Middle Ground
23 October 2006
VicSec has opened a new store near me. Of course I went and checked it out.
Guess what I saw? Heaps of little-girl pink cotton undies!
Crikey, talk about a conflicted marketing message. I mean between VicSec’s erotic print ads featuring uber sexy-girls, Heidi Klum and Gisele Bundchen, and their brick and mortar Pink merchandising, what’s a girl to think?
I know how I felt. Flummoxed!
Call me middlescent fuddy-duddy, but there’s no way in hell all that Polka dot on white cotton made me feel age-aspirational, for my pre-cellulite days, that is.
Jostling with the teens at the Love Pink table did NOT evoke pangs of, “Oh my gawd, I want to be18 again and shoving my bum in these.”
I read a letter from a reader in this month’s Vogue responding to a pictorial of said super model, Gisele, in a Lanvin baby doll dress. The reader was concerned that the dress, and Gisele’s pose in the dress, sent an unfortunate message:
Child-woman as beautiful, “promotes the infantilization of women,” said the reader.
This time last year, I said something similar about an In Style pictorial featuring Jessica Simpson, back arched, looking like an eight year-old with her Popped Boobage and Belly.
Apparently nothing has changed during the past year.
VicSec’s adolescent Pink branding has taken off in a big way, Lanvin loves the baby doll look, and no doubt Jesscia and her crew are still arching their backs hoping the child-woman persona will attract the right bloke.
Hmm, where does that leave my kind, and me - the over-thirties not aspiring to be under eighteen?
Exactly where I started: flummoxed over the trend in popular messaging that suggests women are either cutesy girls or, according to VicSec’s marketing, at the other end of the spectrum as mavens of erotica.
Oh for some middle ground that has nothing to do with age-related sexuality! That convergent spot where one need not feel compelled to aspire to Lolitta in Love Pink or Heidi Klum in black lace, but rather, just comfy in one’s undies.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:22 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:34 pm