Pastel, pious, patronising

Victoria’s Secret (VS) is back. And God, it’s worse than you could have ever expected. Last year, I wrote about how VS fired its angels, woke-washed its branding, and appointed itself the Germaine Greer of G-bangers. Then it disappeared, retiring to a library somewhere to read Feminism For Dummies, reinvent itself, and answer the question, “what is sexy now?”

Turns out, it thinks that sexless is the new sexy. It recently unveiled its new range, dropping it online with about as much subtlety as a first year Gender Studies student at a slam poetry open mic. And it’s bad. It looks like something Maria von Trapp might buy.

But it’s not just the fact that it’s pastel, pious and patronising. It’s the fact that it has got about as much sex appeal as frozen microwave lasagne.

See VS has decided, in its self-appointed role as cultural commentator on female sensuality, that sexy isn’t sexy any more. In some ways, VS has acted in the way all big brands do when they panicpivot. It looked at what everyone else was doing and did that. And VS isn’t the first brand that’s traditionally sold sexy to start airbrushing the sex appeal from its products.

I’ve written before on how you can’t go into Bras N Things right now without getting a motivational podcast from a pair of hot pants. Sex toys are being rebranded as “self-love aids” by Cotton On. Fashion has rejected ass-hugging skinny jeans in favour of shapeless, sack-style Mom jeans. Sexy brands are frantically rebranding in a sexless way, for fear that wanting to be hot is now somehow passe.

They’re partly reacting to the chilly breeze of #sexnegativity blowing across the edges of popular culture; marked by the resurgence in popularity of extreme feminist authors like Andrea Dworkin, stars like Billie Eilish who pioneered non-sexy chic, and the fact that young people are having less sex than previous generations. Compare that to the Sex and the City era, and today feels surprisingly… regressive.

But while sex negativity may be dripping into the back of society’s mind, it’s not the whole picture. The backlash against sexy isn’t really coming from women’s desires; we aren’t suddenly waking up and thinking, I want to feel as glamorous as a tea bag that’s been left in the sink plughole overnight. (And interestingly, this is what an unimpressed Twitter user said when VS dropped its new look.)

The problem is that we still want to be sexy, but companies don’t want to sell sexy any more. The new VS look is indicative of a post #metoo sector, and society, which is so scared of getting sensuality wrong that now it just won’t sell it. It’s the same fear bubbling up beneath this new, puritanical popular prudery. God. That’s depressing. This wasn’t supposed to be the point of #metoo. It was supposed to be about stopping those in power from sexually harassing and abusing those who work for them.

It wasn’t about becoming afraid of sex, sensuality, femininity, identity, desire or any of the other infinitely fascinating forces humans have explored since we could first pick up a paintbrush. No-one would argue that Botticelli’s Venus would look better in granny pants and a crop top the colour of cold coffee.

So really, who wins from this? We’re not rejecting sexy because we’ve suddenly stopped wanting to be appealing. And we certainly haven’t solved any of the issues #metoo raised. All that’s happened is everyone’s too squeamish to talk about it, so we’re pretending we’re all too woke to be sexy now. How is that progress?