Victoria’s Secret and Its Very Particular Sadism

Remember when there were serious conversations about putting more normally-built women on fashion runways? Neither do I—because the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show just wrapped in New York and whoever handles the casting clearly has a clinically specific thing for women who look like they’d snap if you hugged them wrong.

Cara Delevingne can be any size she wants; I love her unconditionally. But Hilary Rhoda, standing there in what amounts to a suggestion of turquoise fabric—my response isn’t desire, it’s a frantic paternal alarm. I want to sit her down. Produce an enormous cheese-and-ham sandwich from somewhere. Stay until it’s gone, then produce another. Eat, I’d say, in a voice that started somewhere between nurturing and unhinged, yes, more, that’s it—which tells you something about what the VS show actually does to the viewer, and none of it is what the brand intends. The styling has strong and confident opinions about displaying exactly as much of its models as the fabric technically permits, all those high cuts arranged to show every available contour, and you register it because you were engineered to. But somewhere between the spectacle and the concern, the whole thing starts to feel less like fantasy and more like a welfare check.