Thank you, Lindley! Thank you SweetAmaranth.com!
Photo Credit: SweetAmaranth.com
http://blog.sweetamaranth.com/victorias-secret-alternatives-plus-size-lingerie/
Yes, her blog names some of my competitors. SO WHAT! This is such a fantastic resource our community, I just had to share.
Like me, the author of this blog (and the amazing photographer behind SweetAmaranth.com) had the same reaction to this article about Victoria Secret not doing very well financially….. BURN IT TO THE GROUND… ok… well those were my words. My have been hers, too.
I mean, like lots of you, I had been trying to shop there since I was about 15 and when I was about 140lbs and I could not find anything even when I was a small human. Nothing like indoctrinating impressionable young women into the “you have to be thin to be valuable” bullshit the diet industry is peddling. (Sorry, Vicky – but you and the Diet Machine are complicit in every eating disorder since 1960!)
This is the Instyle article that had us both on fire: “Victoria’s Secret May be Dying – But For Plus Size Women, It Never Really Lived.” Written by Amanda Richards for InStyle.
This is what inspired Lindley to create this fabulous list. 16 Plus Size Alternatives to Victoria’s Secret
Thank you for the shout out, Lindley!
From Lindley’s SweetAmaranth blog:
“In May 1998, I stepped inside a Victoria’s Secret for the first — and last — time. A naive and shy teenager, I wasn’t interested in the bras and lingerie, which seemed like artifacts from a universe far more glamorous than my own. I scarcely dared look at them as I walked by; after all, at a size 18 there was no way they’d fit me anyway.
No, I was there for a job. In the era where malls still reigned in retail, like many teenagers I wanted to work at a mall store. And like them, I blanketed Valley Hills Mall with applications, popping into one store after another to fill out the pre-Internet-era paper applications.
Vicky’s was the first apparel store I encountered in that day’s swath of applications, and it’s the only one I remember. This being the south, the employees did nothing so crass as ridicule my chubby body out loud, but they made themselves clear nonetheless. The raised eyebrows, the scornful looks and the curt “We’re not hiring right now” made it clear that the universe of sparkle and glamour wasn’t open to people like me.”
Read the rest of her fabulous blog and her 16 Alternatives Here: SweetAmaranth 16 Alterntives Link
It makes me so happy to know she thought of all of us! So much lingerie and so much of my industry’s marketing is targeted to straight women who wear it for men. I love this for the diversity that we all deserve. As I like to say, Sexy is for EVERY body. And, to me, that means that sexy is for every single one of us who want to feel sexy. Sexy SHOULD not and DOES NOT discriminate! Thank you for this, Lindley!