Is It Time We Turned Our Back On The Unrealistic Victoria’s Secret Ideal Of Beauty?

Last week in the run-up to the annual Victoria’s Secret show, the brands most famous angels tweeted gruesome pictures of the injuries they sustained while trying to get their already gym honed perfect bodies into even better shape. 

Adriana Lima who gave birth two months ago was determined to fit into the jewel encrusted undies and managed to graze and bruise her knuckles as she donned a pair of boxing gloves to shift the baby weight while South African beauty Candice Swanepole showed off her emaciated concave stomach after a particularly intense session with her trainer.

Adriana before: Bloody and bruised knuckes

Adriana after: Tiny and toned just two months after giving birth

And while the extremes these models go to in order to achieve an almost Barbie like aesthetic (tiny waists, legs that go on forever, boobs) are totally unrealistic for “normal” women, at least they are being honest about how difficult it is to achieve their gravity defying figures. Miranda Kerr also advocates a healthy lifestyle and seems to subsist on Spirulina (we commend anyone who can stomach a daily dose of this stinky superfood supplement), nuts and seeds and a smattering of coconut oil on salads so it seems only fair that she has pins to die for, rock hard abs and killer cheek bones.

Candice before: Concave and crying out for some food!

Candice after: Strutting her stuff with a feather duster

And although these women might be portraying an unrealistic ideal of beauty at least they are honest about how hard it is to achieve such a look.

Unfortunately, the newest angels on the block seem to think that they can spin the ‘models do eat’ broken record and expect us to believe them. Catwalk queens Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn are no strangers to the runway having both fronted major campaigns and walked in all the major shows during fashion week and granted they both have youth on their side (they are 19 and 22 respectively) but the girls have frustratingly  insisted that they shunned the expected exercise and diet regimes favoured by the other angels and pigged out on junk food in the run-up to the Victoria’s Secret show instead, even eating pizza backstage.

Cara claims to have pigged out prior to taking to the runway

Speaking before the show to Grazia magazine Cara revealed that she snuck in McDonalds for lunch and pizza for dinner the night before the show and rather inspiringly proclaimed “I’m a model but I eat”. Dunn also claims to have hit the fast-food saying “If anything, I've been trying to put more junk in my trunk because Victoria's Secret is about celebrating a womanly body, so I even had a KFC the other day.”

Jourdan's fond of a KFC chicken bucket 

There are always exceptions to the rule but do you really expect us normal folk to believe you girls? We don’t know about you but parading around in our knickers is the last thing we want to do in the wake of a Dominos binge. And saying you stuff your face with crap and still manage to look like a goddess just feeds the eating disorder beast that consumes many teens an;d young adults.

We’re not saying that Victoria’s Secret angels should be role models for young people or that they should promote a healthy body image because at the end of the day, the fashion industry prefers a certain aesthetic that is unattainable for most people and knickers and bras just look better on lean and toned 20-year-old bodies.

It might be depressing to see the girls strut their stuff in the middle of winter when a lot of us feel a bit pale and podgy but there’s nothing more irritating that a person who claims to eat tonnes of food when they don’t!

Give me Adriana’s battered mitts and Miranda’s Spirulina smoothies any day.