When your teenage daughter wants in on Victoria’s Secret

By Erika Vidal
Sun contributor
You’re at the mall shopping for your teenage daughter’s back to school wardrobe. You’ve bought her the ever so necessary low-rise jeans, the shoes, and some basic tops. Everything is going surprisingly well. She has only pretended not to know you once, and that was because a group of boys that go to her school were walking towards her. You’re almost finished shopping, when suddenly she tells you that she could really use some new underwear, and while she’s at it, some bras.

“Okay,” you say to her, “let’s go to the nearest department store.” She looks at you as though you’ve just confused Lindsay Lohan with Hilary Duff, and slowly lowers her head like a bull getting ready to charge. You’ve seen this look before–the oh-mom-you-are-so-out-of-it look. She shakes her head.
“How about Victoria’s Secret?” she asks, very seriously. Your mind automatically flashes to those women in the catalogues, which by the way you are tired of getting in the mail every other day, and you wonder why she is suddenly interested in shopping at Victoria’s Secret. What’s wrong with department store underwear? What’s the difference to her? You don’t want her to sense your fear and discomfort — it’s how her attitude gains strength. “Sure,” you tell her, the palms of your hands beginning to sweat slightly. She knows exactly where in the mall Victoria’s Secret is located, which means she’s been there before, and not with you because when you shop for lingerie, you shop alone. You think back to all the Saturdays you’ve dropped her off at the mall with her friends and try to remember if you have ever noticed a pink and white bag lying around the cluttered floor of her room. What is her father going to think when you walk into the house and his little girl is carrying a Victoria’s Secret bag?
You walk into blinding pinkness and see that there is a sales associate smiling in her black suit, tape measurer dangled around her neck, eyeing you like a hungry tiger. This is where I come in. I’m the tiger in the black suit. “Hi, how are you ladies doing today?” I ask. When you say, “Fine thanks,” I reply, “What brings you in?”
“Just a little back to school shopping.”
“Oh, okay, great,” I nod, “My name’s Erika if you need help with anything.” I leave you alone — for a while, that is, until I see the looks on you and your daughter’s faces.
This situation isn’t new to me. Since I started working here, I have noticed that the mother/daughter experience of shopping for undergarments together is not always as bonding as one might expect, especially when their daughter is only 13 or 14. The majority of the time, mothers want full coverage bottoms and daughters want thongs, or at least low-rise bikinis; mothers want unlined, unpadded bras, and daughters want maximum cleavage. Mom is embarrassed and shocked at her daughter’s candid approach to underwear. There are arguments. Every 10 minutes I hear, “You’re 13 years old, you don’t need to be wearing that, yet,” and then the response comes, with that brutal teenage wrath behind it, “Whatever, you’re so unfair. I am not wearing granny panties to school. Just because you wear them doesn’t mean I have to.”
Granny panties. It is painful for mothers to hear their daughter refer to their taste in underwear as granny-like, because frankly, most moms don’t think of themselves as that old, and besides, what’s so wrong with having your rear end completely covered? So what if your underwear comes up to your bellybutton? Most women over the age of 30 weren’t raised in the low-rise era; in fact many of them think the trend is unflattering and ridiculous. They’ve never seen as many love handles or as much butt crack in their life as they have seen today in the mall, or when they go pick their daughters up from school. It takes every drop of restraint they have not to walk over and pull their jeans up. First it was the boys, and now it’s the girls.
I personally find myself caught in an in-between stage. I am no longer a teenage daughter, nor am I the mother of one. This does, however, make it easier for me to observe and understand both sides. Of course I can relate to the 13-year-old’s desire to feel a little older and to be accepted by her friends, or whatever the case may be. I was 13 not too long ago. But, I can also see the exasperation and concern in a mother’s eyes when her daughter is taking this next step, no matter how small, into the world of Victoria’s Secret, a store whose image revolves around sex, and on the beautiful, barely dressed models in the catalogues and commercials.
The company has recently launched a collection called “PINK” aimed towards girls ages 15-22, in which the colorful mix and match sleepwear is clearly aimed at the younger generation, and the bras only go up to a 36C. All of the “PINK” underwear is low-rise, and the thongs are even stringier (much to the dismay of many parents) than the regular cotton. Although the line is tying to reach the younger crowd, it is, inevitably, playfully sexy.
I try to neutralize many mother/daughter disagreements by bringing bras that aren’t necessarily padded but have some lifting power to them, and by introducing string bikinis, which aren’t “granny panties” but still cover what moms feel need to be covered.
One day, a woman starts talking to me while her daughter is trying on some bras — some lightly lined bras, not padded bras — and she tells me that her daughter is about to be a freshman in high school, and apparently all her friends went out and bought underwear from Victoria’s Secret. So, naturally, since all her friends are wearing the pale pink Victoria’s Secret tag, she has to, also.
“It’s like the cool thing to do now,” the woman says to me, “is to get your underwear from Victoria’s Secret. You can’t get your underwear from anywhere else. But I’m only letting her get the cotton ones.” Her daughter looks so young to me, like she’s 11 instead of 14. She is almost 10 years younger than me, which is disturbing because I still, despite my recent graduation from college, like to think of myself as a teenager. Mothers aren’t the only ones their daughters make feel old. Every time one of them calls me “Lady” or “M’am” I cringe. Her mother continues, “She’d love it if I let her buy those thongs, but she’s too young.” She is talking about the cotton v-string thongs, which are nothing more than a triangle with strings attached. I nod, and tell her that I understand.
Her daughter has settled for the bikinis, picking each pair out carefully. It’s not easy to find the perfect pattern for your particular butt. The horizontal stripes might make it look too wide, the flowers are way too “old lady-ish” for some and navy blue is simply boring. I have witnessed the “Helpful Mom Syndrome”, during which she might ask, “What about this one?” and hold up a pair, to which her daughter responds with a stare that says, “OhmiGod, I know you don’t actually think I would wear those.”
The girl’s mother tells her to hurry up, then looks at me sideways and tells me quietly that no one is going to see her underwear, anyway.
But, girls her age come in here all the time with their friends and head right over to the Very Sexy thong table, the most risqué collection in the store. All string, all slinky, impossible to fold. They usually buy one or two pairs at a time, since they’re $16 each. Black and hot pink are the two most popular colors, black no doubt being the official color of sexiness, and hot pink being the hottest color of the year.
I don’t know what these young girls buy them for, but I hope and believe that more than likely it’s just to show the tag off to their girlfriends. The fascination with thongs and padded bras is nowhere near over, and with magazines and television flashing the arcs of thongs all over the place, how can we expect it to be? As a 22-year-old woman and as an employee at Victoria’s Secret, it has long since ceased to shock me. I for one would like to give these girls the benefit of the doubt. I’d like to think that these girls want to wear Victoria’s Secret simply because it makes them feel more feminine and perhaps even more mature. Victoria’s Secret is after all, a cultural phenomenon that, let’s face it, is synonymous with the word lingerie whether you are 12 or 60.