Today was my biannual trip to Victoria’s Secret to buy my 7 for $28.95 underwear.  TMI? I’ve been buying them there for as long as I can remember and quite frankly they’re about the only thing they have in my size anymore.  I am surely not part of the  demographic this particular chain has in mind as I’ve recently heard in news stories  and perhaps I need to go elsewhere to buy my undergarments.  But I am a creature of habit and so yes, today I was back.

Standing in the ridiculously long line to check out, I had a lot of time to just observe people and things. There’s nothing like seeing larger than life posters of beautiful, young, unhealthy skinny women all around you dressed in – well, virtually nothing, posing in provocative ways, to make you feel not so good about yourself.  But it wasn’t me I was thinking about.

There were two cute middle school aged girls in front of me in line with gift cards (who gives an adolescent girl Victoria’s Secret gift cards?)  and I wondered how these posters were making impressions on them.  At their age I was wearing white cotton everything and it served me well, and while I was a typical teenager, concerned about how I looked and how I dressed, my underwear was not one of my biggest concerns.  Maybe they just want to be pretty.  Maybe they feel pressured to be what they perceive to be pretty.

There were young moms walking through the store with their young children, both boys and girls, all of them looking at the merchandise and the pictures, and I wondered what kind of image of women it sets up in their minds.  As women we say we don’t want to be objectified by men, but aren’t we being a little hypocritical if we say that and then support a place that promotes just that type of thing?  And doesn’t this kind of thing set up a false fantasy for men as well?

Where is that line between doing or wearing something that makes you feel good about yourself and the impression it gives someone else?  We tend to say it’s the other person’s issue for thinking the way they do, but we’re humans after all, just going on first impressions and cultural norms.  And if we expose (no pun intended) our kids and young people to limiting images of women as sexy underwear models, then what else can we expect from our society?

The reason things won’t change in any hurry is because as women we can’t decide what the limits are.  Let’s take humor for instance.  I recently heard of an SNL skit about a certain part of the male anatomy in a box.  I tend to find this really tacky and I would think most women would, especially in light of our current Me Too culture, however some women think this type of humor is funny.  And they have that right of course, but this is why people are confused about the line we talked about earlier.  Can we have this sense of humor and still maintain a respectful relationship with each other?

I don’t have the answers, I’m just making some observations.  There’s no way we can change people’s views of women if we as women don’t know what we want that view to be.  In the meantime, I’m pretty sure that the next time I go underwear shopping, I’m going to find somewhere that doesn’t have unrealistic images of women plastered all over the windows and walls and make some decisions as to what my view of THIS woman can be.