What sex-positive underwear could look like. (source)
This morning I discovered that Victoria’s Secret has a new line of underwear. It’s called “Pink Loves Consent” and features slogans like “Let’s talk about sex,” “No means no,” “Ask first,” and “Consent is sexy.” The models on the website have all kinds of different body types and they’re not all white.
I immediately loved the new line but was skeptical. After all, this is Victoria’s Secret, which is known for its cultural appropriation, egregious use of Photoshop, and portrayal of women as always willing and sexually available.
Of course, it was too good to be true. “Pink Loves Consent” is a hoax.
A feminist group called FORCE took credit for the hoax and wrote:
We are so sorry to tell young women that Victoria’s Secret is not using its voice to create the change you need to grow up safe and free from sexual violence. Victoria’s Secret is not using its brand to promote consent. They are not promoting consent to their 4.5 million “PINK nation” members, to the 500,000 facebook fans or the estimated 10 million viewers who will be watching tonight’s fashion show. But what a different world would it be if they did? What if consent and communication showed up in the bedroom as much as push-up bras and seamless thongs?
Indeed, the website for the fake line is a vision for what a socially responsible business could look like, particularly when it’s targeted at women. Even though the focus is marketing the (fake) underwear, there’s a section about what consent is and how to talk about sex. The website cleverly embeds a serious message in a fun and youthful image, proving that feminism doesn’t have to always be super-serious and that you can create a compelling product without reinforcing problematic crap like rape culture. The models are glowing and happy and serve as a reminder that it’s not just skinny white women who need to buy underwear. It’s, you know, everyone.
The website also points out the ways in which Victoria Secret’s actual slogans promote rape culture, which is the section that should probably have immediately tipped me off that this is fake. Of VS’s “No Peeking” panty, the site notes that messages like that make “no” seem like a flirty thing to say–a mere step along the road to sex. And, in fact, how often do sexual scripts in movies, TV shows, and books fetishize a woman’s initial refusal and make it seem “sexy” when the man (always a man, obviously) eventually overcomes that refusal?
The other slogan it critiques is “Sure Thing,” printed over the front of a pair of underwear, as though access to what’s underneath it is a guarantee. Does it actually incite rape? I highly doubt it. But is it creepy and unsettling? Definitely. It’s a sign of how we think about women’s bodies and how sexually available they’re supposed to be.
One could argue that Victoria’s Secret is too easy or facile of a target. Perhaps. But it’d be so easy for it to actually create a line like this fake one, and, in fact, a spokesperson told Jezebel that the company is “looking into it.” Given how positive the response has been, they’d be silly not to.
In their Tumblr post, the organizers of the hoax write:
We’re not about taking Victoria’s Secret down. We are about changing the conversation. The sexiness that is being sold to women by Victoria’s Secret is not actually about sex. It is not how to have sex, relationships or orgasms. It in an IMAGE of what it is to be sexy. So while we are sold cleavage, white teeth, clear skin and perfect hair no one is asking us how our bodies feel and what we desire. Victoria’s Secret owns the image of female sexuality, instead of women owning their own sexuality.
They also note that consent needs to become a “mainstream” idea, just like condoms did in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As a sex educator, I can attest to the fact that even condoms aren’t yet as mainstream as they should be (and perhaps they can’t be, given how inaccessible they are to certain groups of people). However, given how many people still don’t realize that consent does not merely mean the absence of a “no,” there’s still a long way to go.
(For the record, there’s a good criticism to be made of the whole “consent is sexy” concept, but that’s a topic for another post.)
Victoria’s Secret and its slogans are a ridiculously tiny slice of the rape culture pie, sure. But if a company as large and influential as VS were to make consent part of its product and part of the conversation, it would make a difference.