Last year, undergarment retailer Victoria’s Secret was in crisis. Sales were down, stores were closing, and activists—having accused the company of everything from transphobia to deforestation—had badly damaged the brand. Executives huddled together and designed an ambitious turnaround plan: they would spin off the company into a separate entity, denounce previous leadership as racist and misogynistic, and adopt a new marketing strategy that would focus on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” instead of physical beauty.
The change at the company was significant. All the men on the board of directors, with the exception of CEO Martin Waters, were replaced by women. The Victoria’s Secret Angels—women like Heidi Klum, Gisele Bündchen, and Tyra Banks—were out. A new group of women, called the VS Collective, was in. The new models were chosen on political, rather than aesthetic, grounds. The group included the soccer player and “LGBTQIA+ activist” Megan Rapinoe, plus-size model and “body advocate” Paloma Elsesser, and transgender swimsuit model Valentina Sampaio, who was born a biological male. Executives crafted a narrative of explicit political activism: Elsesser promised to “change the world” and expand the company’s product lines to XXXXXL size, Sampaio pledged to use her new position to “raise our vibration and catalyze positive change,” and “equality advocate” Amanda de Cadenet said that the point was not to sell underwear but to “shift culture.”
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