Battling The Panty Giant

I recently opened my mailbox to find something so horrific and disturbing that I dropped to my knees and screamed, “Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! Why? Why god, why?” My anguished cries alerted several nosey neighbors, who rushed over to ask if I was okay.

“Yeah, it’s just...Victoria’s Secret put me back on their mailing list. That’s all,” I said and the neighbors dispersed, whispering things about drama and queens.

I stood in front of my mailbox, staring into the vacant eyes of the swollen-mouthed “angel” who was posed on the cover wearing a nude bra and underwear set that blended with her flawlessly airbrushed skin making the absence of areolas the only real indication that she wasn’t totally naked, and I whispered, “How did you find me?” She didn’t respond, which didn’t surprise me because I’m sure it’s hard to talk with all that collagen and Botox, so I retreated inside to pour a glass of wine and revise my interrogation tactic. I reviewed the contents of my underwear drawer—nothing new. Noting this as evidence, I realized I haven't purchased anything from Victoria’s Secret since the last time I tried to go bra shopping and was bombarded by an all-too-eager saleswoman and her measuring tape, which she used to tell me I was wearing the wrong bra size without even considering for a moment that maybe it was a deliberate decision, like the size six pants I’m still stuffing myself into. After changing my address and keeping a restraining order’s distance between myself and every Victoria’s Secret store, I managed to enjoy one catalog-free year until those padded bra peddlers found me. I might still shop at Victoria’s Secret, despite the catalogs and harassment endured during my bra fitting, if they weren’t so intent on catering to the barely legal demographic while simultaneously encouraging adult women to dress like Tara Reid. Also—holy high prices! Who decided it was okay to pay $30 for a piece of floss made of lace spun by child laborers? I now make a point to shop at places that offer more sensible and affordable products, like Wal-Mart. I guess I’m just past the point of wanting to wear a bedazzled piece of string as underwear and I’m slowly coming to terms with my body’s natural attraction to granny panties.

In the last month I received four Victoria’s Secret catalogs: one for their winter sale, one for their spring clothing line, one for their bathing suit line and one for their “we’ll give you $10 off your purchase if you pretend it’s 1997 and order something from our catalog” sale. I’m not a huge environmentalist—I use disposable razors, I don’t always turn off the water as I’m brushing my teeth and I drive a gas-guzzling SUV—but I do occasionally buy green cleaning products so I feel entitled to say that based on their output of one million catalogs per day, Victoria’s Secret might as well burn Styrofoam and feed it to polar bears.

Obviously we cannot stand by and watch Victoria’s Secret destroy our world and kill our children (okay, that part might be a little dramatic) with their catalogs. We must take a stand against this lingerie overlord by going commando! Just kidding, I like not being blind.

You may recall an environmental campaign against Victoria’s Secret catalog production in 2004; since then, Victoria’s Secret claims to have cleaned up their act, leading the campaigners to find new causes to fight for and bigger trees to chain themselves to. But I, for one, am not ready to surrender to the panty giant, which is why I devised several plans of attack.

Plan A: If I receive one more Victoria’s Secret catalog this month, I am going to collect sap from every tree I can find and take it to the nearest Victoria’s Secret store where I will wipe it in the crotch of every pair of underwear I can get my hands on. Then all of the disgruntled customers with sticky vaginas will join my crusade (or beat me up, whatever) and I will have an army of haters on my side.

Plan B: Take all of the sap collected for Plan A and mail it to Victoria’s Secret headquarters with a note that says, “These are the tears of the trees you’re killing in order to send me 90 pages of half-naked women wearing heinously impractical and uncomfortable lingerie every month.”

If both Plan A and Plan B fail, Plan C is to put my name on the Do Not Mail List and resign myself to a boring, unimaginative one-woman protest.

I’m on to your secret, Victoria. I know you have zombie underwear models searching top-secret databases for the people who had to move in order to escape your catalog’s mailing list. I know you want to kill polar bears. I know you want to sell an already over-sexed generation of young women under garments with “SEXY” or “PINK” scrawled across the crotch because, how else will they gain self-esteem? I know you think you’re helping out millions of teenage boys and their fathers by sending countless catalogs to their mothers and wives every month under the guise of an obnoxious tagline like, “I Love My Body.” I know you know that real women don’t look through your catalog and think, “Wow, I really do love my body!” I know you know that real women think they might love their body if they buy a leopard print babydoll nightie and matching thong to wrap around their cellulite for $60 (plus shipping). And I know you killed Inigo Montoya’s father (okay, fine, maybe you didn’t kill Inigo Montoya’s father yourself, but I bet your people’s people had a hand in it, or something).

So prepare yourself, Vickie. You and your army of emaciated supermodels are about to get sapped by me and my granny-panty-clad posse of yet to be determined millions.



NOTE: This post is meant to be humorous.* Please do not embarrass me and yourself by taking it too seriously or I will be forced to file a fun-killer lawsuit, which will included harsh language regarding “your panties” being “in a wad.”

*Unless you are part of Victoria’s Secret corporate stratosphere, in which case, I totally mean it and you should probably give me a gift certificate for eleventy billion dollars in order to make it up to me or else…(you know, the whole sap thing).