Victoria's Secret Is Now ... a Podcast?

Over the past few months, the creative team behind Victoria’s Secret’s latest half-baked attempt at a relevant rebrand has seemed to be throwing various, increasingly desperate ideas against the wall to see what sticks, all with the hope of answering the question we’ve all been asking: What is Victoria’s Secret? Is it a once iconic but now irrelevant lingerie brand that refuses to die? Is it, as the marketing behind the brand’s most recent rebrand claims, “a leading advocate for women”? Or is it … a podcast?

Indeed, much like every millennial man in Brooklyn who thinks he would probably be pretty good at standup, Victoria’s Secret has decided to start a podcast — an “empowering” one at that, according to People.

Hosted by author Amanda de Cadenet, an inaugural member of the VS Collective — AKA the more diverse group of brand reps that replaced the fallen Victoria’s Secret “Angels” earlier this year — the podcast will reportedly feature “candid, deeply personal” interviews “with an underlying and persistent focus on the human experience of womanhood.”

The first episode of the podcast, dubbed VS Voices, premieres today and features fellow VS Collective member Priyanka Chopra Jonas. “The mission of the VS Collective is to elevate and support women for all our accomplishments and not just our external beauty as quantified by the male gaze,” de Cadenet told People. “VS Voices supports that and goes far beyond as my fellow VS Collective members and I discuss the parts of our lives — and internal struggles — that we face as women.”

While it’s easy to write off VS Voices as yet another in a long line of increasing desperate grasps for relevancy from the brand, it does at least provide an answer to one of the many questions raised by the VS Collective’s debut earlier this summer, namely: What is the VS Collective going to do? Heretofore, it has seemed like the women of the initiative, including soccer star Megan Rapinoe and trans model Valentina Sampaio, have mostly been hired to make vague statements about female empowerment while representing the purportedly new and improved Victoria’s Secret. The introduction of VS Voices, however, confirms the women are there to do exactly that, but this time on a podcast, which is cool and trendy, right Gen Z? RIGHT? Will you buy our underwear now?

Look, none of this is explicitly meant to shade the women of the VS Collective, many of whom I’m sure are intelligent, forward-thinking advocates for all the things you’re supposed to be an advocate for these days. If Victoria’s Secret offered me a lot of money to endorse their dying brand, I too would probably put on my girlboss pants, go on a podcast and say things like “female empowerment” and “the male gaze” in the name of a brand that literally built its empire on a pushed-up, rail-thin image of idealized femininity crafted specifically for the male gaze.

Anywho, Victoria’s Secret is officially pivoting to podcasting, and unfortunately, “VS Voices is just the beginning,” according to Chopra Jonas, who added that she “can’t wait to share what’s next on the horizon!” Personally, I hope it involves Victoria’s Secret finally dying a merciful death, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what fresh hell Victoria and her secret have in store for us next.