A Different Resolution

There’s a version of this where I think carefully about what events like the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show mean—the body politics, the narrow bandwidth of beauty being celebrated, the vast industrial apparatus behind every square inch of it. I’ve read those essays. They’re not wrong. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The 2016 show was in Paris. Kendall Jenner walked it. Gigi Hadid walked it. Sara Sampaio walked it. And I watched the whole thing with the focused attention of someone who has made peace with being exactly as susceptible as advertised. The show technically exists to sell underwear. Nobody is watching it for the underwear.

Lady Gaga performed. Bruno Mars performed. The Weeknd performed, which had a layer of tabloid geometry to it—he’d just started seeing Selena Gomez after splitting from Bella Hadid, who is Gigi’s sister, who was also walking the show. Everyone kept it professional. Everyone looked extraordinary. The whole production is built to make you feel that some people exist at a higher resolution than the rest of us, and for two hours it’s completely convincing.

Kendall Jenner in particular does something to my capacity for holding nuanced beliefs. I know, in theory, that character matters more than appearance. I believe it. I’ve built a lot of my thinking around it. Then she appears in a rhinestone bodysuit under Paris lights and I completely lose the thread.