{"id":5240,"date":"2014-11-02T01:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T05:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/?p=5240"},"modified":"2014-11-10T19:40:05","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T00:40:05","slug":"the-perfect-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/02\/the-perfect-body\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect “Body”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vs-perfect-body\"<\/p>\n

What are we to make of a campaign image like this one? Victoria’s Secret is of course well aware of the politics around terms like “perfect body,” and I am sure it is at least as well versed in the intricacies of Dove’s “Real Beauty”<\/a> campaign as the people who created it. (VS might be reading too much into negative media and critical responses to Dove’s campaign this year<\/a> and last<\/a>, too, though.)<\/p>\n

I don’t even have the energy to be outraged by this kind of advertising. It seems self-evidently prescriptive, unkind, and elitist. It would be a great jumping-off point for a university seminar on advertising or internalized sexism \u2014 beauty standards seems too obvious.<\/p>\n

But it is very hard to see this kind of imagery as anything other than a deliberate taunt. Apparently “the perfect body” (by Victoria<\/i>) comes in several color ways (as any well-developed product line does) but, judging by the different types of bras listed beneath the models, is one that varies primarily in a woman’s preference for displaying her breasts.<\/p>\n

Then again, what else should we expect from the promoter of the world’s most expensive bra<\/a>?<\/p>\n

UPDATE, November 10: Tagline changed to “A Body for Every Body,” but the art is exactly the same. So now instead of saying their waifish models are “perfect,” they are actually claiming they represent “every body.” This is worse, a truly remarkable display of tone deafness.<\/p>\n

\"abodyforeverybody\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What are we to make of a campaign image like this one? Victoria’s Secret is of course well aware of the politics around terms like “perfect body,” and I am sure it is at least as well versed in the intricacies of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign as the people who created it. (VS might be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4OKzG-1mw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5258,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions\/5258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}