s Secret, and you also know how I try to avoid anything that triggers me to hate my body. So it should come as no surprise to you that I took a pass on the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
It’s not that I didn’t want to watch it. Every bone in my body wanted to. Though I didn’t outwardly verbalize my desire to spend my evening staring at lingerie models and secretly plotting my next eating disorder relapse, lest my husband consequently decide domestic abuse is now how we do things, I kept rationalizing the idea to myself.
- I’ve come so far! It probably won’t be a big deal. The worst thing that could happen is it inspires me to lose weight and hey, that’s like, healthy, right?
- I bet there will be a lot of celebrities there. And who doesn’t love celebrities?
- Oh, goodie! Kanye West is performing! Maybe he’ll steal a microphone from one of the angels and totally go all Taylor Swift on her in front of everyone. I wouldn’t want to miss that!
- Lingerie pretty. Me want look.
But at the end of the day, my inner self-love warrior won out and I chose to put my attention elsewhere. (Finishing my NaNoWriMo novel, thank you very much!)
Today I stumbled across this article by a man named Ryan Beckler and it confirmed everything I feared about watching the show. Here’s an excerpt:
A commercial break allowed me to check my social media streams. I was pretty shocked at what girls were posting/tweeting:
- “BRB, starving myself. Thank you, VS fashion show.”
- “Victoria secret fashion show = going to throw up to make myself look that good!”
- “NEVER. EATING. AGAIN.”
- “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.. now I feel like a whale =[ “
Huh? What the hell? Something is seriously wrong here.
The rest of the article is a great reminder to all of us women that being dangerously thin and hating ourselves is not attractive! If your end game is to snag a man (and if it is, let me wag my finger at you for a moment and remind you to switch your focus to learning how to fall in love with yourself instead of waiting for another person to validate you) vowing to never eat again on Twitter is not the way to go about that.
Read the rest of Ryan’s awesome article here.
fueled by diet coke 
I was listening to Kidd Kradick (it’s better than Lex and Terry) on my way to work and Kidd kept saying how he was so upset at how thin and gross and unattractive the models were. Never in my life have I wanted to hug the radio so badly. So at least some people now are getting it and I think it’s because of wonderful people like you! (also, hbd)
yay kidd kraddick! and yay you! 🙂
I, too, had the same inner dialogue and chose not to watch it! I also had some really upsetting statuses/tweets on my social media feeds. So sad. 😦 There wasn’t a single person that was like, “Wow, I’m loving the new Angels line!” Obviously, it’s not about the fashion. It’s about showing off their un-human bodies to the 99.9% of the population that could NEVER possibly look like them. One of the tweets on my feed said, “Omg, one of them JUST had a baby!” Just the tweet alone made me feel horrible about myself, and I never even watched it.
Thank you for giving me a place to vent! Haha. You’re AWESOME for finishing your novel instead of watching that garbage.
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I ate chips and salsa through out the entire thing. I have been personally eating smaller portions and exercising so I gorged during the entire thing. I was also thinking how I am glad that my next pay check isn’t reliant on how tiny my tummy is. ALSO, very glad I decided to leave that world behind when I turned 16. No more self loathing (well, at least a little less) : )