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Victor/Victoria’s Secret

Lingerie giant's chief marketing officer says no to transgender underwear models -- then forced to apologize for transphobic bigotry
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Ed Razek, chief marketer at lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret, said something commensensical in an interview with Vogue this week. He was talking about the company’s annual televised Fashion Show, which, according to Vogue, last year “was seen by some 1 billion people in 190 countries, a 45 percent increase over 2016.”

Razek was asked about sending transsexual models down the runway in Victoria’s Secret lingerie. He said:

Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It’s a 42-minute entertainment special. That’s what it is. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and any other fashion brand in the world would take it in a minute, including the competitors that are carping at us.

BIGO-O-O-O-O-T!

You knew this was coming next:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Look. Nobody wants to look at ladies with male genitalia walking runways in lingerie. Or males who formerly had penises doing same. It’s the most obvious thing in the world, but now people have to pretend that this is attractive or normal. How many of those one billion people in 190 countries would sour on Victoria’s Secret if the company started sending fake women down the runway? Most men — except Stephen Rea in “The Crying Game” –do not want their fantasies to be penis-having “women”.

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is a pageant that’s about objectifying and exploiting women, not “women.” And now we all have to pretend that normal men want to watch transgender lingerie models, with their broad shoulders and big hands, parade in panties? That they’ll be able to sell expensive lingerie to a mass global audience by hanging it on she-male frames?

No. Just, no. You can intimidate fashion world and media elites into pretending that transgender lingerie models are desirable, but you can’t make the mass audience accept that. Try it and see.

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