I remember when I watched the 2012 Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I was 19, in my tiny, silverfish-infested university box room, wearing a fleece onesie – the antithesis of glam. But marching across my tiny laptop screen were the most beautiful women in the world, all bouncy blow dries, skimpy underwear and mega-watt smiles. On their backs were ginormous wings – some made of feathers, others of American flags or huge faux orchids. These “angels” were the epitome of sexiness, fun and allure. It was the last year I watched it.

As I grew older, I began to see the problems with this parade of skinny, white women in skimpy underwear year after year. Not only did no one in my life – even the most beautiful women – look like the angels, but that everyone had stopped trying to. The show began to feel cringeworthy and gauche. In the past, I’d dismissed criticisms of the show and what the brand stood for – perfection, coquettishness – as a lofty way to attack women, but now I could see they had a point.

Then followed a string of controversies, including the brand’s refusal to allow transgender models to walk the runway, claiming it would spoil the “fantasy” of the event, and its constant promotion of unattainable – sometimes even unhealthy – body standards. At a time when Rihanna’s Savage X Beauty lingerie line was embracing consumers of all shapes, all sizes, all genders and all races, Victoria’s Secret was not only uncool, but out of touch. The underwear brand eventually ended its shows altogether in 2019 after a decline in viewership – millions of other women, like me, had also turned it off.

A new documentary shines a brutal light on the behind-the-scenes machinations of the company. Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, streaming on Paramount+ from today, is an incredibly uncomfortable watch for those of us who bought into its toxic ethos. From sexual assault to the undermining of female executives to the sheer greed of its CEO, behind closed doors, Victoria’s Secret was not the fun-loving brand it pretended to be. Even hearing one model describe the annual fashion show as “exposing” and revealing that she used to go home afterwards and cry in the bath is shocking. We were always told the angels loved walking in the show.

Most disturbing is former CEO Les Wexner’s relationship with convicted paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. According to sources who worked at the company, Epstein would pose as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models as a way to meet young women hoping to build a career. In 1997, one woman filed a sexual battery charge against Epstein, whom she originally trusted because he had told her he worked for Victoria’s Secret. Wexner has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, though association with the former financier has left an indelible stain on his reputation and Wexner eventually resigned in February 2020.

Watching the three-part film, it’s not hard to see how I – and millions of other women – fell for the lie Victoria’s Secret was selling us. Its boom era came in the early noughties, when Sex and the City and lads’ mags championed women’s supposed reclamation of sex. Victoria’s Secret fit right in, combining a cheeky attitude with a proto-feminist message of empowerment – these women wanted to be stomping down the runway in stilettos and wearing “very little clothes”, as one TV spot advertised the show. It was true, too. In the doc, supermodel Tyra Banks is seen talking about how she nagged her agent to get her a spot in the show. “It couldn’t be better!” claimed Alessandra Ambrosi.

But the magic was all fake. The façade of being a company “run by women” was dispelled by former employees who struggled to get their designs past the men at the top. “They wanted nothing to do with shapewear or maternity,” lamented one designer. They just wanted thongs.

Angels and Demons is wide-ranging, giving lots of background to how the business came to be such a monolith. It respects Wexler’s ambitions, while also questioning his morals and unchecked need to be held aloft in New York society – though it focuses a little too much on the Jeffrey Epstein connection, perhaps in an attempt to make the series newsworthy and not just an attack on Victoria’s Secret. It is not unlike Netflix’s film about Abercrombie and Fitch, which was also accused of creating a culture of toxicity. That the two brands had so many of the same issues when it came to body image and the idea of what was beautiful was perhaps due to the fact that until 1999, Wexler owned them both.

What I fixated on during my “Victoria’s Secret phase” was the constant reporting of the angels’ diets and exercise regimes. In 2012, model Joan Smalls revealed that she worked out so much leading up to the show that she burned 800 calories in one day, while Doutzen Kroes showed off the ingredients of the smoothies she was living off on Twitter, made up of flaxseed, coconut, calcium powder and acai berries. “I didn’t eat very much for 10 years,” says one former model in the documentary. “I lost a part of myself.” When Kim Kardashian reveals she lost 21lb to fit into her Met Gala dress earlier this year, there was outrage; back then it wasn’t just seen as normal, it was an achievement to be celebrated.

There’s no doubt that Victoria’s Secret had a negative effect on my body image. At a size 10 I was convinced as a teenager that I was “fat”. In the eyes of the biggest underwear brand on the planet, I was. “There were people who were tortured by it,” acknowledged one former employee. Wexner wanted “sexy girls next door” – the same women found in the pages of Playboy. Even freckles and moles were considered imperfect.

Recently, Victoria’s Secret has rebooted itself as an inclusive, less glamorous brand. They’re using plus size models, and older models. The marketing strategy claims the company has “changed” and that it “sees” its customer more clearly than before. There’s a new CEO, Martin Waters and a new VS Collective initiative, a group of women including footballer Megan Rapinoe, actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas, model and inclusivity Paloma Elsesser, who will advise the brand on what “real women” want.

And it seems to be working: in the fourth quarter since the reboot, Victoria’s Secret reported growth after years of dismal sales. I’m surprised: in my eyes, too much damage had been done.

But it wasn’t just the Victoria’s Secret that had to change: consumers had to follow suit. Have we really? We like to think that a brand like this would never have the same hold over culture again. But its legacy lives on via Instagram, where the Kardashians, whose beauty standards are just as unobtainable, yet just as desired as the Victoria’s Secret models’ (Kendall Jenner is, after all, a former angel).

Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons presents some uncomfortable truths but doesn’t capture the extent to which young girls were manipulated by a company run by men who only cared about making money and creating a global platform for men to ogle at women. I have stopped feeling guilty for not having Victoria’s Secret-approved abs. It’s harder to let go of the shame of buying into the brand’s dangerous culture in the first place.

Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons is streaming on Paramount+ now

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