Images: Getty Images Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story I am speaking now to the people of the world who are not the shape of a stick insect. I hope you enjoyed your moment. I hope you cranked up the tunes and broke out the champagne back in those glorious years when we celebrated body positivity and the belief that our anatomies should have room for internal organs. I hope you enjoyed it. Took pictures. Kept a souvenir.
Because those halcyon days of celebrating the endless shapes, the beautiful details, the magnificent uniqueness of the human form? Gone. Done. Finished. Sayonara. Kindly collect your cellulite on the way out.
If there was one message from the 2026 Victoria’s Secret fashion show it was this: Body positivity was a limited time offer. It's now as sexy as a Hyundai sales event.
Two years ago, I watched the show with my then 15-year-old daughter. The spectacle was making its return six years after being cancelled—in every way. As I wrote then of that 2018 plug-pulling: “People understood disordered eating. Pussy hats had marched on Washington. And time was up for a whole generation of abusers. Suddenly, exploiting women’s bodies for entertainment didn’t feel so good. The moment was over. The Angels were locked in a glass box to be put on a bookshelf and marveled at once in a while. Holy shit can you believe the crap we used to do? Scandal, controversy, and the world marching inexorably toward body acceptance all coalesced.”
My daughter wasn’t particularly interested in watching that surely ill-fated comeback, but I told her to grab a seat and get comfy, a forthcoming chemistry test be damned. In the end, the Victoria’s Secret show of 2024 turned out slightly better than the chemistry test. I guess you could put them both in the D/D-cup range.
Obviously a parade of women in push-up bras and feathers was never going to be the ideal vehicle for feminism and inclusivity. And Les Wexner, the billionaire who built Victoria's Secret into an empire as well as a longtime financial patron to Jeffrey Epstein, was not going to be the guy to figure it out. But that can’t explain what I watched last night. Wexner left five years ago. The company is now run by a woman whose name I could look up but, in the spirit of feminism, have chosen not to. I’m sure the suffragettes, had they lived to see the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show of 2026, would have been right there in the front row. Susan B. Anthony waving a foam finger. Elizabeth Cady Stanton shouting, “Take it off!”
Of course, we don’t have them. Or Betty Friedan. Or Gloria Steinem. But you know who we do have? The Donald. The Cornell 7. And that voice of a generation, Megyn Kelly. The one who bravely reminded us that Cornell 7 accuser Jane Doe was “extremely beefy in her arms and legs” so she was lucky to have wandered into that fraternity on that chilly night.
With righteous indignation as my copilot, I poured myself a glass of wine and summoned my daughter to the living room. We settled onto the couch with pretzels and cheese. My son wandered in.
Barbara Palvin, six weeks post-childbirth
Gigi Hadid in her sixth Victoria's Secret show
What follows is an edited transcript of the next 30 minutes, during which my family conducted an impromptu seminar on feminism, hypocrisy, and the appropriate amount of clothing to wear while eating cereal.
“You can’t criticize their bodies.” My daughter.
“Aren’t they inviting us to talk about their bodies?” Me.
“M…