Victoria’s Secret Tried to Diversify. Conservative Influencers Couldn’t Handle It.
Evie's Masterclass in Misogyny
Fallen Angels — When the Male Gaze Loses Its Wings
This week, the Victoria’s Secret fashion show returned—for only the second time since its 2018 cancellation. Back then, there was controversy, yes—ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and no surprise, a culture of misogyny, harassment, and anti-trans sentiment. But the deeper reason the show died was that audiences were done with a brand of “empowerment” that commodified women’s bodies for the male gaze.
Fast forward seven years later, the lineup included a pregnant model, plus-size and trans models, along with star athletes like WNBA player Angel Reese and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee. The diversity drew praise—especially compared to last year, when “inclusion” meant a handful of plus-size models (mostly still within straight sizes) who were noticeably more covered up than their thong-clad, thigh-gapped peers. Still, critics argued the brand hadn’t gone far enough—or that it didn’t deserve credit for “meeting the bare minimum standards of representation that your competitors established years ago.”
Evie Magazine, however, felt Victoria’s Secret had gone too far.
Described by Rolling Stone as a “Gen Z Cosmo for the Far Right”—Evie had already decided the show would be awful before it even aired. In a piece titled “Exclusive: Insiders Say The Victoria’s Secret Show Is Going To Be A Disaster,” Evie declared we’re now living in a post-woke world where “Gen Z believes Wokeism is only for ugly people.”
Ugly, as it turns out, means trans, larger-bodied, and even high ponytails instead of big waves and extensions, or anything else outside the straight-male fantasy. This is the increasingly popular dribble girls and women are ingesting across social media. And don’t think it’s just Republican young women. The New York Times was given an analysis that found similar levels of Democrats and Republicans among Evie’s subscribers.
Just googling “Fall dress” can suck you into its orbit and before you know it, you might find yourself quitting the birth control pill because of a vague sense you should “get in touch” with your body’s natural cycle. That’s exactly what happened to Katie Gatti Tassin, the co-host of the culture and politics podcast “Diabolical Lies,” who realized mid-recording of an episode about Evie, she had been swayed by anti-contraception social media content from wellness and lifestyle influencers, as reported in the Times piece.
When a brand as historically sexist as Victoria’s Secret tries, however clumsily, to evolve, Evie reacts as if it’s the end of civilization. That overreaction reveals what’s really at stake—not lingerie, not “femininity,” but control.
I actually gasped as I read, floored by how seamlessly nostalgia for “real women” collapses into a demand for less diversity. Scratch that surface, and white supremacy bleeds through.
I Read Evie So You Don’t Have To
I groan and rub my temples every time I read Evie. But I make myself do it, because it’s a perfect case study in how conservative pop culture smuggles regressive values into the mainstream—softly, stylishly, and with just enough empowerment language to make the poison go down easy.
Evie is smaller than legacy glossies like Vogue, Glamour, or Cosmo, but its influence is growing across social platforms, including here on Substack.1 We should be paying attention, if not giving it attention. Where right-wing influencers have exploited male loneliness to radicalize young men, Evie applies the same playbook to women: targeting anxious Gen Z readers and exhausted young mothers who feel abandoned by a system that gives them no real choices. But instead of pointing to impossible expectations, unaffordable childcare, or crumbling safety nets as the problem, Evie blames feminism.
Just as manosphere influencers disguise their misogyny in talk of gaming, fitness, and protein shakes, Evie embeds its ideology in glossy lifestyle content. Amid innocuous headlines about fashion (“The Internet’s Best Fall Dresses Under $100”) and sex tips (with the caveat that they’re for married women only) lie far more pernicious columns—pieces that romanticize submission, cast feminism as the root of women’s unhappiness, and rebrand patriarchal control as empowerment.
A sampling:
“The Cost of Soft Masculinity: Despite feminist propaganda, nothing is worse for a woman than to realize that she’s stronger than her man.”
“Stop Calling Your Boyfriend Your “Partner”: It’s time to make romance romantic again.”
“Why Do Feminists Like Sugar Babies But Hate Housewives?: I’ve noticed that pro-sex work feminists tend to applaud sugar babies.”
“The Transformative Power of Leaving Maidenhood and Embracing The Motherhood Archetype.”
“The Best Of SkinnyTok, Condensed: I Devoured All Of SkinnyTok’s Most Viral Weight Loss Advice: Here Are The Best Tips.”
Evie Double-Speak and The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
When it comes to beauty, Evie talks out of both sides of its mouth. One article critiques the impossible body standards imposed on K-pop stars; another praises The Golden Girls for showing women aging gracefully “in a society obsessed with youth.” Yet countless others boldly reinforce the male gaze, mocking anything that falls outside the boundaries of thin and conventionally attractive.
Which brings us back to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
I am frequently outraged by Evie because it specializes in what Momfluencer author Sarah Peterson calls “propaganda disguised as journalism”— like referring to anti-abortion centers as “pregnancy resource centers.” So why did this particular article spur me to write about it? I kept picturing teenage girls scrolling through the piece, quietly learning to hate their own bodies the way we once did, crowded around TVs at sleepovers and in dorm rooms, watching the fashion show that told us what beautiful was supposed to look like.
In Evie’s pre-show takedown, writer Zoey Carter2 mourns the loss of what she calls “an Olympics of femininity”—invoking womanhood as competition and pining for all the Angels to look like the same airbrushed fantasy. The subtext (sometimes more text than sub) is clear: today’s Angels are too big, too brown, too queer for her taste. I actually gasped as I read, floored by how seamlessly nostalgia for “real women” collapses into a demand for less diversity. Scratch that surface, and white supremacy bleeds through.
Carter laments that the brand’s new CEO once worked at Rihanna’s lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty: “Victoria’s Secret was once sexy but classy. Savage X Fenty was explicit, filled with models of every size twerking on the runway. It was a brand that peaked during the height of Woke.”
Umm, so much racism in there, I can’t even.
Her sarcastic dig at Angel Reese—“because we all know the WNBA brings in the viewers”—isn’t just a cheap shot at women’s sports. It’s a wink to readers who see diversity itself as the problem: a signal that strong, Black, athletic bodies don’t belong in the fantasy.
Carter cites a new study by Eric Kaufmann—who has praised Ron DeSantis and runs the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, a think-tank-style “research center” often accused of blurring the line between scholarship and ideology—to bolster her anti-trans argument:
A new study out today just revealed that fewer and fewer young people identify as trans. Despite that, there are reportedly at least two trans models walking this year’s show, taking the spots of beautiful, undiscovered women who might have been the next Tyra or Gisele.
Even if that study were true, why does fewer trans folx existing make trans inclusion less legitimate?
And because she just can’t help but circle back to fatphobia, she adds:
Once upon a time, Victoria’s Secret had the “Train Like an Angel” series, where fans could follow the girls’ workouts in the lead-up to the show. It was aspirational. In 2014, girls lined up around the block to try to audition for the chance to be in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. They made sure they looked the best that they could.
Now, any size girl can walk the runway, so where’s the magic? Where’s the discipline? Why even train to be an Angel when the executives don’t even know what the title means?
Translation: fat people are lazy and ugly. Nothing says “aspiration” like anorexia and self-loathing—isn’t that what every mom wants for their daughters in 2025?
Speaking of mothers, it’s telling that Carter never mentions Jasmine Tookes, who walked the runway while pregnant. Maybe because it didn’t support her “fallen angel” argument. Or maybe she just couldn’t reconcile a pregnant woman on a catwalk instead of in a kitchen—breaking barriers instead of baking bread.
Either way, it reveals how Evie’s vision of femininity can’t accommodate real women or real lives. Pregnancy, fatness, aging, imperfection—these are reminders that women exist beyond fantasy, that we take up space, create life, and refuse to stay decorative. Patriarchy, repackaged as “traditional values,” can’t stomach that and they’re hoping our daughters won’t either.
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Read an excerpt of my book Sexism & Sensibility in Kate Manne’s Substack HERE
Dancing with the Divine Feminine: Liberation or Seduction?
I spent the last week pulled between the endlessly charming streets of Amsterdam and a personal development event filled with workshops, masterclasses, and community gatherings on topics ranging from consciousness and love to entrepreneurship and leadership. I was there to be interviewed by its book club arm about my work on equality. I brought my daughter along because, well, she’s amazing and agreed to come, and because I wasn’t sure how much the conference would really interest me. Yet the calming effects of meditation and energy work I’ve been practicing since the current U.S. president took office had piqued this skeptic’s curiosity.
At this writing Evie has 186K+ subscribers on Substack and are #25 Rising in Culture. Evie’s website gets over 1 million monthly pageviews (per Evie’s media kit) and has about a half-million followers across its platforms.
Authors names are withheld on Substack but you can find them on Evie’s website.
