Victoria's Secret Models Admit Their Campaign Pictures Were Heavily Edited: "It's All Fake"

Victoria's Secret runway shows, epitomized by their flagship event, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, have long been emblematic of glamour, fantasy, and aspirational allure. High-profile models, or "Angels", like Adriana Lima, Tyra Banks, and Gisele Bündchen, have graced its catwalks, often in elaborate lingerie sets adorned with feathers, sequins, and the infamous "angel wings".

However, these shows and the various billboards associated with Victoria's Secret have sparked considerable controversy. Critics contend that they promote unrealistic beauty standards, as the Angels are often exceptionally thin, tall, with impossibly perfect figures. There have been calls for more diversity, especially in body size. Controversies peaked in 2018 when Ed Razek, then-Chief Marketing Officer, made some unsavory comments about plus-size and transgender models, leading to his resignation. In 2019, the annual show was cancelled, marking a significant shift. The company announced a major rebrand in 2021, retiring the Angel brand in favor of a collective of accomplished women dubbed the "VS Collective". This new group, including actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and soccer star Megan Rapinoe, represents supposedly diverse backgrounds and achievements, aiming to shift Victoria’s Secret's image from sexualized fantasy to individual empowerment and inclusivity.

On a recent episode of Real Pod with Victoria Garrick Browne, famous Victoria's Secret models Jasmine Tookes and Josephine Skriver answered some questions about their modeling career with the renowned lingerie company.

Victoria's Secret Models Admit Their Pictures Were Heavily Edited

Browne asked the models whether they ever thought about the impact they were having on young women when they were successful Victoria's Secret models and Angels. Women are dying to know what they were eating every day, what size they wore, what their waist measurement was, etc. So many young women looked up to them and wanted to look like them, even if their natural build was totally different from what the Angels looked like.

In the clip shared on Instagram, Skriver seemed shocked that anybody would believe that their photos were real. She was "100% sure" that people knew that women don't actually look that perfect in real life.

When you look at the older Victoria's Secret campaigns, "obviously there's retouching," Tookes says. She points to her face to indicate that their blemishes would get covered up in post-production.

"I don't even look like my pictures," Skriver continues, claiming she could stand right next to a huge VS billboard of herself for 30 minutes, and nobody would be able to tell that they were the sam eperson. Her mom asked her, "Is that you? I didn't even know you could look like this."

"You're creating all these illusions," Skriver says. She adds that she "never really felt naked" because they had so many layers of body makeup, glitter, sparkles, and body oil slathered all over them. The production team would do anything to make them look their absolute best—perfect, in fact.

"No one looks like this," she says. "It's all fake."

Although this discussion was meant to foster an honest discussion about photoshopping and unreasonable beauty standards, many people in the comment section didn't quite take it that way.

"Ugh. What a cop out to say that you assumed people knew it wasn’t real. Just tell the truth, you didn’t think about it or if you did, you didn’t care," one person wrote.

"And I guarantee they still edit their instagram photos 😒," another person commented.

"If you asked them 10 years ago, they’d be like “oh yeah we work really hard to look like this”. All the workouts, skin care, makeup routines were plugged for this very reason," another said.

They all have a point. The message about modeling and beauty image keeps changing as the years go on and the trends transform. Right now, we're in a time of radical authenticity, so virtually every single model talks about the dangers of overcorrecting pictures, photoshopping, and setting unrealistic beauty standards. But just several years ago, you would never see a celebrity or model admit that their photos or campaigns are severely edited. It used to be a hushed secret in the industry. But today, models are all too quick to lament about the heavy editing—and yet, they still take part in it and very likely edit their own pictures on social media. There's nothing wrong with seeing beautiful women on the cover of magazines and on billboards, but attempting to make it seem like they thought women knew it was all fake seems like a poor strategy in retrospect. They're better off just admitting that they hit the genetic jackpot and are impossibly beautiful creatures who look perfect on a humongous billboard. Own it and move on.

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