Victoria’s Secret’s spring break line seems to be going after teenagers.
Every year Victoria’s Secret hosts a fashion show to unveil its upcoming line of padded push-up bras that miraculously make breasts look bigger and lacy panties that magically make derrieres look prettier.
In the past, the Limited Brands Retailer’s show featured guest headliners such as Marc Anthony, Sting and Ricky Martin, performers who appealed to an older, more mature audience.
Last winter, the lingerie company put teen idol Justin Bieber on the stage as models wearing the colorful Pink line cotton panties and bras strutted across the stage.
The point? To market the popular Pink line initially launched for college students to an even younger audience—teenagers.
At a conference in January Limited Brands’ Chief Financial Officer Stuart Burgdoerfer confirmed Victoria’s Secret’s plans. “When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be?” Burgdoerfer asked. “They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.”
Now, Victoria’s Secret’s Pink line is selling its spring break line with the slogan “Bright Young Things,” which you’ll find emblazoned across the website next to a lanky model posing provocatively in a bikini top and those slouchy sweat pants that have become wildly popular with 16-year-old girls. Victoria’s Secret’s models are often voluptuous and curvy but this one has a youthful skinny figure. In the spring line, you’ll find an array of panties, from lace back cheeksters with the word “Wild” on the back, to a lace trim thong with “Call Me” on the front, to green-and-white polka-dot hipsters reading “Feeling Lucky?”
Moms typically pick up their tweens and teens boxes of underwear at big-box stores like Costco, Target and Walmart. Retailers like Gap, Gymboree and Hanna Anderson also carry these items for young girls. The bras and panties are usually fun, colorful and comfy, certainly not skimpy. You might find unicorns, Hello Kitty, or cotton-tailed bunnies on them. Now, Victoria’s Secret and a growing number of the edgier teen retailers are hoping to tap into this market with lingerie lines that are more fashionable and sophisticated, Business Week reported.
Last year, Hot Topic, a store that’s the antithesis to J. Crew and markets to music-loving teen goths, introduced a new lingerie line called Blackheart. Visit the Hot Topic online store’s Undies/Bras department and you’ll find Blue Leopard Hot Pants for $5.50, a Red Black Lace Bralette for $16.50 and a Hot Pink Lace Baby Doll for $24.50. These racy items aren’t any different from the lingerie you might find at a fetish store in a seedy part of a big city.
Hot Topic also introduced five Blackheart retail stores in Texas that they claim is geared to older and more mature customers, reported the LA Times.
Urban Outfitters is another retailer popular with teens that has increased its lingerie offerings. Business Week reported that the store hopes “intimates could eventually make up 10 percent of sales.”
Justice, a store for 7- to 12-year-olds, is now selling $22 leopard print bras and $9 flowered panties online.
Victoria’s Secret captures the teen market with its spring Pink line.
Parents: How should we react to all of this?
One San Diego mom who blogs for Cafe Mom’s The Stir has gotten a lot of media attention for saying that moms should be happy Victoria’s Secret is now catering to teens.
Jenny Erikson writes:
All of a sudden, I understand who fits into those XS bikini briefs that taunt me from the table at Victoria’s Secret. I knew no one past puberty could fit into those! Anyway, as the mom of a girl that is soon going to decide she doesn’t want cartoon characters on her underwear, and will be wearing a bra sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to figure out where we’re going to purchase them.
It’ll probably be Victoria’s Secret — and I have no problem with that. I even like that fact that they are marketing toward a younger audience. What’s wrong with having fun, bright-colored underwear? Girls change all the time in front of each other — for sports or recreational activities that require it, at slumber parties or camp, for the school play … no one wants to be the girl with the ugly underwear.
My point-of-view is a little different.
First of all, the Gap sells entirely appropriate and cute underwear. Even Costco’s panties come in fun colors. These underwear might lack lace but they’re not ugly.
I feel that teen girls these days face countless pressures from the media, big retailers and their peers to look a certain way. Their ears must be pierced, their toes painted, their feet outfitted in certain shoes, their hair colored (Yes, 12-year-olds are getting highlights, pedicures, even bikini waxes).
Now must they also wear fashionable undergarments? Really?
Girls these days are growing up way too fast and they’re missing out on those wonderful carefree years when they can look at themselves in the mirror and laugh, giggle and make funny faces and see a beautiful young girl—rather than look in the mirror and worry about their hair, their weight, their clothes, and how their boobs look in a push-up bra and a pair of hipster panties.
What’s more, I worry that these lingerie lines are sexualizing teens. After all, Victoria’s Secret is the company putting out a catalog that many men in America have looked through while masturbating. It’s the Playboy magazine that you can safely receive in your mailbox. And this is all fine but do young girls need to be wearing undergarments coming out of this catalog?
Yes, their bras can work wonders on boobs and they’ve got some cute panties, even if they’re poorly made, but do 13 year olds, even 16 year olds, need to be wearing them?
