The only Victoria I was ever on semi-familiar terms with until recent years was a queen who, if she had any secrets, were not the ones that were on display during a recent visit I made to the store with a much younger family member. And I feel I must quibble about the store title, as there was absolutely nothing secret about what that store was selling.
The mannequins were boldly going were no woman from my generation had ever gone. Or if she had, she would not have found it in a store in her local shopping center. We were headed for the underwear department, which was not that big as the garments in question were tiny wisps of fabric with unwispy price tags attached. Fortunately, the display could be small, as underwear for an entire campus of women could easily fit in two drawers.
As I tried to accustom myself to the changing times, for one pair of the underwear of my youth would have made ten of the current model, I could not accustom myself to the fact that it was a man next to me rifling through the adjacent drawer of lacy nothings. And accompanying him was a small boy who I assumed was his son. Was this underwear for his mother? His father’s girlfriend? A woman in the office? Who knew. But I did know in my ancient bones that the boy did not belong there, and I wished the man would get his male hands out of the female underwear.
I was struggling to ignore some panties, prominently displayed, that had a huge slit up the backside. I really, really, really did not want to think about that. No more than I wanted to think about that young boy, and what ideas he was forming about women and their place in society as his eyes roamed the store.
The checkout line was long as the store was very crowded. That gave me plenty of time to look at the pictures on the wall behind the women at the registers. Half the wall was taken up with a gigantic torso of a woman wearing underwear which barely covered what desperately needed to be covered. The other pictures were of the Victoria’s Secret ‘Angels’ strutting down runways garbed in fashions from the store. By the time one got to the checkout counter one could simultaneously have been made to feel totally inadequate as a female, while getting to know one part of a models body better than one’s own. As for that young boy ----- what will be his expectations for the future adult woman in his life? Should he really aspire to what is being sold in that store?