2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show USA Magazine

1.) The “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition of television. Both are outdated relics of our ogling past. It used to be relatively tough to find women wearing hardly any clothes on television or magazines. Now you have to work to avoid it. Fashion for women is nearly all body-hugging, curve-enhancing garments. And, of course, the Internet, which was apparently invented to share images and videos of woman wearing hardly any or no clothes at all.

2.) The show seems a little desperate to be something more than a festival of near-nudity and leering. I’m not condemning nudity, near-nudity or leering. These models make millions of dollars. If they’re being exploited, I’ll sign up for that. And leering, I suppose, is, at-best, uncouth, but I like beautiful women. I watch them on TV and in movies. I look at pictures of them in magazines and on the Internet. I know the scolds in the English department would disapprove, but I already graduated and am not taking English classes anymore and not seeking their approval for my entertainment choices.

No word on whether Homeland Security will investigate Taylor Swift for wearing the flag of another nation during the "2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show."

No word on whether Homeland Security will investigate Taylor Swift for wearing the flag of another nation during the “2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”

3.) I tuned in this year because Taylor Swift was performing. I like that young lady. She’s a great performer. Sure, she writes a lot of songs about failed relationships. She’s 24 years old. That’s to be expected. I will be more critical of her if she’s still playing the same notes when she’s 34. But for now she’s a fun pop star in a dreary musical landscape. She performed her hit “Trouble” and another song with Fall Out Boy, which I didn’t know but sounded good. There was, in fact, a lot of good music on the show.

4.) The whole of the show is, excuse the pun, a lot of padding. The nearly naked women parading up and down the runway in silly costumes — they’re not sexy at all, just sort of moving sculptures — takes maybe 20 minutes. The rest of the hour is filled out with behind-the-scenes puffery about young women using social media (shocking revelation!) and brief features on how hard it is to be a model. There was a teary feature on one of the models who sprained her ankle the previous year and was not back better than ever this year, opening up a segment in which the models wore hardly any clothes with a bird theme. Modeling may, in fact, be a tough job. But let’s not overstate things. Wearing impossibly high heels while wearing hardly any clothes is not operating an arc welder.

5.) I was a big fan of the old Victoria’s Secret catalogs featuring Stephanie Seymour. But the modern models aren’t all that attractive to me. They’re tall and beautiful to be sure, but they seem more odd than sensual against the celebrities or everyday women I find attractive. Fashion holds little interest to me. I wear navy blue golf shirts, khakis and sneakers nearly every day of the year. I’ve never bought sexy underwear for a girlfriend. I’ve admired many women in lingerie, usually through popular culture rather than true life experience. Most lingerie strikes me as sexy, but impractical. The stuff on these fashion show is just silly. One model wore a glittery Eiffel Tower in her hair. Another had a giant cardboard smiley face on her back. And some of the “angel wings” were kind of creepy. If women are worried we expect them to look like the Victoria’s Secret models, they can stop. With these getups, the models are closer to clowns than sexual fantasies.

 Victoria’s Secret models celebrate the end of the 2013 fashion show by sipping water and spitting it out and looking longingly at an orange rind. 1. ) The “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition of television.
 Original air date: Dec. 10, 2013 1. ) The "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show" is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition of television. Both are outdated relics .. ".  Original air date: Dec. 10, 2013 1. ) The "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show" is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition of television.
No word on whether Homeland Security will investigate Taylor Swift for wearing the flag of another nation during the “2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. 3. ) I tuned in this year because Taylor Swift was performing. I like that young lady. She’s a great performer.


And, of course, the Internet, which was apparently invented to share images and videos of woman wearing hardly any or no clothes at all. 2. ) The show seems a little desperate to be something more than a festival of near-nudity and leering.
The rest of the hour is filled out with behind-the-scenes puffery about young women using social media (shocking revelation! ) and brief features on how hard it is to be a model.  There was a teary feature on one of the models who sprained her ankle the previous year and was not back better than ever this year, opening up a segment in which the models wore hardly any clothes with a bird theme.  Modeling may, in fact, be a tough job. But let’s not overstate things.
It used to be relatively tough to find women wearing hardly any clothes on television or magazines. Now you have to work to avoid it.