The End of an Era? Victoria Secret Angels fired.
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
Athletic and plus sized women do not look like teenage girls is what I meant.
i really couldn't give a flying fuck if they no longer use models, or decide to change the lineup to provide some variety. I've never bothered watching their fashion shows, and things like "beauty" are subjective as hell. I personally think most of the women they use for their "angels" look too damn skinny, and I just want them to eat something and not wear those dumb ass heels. I've seen isolated clips here and there, and the women look fairly uniform in body type (skinny as hell), so if they want to add some chunkier women, some more masculine looking women, some with inks and piercings, fucking go for it.
If I want to see sexy women in lingerie, I have the internet, which is where people buy VS's products anyway. Besides, aren't they like, tanking financially right now under their current business model anyway? TImes are changing VS, change with them.
So I find the idea of even bothering to bring this up, fairly pointless. There is no lack of near naked women on fashion runways, all over the world. This is hardly some major thing. All those hungry girls can easily go find (and ARE finding) other modeling jobs aside from VS. It's not like this is the only gig they have as a model.
If I want to see sexy women in lingerie, I have the internet, which is where people buy VS's products anyway. Besides, aren't they like, tanking financially right now under their current business model anyway? TImes are changing VS, change with them.
So I find the idea of even bothering to bring this up, fairly pointless. There is no lack of near naked women on fashion runways, all over the world. This is hardly some major thing. All those hungry girls can easily go find (and ARE finding) other modeling jobs aside from VS. It's not like this is the only gig they have as a model.
Well, people's perceptions of beauty are subjective, and that subjective view is at least societally formed. Once upon a time, people like Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth were the hottest women on the planet. Step forward 50 years, agents would see them, snigger, make "oink" sounds and tell them to lose 30 pounds.
So you can perhaps sympathise with people who have had a certain image of beauty rammed into their heads for a few decades, and suddenly find themselves short on top totty to gawp at when society decides something else is beautiful and fill hteir adverts and magazines with that instead.
Comicsgate is an offshoot of that other Gate that believes that the reason that superhero comics aren't doing so hot is that Marvel and DC are letting the wrong kind of people write and draw comics instead of the dozens of more obvious reasons that superhero comics aren't doing great.
The comics are GoFundMe and Indiegogo grifts with bad writing and occasionally passable art that are going to save comic book shops by selling directly to consumers, somehow. (They can't use Kickstarter because Kickstarter doesn't let you Kickstart the same project multiple times)
This particular idiot is either saying the quiet part out loud by admitting the Angels are there to be sexy instead of selling lingerie or is planning on getting into the sexy women's underwear market. Which, considering their market efforts with comics, would be comedy gold.
The topic is prime MRA bait material, it is no surprise. The hardest pill they don't want to swallow is that it's not about them anymore.
Looks like David there hasn't delved very deep into the comics he's putting up... the preview pages for the second one there involve a Hispanic pink-haired woman kicking the ass of a guy who calls her a slut. Also a massive stone statue of Freddie Mercury at the "hall of champion badasses".
You know, exactly the kind of thing that would make the right-wing culture warriors decry a mainstream comics company as "woke" if they did it.
"My daddy got catered to. It's my turn now; I deserve it!"
Honestly, all the woke shit in the world won't matter so long as they're selling uncomfortable, overpriced lingerie (and casual/athletic wear) of middling quality compared to competing brands, that lacks a distinctive brand identity other than a name, that isn't keeping up with annual fashion trends whilst simultaneously clinging to a dated business model with far too high overhead for current times. Or to put it another way from a friend of mine recently, you can buy $7-12 dollar Chinese shit on Amazon that looks and wears better, and lasts longer, than Victoria's Secret.
That's what "get woke go broke" misses. A helluva lot of these companies "get woke" because they're already "go(ing) broke", and the "woke" is a hail mary to get free advertising and short-term profits, to stabilize the books and buy enough time to strategize the "divest and dissect" endgame of the 21st Century American business model.
More to the point, Marvel and DC are pulling the exact same shit that caused the comics crash of the '90s -- fake collectors' editions, mass variant covers, stupid sales gimmicks, predatory sales practices towards brick-and-mortar stores to eke the last few cents out of a dying business model, over-reliance on residuals -- and they think playing the "we're woke and everybody critical of our business practices are racist/sexist!" card will save them in the long run from unsustainable and irrational business practices that already burnt the industry to the ground once in the last thirty years. The wokies they're hiring are ultimately useful idiots, and the drama around them is kabuki theater to distract from the real problems in the industry.
That's what "get woke go broke" misses. A helluva lot of these companies "get woke" because they're already "go(ing) broke", and the "woke" is a hail mary to get free advertising and short-term profits, to stabilize the books and buy enough time to strategize the "divest and dissect" endgame of the 21st Century American business model.
Sadly, this is also true and the final form of the outrage-for-cash-and-prizes social media grift machine.
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(Quick reminder for anyone following along that this card doesn't exist).
Yeah, but the perception of that card lets a middling artist make a living off of outrage YouTube videos and selling one issue of a rip-off ninja turtles comic every two years.
Yup.
A lot of it is just marketing: we all know that quality or value isn't what really makes a lot of companies shift product. A brand is huge one day, and gone anywhere from 2-20 years down the line: it's really hard to keep with the times. Victoria's Secret has almost certainly long since peaked. Their brand just doesn't fit what people want any more, so it's in a frantic attempt to change its public perception to keep its ball rolling as long as possible. I remember when Gap took over the high street in my country. Now their stores are few and far between. Currently H&M and Primark rule the roost, or the likes of Asos and BooHoo online, and I wouldn't bet on any of them being major players in 2040.
Also true. "Non-woke" companies aren't really inclined to go woke unless something's already wrong: why would management change a well-functioning business model? They're trying "woke" as an attempt to see whether that will improve matters, and inevitably if it isn't (or at least not a critical problem) they will continue to decline.
A friend of mine very into his comics spent hours raging to me about the last collapse: so he said DC and Marvel wrecked the business model of small comic shops in pursuit of their own profits, bankrupted a ton of them, and then found out a load of their would-be customers didn't have places to buy their comics anymore causing a major sales dip. Whoopsies!
I do think, especially after the athletic wear boom over the past 4-5 years, people are getting to a point of looking for greater longevity and comfort in what they wear as opposed to appearance. Especially in light of post-recession economic woes, and as compared to the dubiously comfortable fashion trends that dominated the decade prior to that. Most women I've talked to in the past few years about lingerie -- quite a few, considering my past place of employment, the topic's an inevitability when almost all the merchandise you move is women's wear -- are much happier with current trends just on the basis of comfort and ease of wear, compared to those of the past.
As far as I can tell, the big trend right now is combining contemporary fabrics and manufacturing with vintage cuts and retro-inspired style, and I really don't see that going away in the next few years. Especially since Amazon pretty well has the market cornered on "novelty" lingerie with its endless supply of less-than-$10 Chinese shit. Since VS missed the boat on the former trend and got pushed out of the latter market, they really don't have a market niche to fill and that's what they need to fix to make the business sustainable in the long run...but as I implied, I don't think long-term sustainability is the intended goal but rather to push the company past the goal line of "divest and dissect".
What would fix things is to ditch the hard copy periodical format, and embrace graphic novel production and digital distribution. Comic book stores have been walking corpses since the comics crash; the writing has been on that wall since most comics stores had to transition to a hybrid model of merch sales, gaming products, and gaming supplies. The TPB boom is pretty much the definitive smoking gun as far as performance indicators of market performance and trends.
But for some reason, the comics industry is just refusing to swallow that bitter pill and they're just reverting back to the predatory, gimmicky shit of the late-'80s and early-'90s, trying to manipulate consumers already wise to the tricks into collection and speculation.
The shot heard 'round the fandom should have been when in...early 2017 if I remember right...when store owners started posting their purchase agreements with distributors and invoices online, revealing Marvel was abusing the direct market's non-returnability and inflating their sales numbers by mandating minimum bulk purchases of...certain...titles. Because Marvel was counting sales to retailers, not sales to readers.
Thereby, leaving already-struggling comic book stores holding the bag in the form of inventory they were forced to pay for and couldn't return for credit, which readers weren't buying.
I think - it's kind of 20-25 years back now - what my friend was complaining about was some guy took over at ?Marvel and started reprinting rare and classic editions: because of course people want them and will pay for them, so that's profits. In the process severely damaging the second hand comic book market, through which many comic book stores made a substantial chunk of their money, and thus went bust.
But in a sense, it doesn't matter that much to many investors. They don't have any loyalty: Marvel is after all just a brand that can be stripped for short-term profits and then they sell out as convenient and leave the incipient wreck to less dynamic and clued-in shareholders. Comic writers can keep going and continue under another brand.
I feel there is a certain irony that as women seem to be moving towards comfort and functionality from looks, men appear to be going the other way.
As an example, I've been bugged by YouTube videos suggesting I need a good quality pubic hair trimmer. The idea of shaving my pubes has literally never occurred to me until this advert started telling me it was the thing to do. I happily say I remain completely unconvinced, and short of requiring some sort of groin operation I intend to keep cutting implements far from my genitals.