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2010 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on CBS

Brand loyalty is one of the guiding principles of corporate marketing. “Get them while they’re young” – so goes the axiom – “and they’ll be a customer for life.” This makes sense if the company is selling Chicken McNuggets and Happy Meals, but much trickier if they’re selling thongs and Wonderbras.

CBS aired the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on November 30^th with special musical guest Katy Perry. And while the show aired during the 10:00 p.m. ET timeslot, it nevertheless seemed skewed towards a decidedly younger audience. For making a holiday tradition of peddling sexualized ideals to teenage girls, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show has been named the Worst TV Show of the Week.

Essentially an hour long commercial for lingerie (and arguably, eating disorders), the show featured six runway segments. It is telling that the program ended with the “Pink” segment, showcasing Victoria’s Secret products geared toward girls. In a 2004 article in the Chicago Tribune, Victoria's Secret executive Monica Mitro stated that “[the Pink line] hopes to lure young bra buyers from Target and Penney's underwear aisles and build brand loyalty.” Or as one blogger on collegecandy.com more pointedly noted: “The sub-division of VS is supposedly geared towards high schoolers and undergrads, but is usually found on awkward middle school girls, typically in the form of bejeweled hoodies and capri-length sweat pants with PINK written across the butt.”

The clothes (or rather the lack thereof) that came across the runway during the Fashion Show‘s finale spoke volumes about the potential customers Victoria’s Secret is targeting during this holiday shopping season. While Katy Perry (who, by the way, hosted the Teen Choice Awards earlier this year) sang a medley of her hits including “Teenage Dream,” a bevy of models sashayed in skimpy outfits with patterns that came straight out of a 1^st grade classroom. Behind a backdrop of stars and multi-colored balloons, models wore rainbow stockings, polka-dot panties, a smiley-face sunshine robe, lipstick-spotted pj’s with a long slit down the front and a hole over the rear to expose the sequined “Kiss This” panties, a cheeky tartan mini-skirt, and heart-shaped wings.

By targeting increasingly younger shoppers, Victoria’s Secret fills adolescent girls’ mind with degrading, unrealistic images of women in an effort to sell underwear.

Curiously, as in previous years, the fashion show aired on the same night as CBS’s annual broadcast of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.  It’s a shame that CBS would cap off a night that starts off so family-friendly with something so tawdry.  The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is one holiday tradition families should definitely try to avoid.