The Globe and Mail - 25.11.2019

MONDAY,NOVEMBER25,2019 | THE GLOBE AND MAIL O A

I

n the annals of awful but mystifyingly

popularTVrituals,theannualVictoria’s

Secret Fashion Showhad no match. It

just happened, there was an annual

splutter of hyperactive coverage and then

it returned the following year. An invented

tradition,itwaswatchedandwrittenabout

by people who should be ashamed of

themselves.

Well, now it’s dead. Dead as doornails.

For 16 years, the wretched thing aired on

CBS in late November or early December

and more recently it was back on ABC,

which should also be ashamed of itself.

People stopped watching, you see. In fair-

ness, the audience wasn’t reduced to zero.

About 3.3 million viewers in the United

States watched it last year. When the com-

icallyineptTVconcoction–aninfomercial

with a broadcaster picking up the costs –

started airing in 2001, it had 12.7 million

viewers.

We are witness to a cultural disruption

moment.Me,I’dliketothinkthere’ssome-

thing to relish in the announcement of the

cancellation coming on the same day that

Fiona Hill, the former U.S. National Securi-

ty Council official and consummate au-

thority figure, lectured a bunch of mostly

male politicians about the uses of “fiction-

al narratives.”

Also, for good measure, the announce-

ment comes in the same week that the re-

pulsive Prince Andrew was withdrawn

from circulation by his mom, the Queen.

As The New York Times has reported, the

head of the lingerie company’s corporate

ownerhadclosepersonalandfinancialties

to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Victo-

ria’s Secret Fash-

ion Show al-

ways peddled a

fictional narra-

tive. One that

framed the ho-

lidays as a time

for women to

purchase ludicrously skimpy and uncom-

fortable underwear and get upholstered in

other items that included a lot of padding

andgel.Thistawdryfictionwaspeddledon

aTVspecialbyuniversallytall,thinmodels

traipsing up and down a runway with ab-

surdly large wings attached to their backs.

This spectacle would have been comical

had it not been both tacky and dangerous.

One long-time Victoria’s Secret model,

Adriana Lima, told the Daily Telegraph in

2011 that for nine days before the show, she

would drink only protein shakes, with ab-

solutely “no solids” in her diet. She even

cutdownonherintakeofwater.Lastyear,a

writer in The Guardian accurately referred

to the annual show as “this circus of com-

petitive anorexia.”

We are better than that now as a society.

While the company’s corporate owner, L

Brands Inc., has said it intends to “evolve

the marketing of Victoria’s Secret,” there

was a social-media backlash when the

company’sheadofmarketingsaiditwould

not include transgender or plus-sized

models because Victoria’s Secret was sell-

ing “a fantasy,” something larger is going

on. The rise of athletic wear makes Victo-

ria’sSecretapparellookparticularlyridicu-

lous, an anomaly in a shifting, inevitable

reframing of body image and strength.

Besides, about 50 of the company’s

storesclosedintheU.S.thisyearandabout

30 last year. You could argue this is all

about a shift to online shopping, yet it

seems more plausible that the company is

simply out of date, out of touch and obso-

lescent.

It had a curious history on TV, though.

TheVictoria’s Secret Fashion Specialfirst

airedin2001onABC.Aflurryofcomplaints

wenttotheFederalCommunicationsCom-

mission about its alleged “indecency,” and

the National Organization for Women

called the special a “soft-core porn info-

mercial.” Burned by the controversy, the

Disney-ownedABCdroppedtheshow.CBS

picked it up and ran it until last year. That’s

when ABC returned as the broadcaster.

Although ratings had been in steady de-

cline, ABC was interested in one thing only

–theaudienceforthespecial,itturnedout,

was now mostly young women aged 18-24.

With a lineup of series such asGrey’s Anato-

mymainly aimed at that audience, ABC

was looking to please that demographic. It

didn’texactlyworkout.The2018specialon

ABC had two million fewer viewers than

the 2017 special on CBS.

It’s impossible to ask all those young

women viewers why they lost interest. But

we can try to extrapolate. Perhaps a cultur-

al shift changed the experience of watch-

ing it from mildly embarrassing to toxic.

Perhaps the women realized that the Vic-

toria’s Secret marketing claim, that its

products and TV specials were “empower-

ing,” was the insultingly cynical concep-

tion it always was. Perhaps in a time of

#MeToo and #TimesUp, the tawdriness

became suddenly explicit.

It would be unwise for me, a male critic,

to speculate further. But I’ll say this: At a

time when the idea of “cancel culture” is

partofthezeitgeist,thisannualTVfandan-

go was literally cancelled. Good. One more

fictional narrative debunked.

Theendofthe

Victoria’sSecret

FashionShowisa

vitalculturalvictory

JOHN

DOYLE

OPINION

TELEVISION

Thisspectaclewould

havebeencomical

haditnotbeen

bothtackyand

dangerous.

P

ain that comes from deep within your body,

pain that invades your very core, is quite

different from a cold or the flu, a paper cut

or a bruise. This pain owns me.

For years, my mother complained of neck and

back pain – to the point where she annoyed me.

When I was 8 or 9, I remember coming home for

lunch and finding her sitting in the bedroom with

her neck in a massive brace that was attached to a

rope with a weighted bag slung over the top of her

cupboard door. I took a few steps back. The peanut

butter and jelly sandwich that had been on my

mind vanished. To me, it was a scene out of a

horror movie, full of zombies with icy blue ten-

dons, throbbing red arteries, cracking bones and

bloodshot, bulgy eyes. It frightened me. It was diffi-

cult for her to move her jaw and talk while the

brace had her in its demonic hold.

After she unleashed herself from the

grips of the thing, it hiccuped, the

bag slithered down to the ground and

the brace scurried upwards bouncing

like some creepy clown puppet. I

croaked some inaudible words and

retreated to my room.

That was the day I learned that my

mother had arthritis. My fresh little

limbs, tendons and bones could not

comprehend pain, other than a

scrape to my knees or the occasional

bout with a stomach ache after too

much Pink Elephant popcorn. But

getting an official diagnosis somehow legitimized

her pain and unleashed my sympathy.

This year, I was diagnosed with my own disease:

arthritis in my cervical spine. What I thought was a

pulled trapezius muscle (from too many weight

classes at the gym) turned out to be arthritis, nes-

tled like a bunch of hungry maggots in the joints of

my neck. Lifelong arthritis. Nasty, chronic-pain ar-

thritis. Mean, evil, unrelenting, ever-present arthri-

tis. I picture the maggots feasting on the spongy

tissue between my vertebrae and it hurls me into

depression. They will nibble away until they are

satiated and I will be left with bone on bone, grind-

ing away. This began my intimate relationship with

chronic pain.

When pain comes to visit, I cannot ask it to

leave. I cannot take medications to banish it or

wine to subdue it. This pain knows my every weak-

ness and it attacks with fervour. When I have a

flare-up, it feels like I have wooden splints

strapped with duct tape at either side of my neck

and concrete bricks on my shoulders. All these

years, I’ve taken my beautiful, sexy, sweet, neck

swivel for granted. This pain is now a part of who I

am. Initially, the pain scared me and I immediately

stopped going to the gym, started taking a host of

herbs and tinctures for the inflammation that

crept throughout my body, and put heat packs on

at every opportunity. I sit a lot, stay in bed too long

and can’t seem to read or settle or even think

about things that I used to love. Pain knocked my

confidence in the one thing I could always rely on,

my body. As a result, my self-esteem and ego took

a gut punch.

So begins the journey of my lasting relationship

with pain. Now that I have pain as my closest

friend, many things have changed. I can’t dance

with abandon. Any sudden movements I pay for,

dearly. So, it’s strictly swaying to the beat for me. I

will need more silky dresses and pearls for this

slow dance. My right eye has started watering un-

controllably, as if I am only half crying. I keep

telling people I’m only half sad today. My neck

clicks with regularity. I think this is

just in case I forget about the pain for

a second. It’s a reminder not to get

cocky, and not go out and do a Zum-

ba class. Oh thou cruel host, pain.

Now, I look at a bag of groceries or a

bag of mulch for the garden and

think: “What price am I willing to pay

to hoist this load to my house?”

My pain doesn’t like pillows, of any

kind, so the pillows get put back on

the bed every morning, fluffed and

camera-ready like the inviting impos-

ters they are. My pain puts up with

yoga on a day when it’s not raining

but my years of lifting weights are behind me now.

She will punish me with a vengeance if I lift a

dumbbell. If pain gets angry, she will come to visit

and not relent until she’s good and ready. That

means there could be days, even weeks, of pinch-

ing, burning, pulling and aching. Clearly, my pain

needs some anger-management training. I need to

coax her back to level ground, calm her down and

invite her to join me in a hot Epsom salts bath.

This generally subdues her enough that I can sleep

(without a pillow) for a few hours.

I reflect now on what I could have done differ-

ently. How could I have prevented pain from land-

ing with such ferocity into my spine, the anchor of

my body. Was it too much pizza, French fries and

deep-fried chicken balls with orange sauce in my

youth? Was it the countless fitness classes I’ve at-

tended – neck cranked like a fish hook? Was it the

stress of career and family? Too many hormones in

my milk? Pesticides? DDT on my strawberries? My

birth order as the youngest and weakest? Or is this

my mother’s biological legacy to me? There is no

clear, crisp answer to this state of affairs. Now I

need to decide what to do with it.

Wendy Walters lives in Toronto.

LEARNINGTOLIVE

WITHCHRONICPAIN

ILLUSTRATIONBYMARYKIRKPATRICK

TheunrelentingarthritisIinheritedfrommymotherhastakenovermylife,

butI’mcomingtotermswithit,WendyWalterswrites

FIRSTPERSON

Whenpaincomesto

visit,Icannotaskit

toleave.Icannot

takemedicationsto

banishitorwineto

subdueit.Thispain

knowsmyevery

weaknessandit

attackswithfervour.

Haveastorytotell?Pleaseseetheguidelinesonourwebsitetgam.ca/essayguide,

[email protected]

FirstPersonisadailypersonalpiecesubmittedbyreaders

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