The Victoria’s Secret Machine

So I watched the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show highlights—the usual suspects parading in impossible heels while Taylor Swift and Fall Out Boy played in the background. It’s this peculiar machine they’ve built, very expensive, very deliberate. Models like Karlie Kloss and Cara Delevinne floating past in the kind of light that makes everything look better than it should.

The thing that always gets me is that it works. You know exactly what it’s supposed to make you feel, and you feel it anyway. By the end you’re mentally pricing out gym memberships you’ll never use and fantasizing about spray tans. It’s honest in that way—they’re not pretending to be anything other than a vision designed to make you want something you can’t have.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s well done, at least.