Pink used to be a color, a softer hue often favored by females. In recent years, however, it has been hijacked by one of the nation’s biggest objectifiers of women and purveyors of soft porn: Victoria’s Secret. Pink has been gutted of its inherent beauty and has been turned into a product line that Victoria’s Secret has cast like a lure to draw teens and young women into their hypersexualized adult product line. Launched in 2002, Victoria’s Secret PINK brand passed 1 billion dollars in sales in 2010. They have quickly and effectively captured the attention, imagination, and money of teens and young women who pay significant sums to display the PINK brand.
And, sadly, our girls are enthusiastically taking the PINK bait. Just count the number of shirts and leggings emblazoned with PINK walking around town. Our girls are being objectified. Our girls are being lured into the hypersexualized world of Victoria’s Secret. Some may disagree with this assessment of Victoria’s Secret, but ask yourself if anybody knows or even cares to know the names of their models? They are simply props, living mannequins to sell products and to propagate the idea that women are objects that exist for men’s pleasure.
The PINK brand might not look as provocative and suggestive as Victoria’s Secret, but PINK funds Victoria’s Secret. They are one and the same. Giving money to PINK is giving money to Victoria’s Secret. Promoting PINK is promoting Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret and PINK depersonalize women, endorse their objectification, and give men the right to expect them to dress and act in certain ways. Further, they teach women that their worth comes from their appearance. This is a lie, a lie by which too many women and girls have been deceived.
Why would we support this? Why would we clothe our girls in this? Our girls have names. They have value as persons. They are not objects that merely exist for another’s pleasure. They are beautiful creations of God. Even more, they have been redeemed by Christ! Their identity and worth is found there – in their creation and redemption.
Consider Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians 5:16, “We regard no one according to the flesh…” In other words, we don’t determine value or worth by the world’s labels. We don’t see people as the world does. We don’t let Satan’s lies parading in the provocative attire of Victoria’s Secret or the seemingly innocent PINK brand assign worth to women.
How do we see them? Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Those baptized into Christ have a new identity. In fact, Paul says, “For our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Our baptism so closely connects us to Christ, the righteousness of God, that we are incorporated into that righteousness!
And this changes the way we live. Listen to what Paul writes: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:19). Victoria’s Secret and PINK are charging women to devalue their own bodies. Paul’s words are blunt: Flee! Get away from anything that would devalue the body that Christ redeemed. “Or do you not know,” Paul asks, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:10-20).
Our bodies have been redeemed by Christ; they belong to Him. As such, we are called to adorn them in such a way that He receives the glory. And PINK in no way helps us to do this.