Has anyone noticed the Victoria’s Secret catalogues are getting a little provocative? Woodrow McFadden has. He arrived just ahead of his wife, Emily, at the Post Office one day last week and it was almost worth it. Rifling through the chaff, he grabbed the V.S. Swim 2002 catalogue, tried to conceal it inside an Eddie Bauer, and headed for the door leaving behind on the counter the electric bill, several other catalogues, a check from Delphine VanMiddlesworth for the caretaking he’d done that winter, and two notices from the I.R.S. One notice advised him that he’d underestimated his income in 2000, had therefore paid too little in quarterly estimated tax payments and was now being assessed a penalty. The other advised him that in 2001 he’d overestimated and was being penalized for having paid too much. Emily was heading in the door just as Woodrow was headed out. Another minute or two and he’d have been in the truck, safely underway and headed for the fish house where he could examine the spring fashions at his leisure. It was not to be. The small Eddie Bauer couldn’t contain the larger Victoria’s Secret catalogue any more effectively than the tiny outfits therein contained the models upon whom they were so appealingly arranged. Emily snatched the catalogue from under his arm, delivered a withering look, and sent him back to the counter to pick up the real mail.
Recently I had occasion to make the mail run myself every day for an entire week. Usually my wife retrieves it. During that week nine different Victoria’s Secret catalogues arrived. Unlike the ladies who graced the interior, each was a different shape. All the catalogues, though, had a couple of things in common. Don’t get ahead of me now. I’m referring to, for example, miracles. Miracles appear to be a common theme. Several miracle undergarments, each offering a different means of achieving miraculous results, were modeled to great effect on young women whose need, individually, for a miracle was only marginally less urgent that Michael Jordan’s need for shoe lifts. The miracle, if the ad copy is to be believed, can sometimes be accomplished by simply donning one of these delicate items and securing the fasteners. That alone will apparently transform the wearer, providing she is a breathtakingly beautiful and nearly anorexic young woman to begin with, into, well – into a breathtakingly beautiful and nearly anorexic young woman who, clad like that, could sell bait bags to an astronaut. In other cases, the miracle is achieved by means of adjustable equipment. By manipulating a discreetly located little chain, the result can be modest miracles for modest moments, as when not too much encouragement is needed, or really big miracles for those occasions when, claims the ad, these young ladies in the catalogue find it necessary to bring all their resources to bare. The ad presumes, I guess, that somewhere out there among the heterosexual males exist some remarkably resistant individuals.
It’s an interesting piece of marketing, this catalogue, and effective. Superficially the catalogue is designed to appeal to men. The cover girl is smiling invitingly or at least looking coy. If the man picks up the mail, the Victoria’s catalogue will likely, therefore, get taken home and the competition, Chadwicks, Nordstroms, the aforementioned Eddie Bauer, Land’s End and the rest will be discarded with the same wild abandon employed in sending a short lobster over the side. This even though a given model within, while presenting an appealing front, as it were, is glaring sullenly at him with a scowl that effectively telegraphs the message, “In your dreams, Bozo, you stand less of a chance with me than a snake’s belly stands in a wheel rut at Indianapolis.” Such a bruising bait-and-switch encounter is an awful letdown after having made the acquaintance of the nice lady on the cover. No matter. If the woman picks up the mail on the other hand, Chadwicks, Eddie Bauer and the like do get home but so does the Victoria’s Secret because women never throw out catalogues, no matter what. I recently found myself in the bathroom thumbing through one called Memories of Vigor – A Catalogue of Enhancements for Your Maturing Man. Where did that come from, and why on earth is she keeping it around?
Women thumb through the Victoria’s Secret catalogue apparently oblivious to its tenuous perch on the fence separating soft sell from soft porn. But women thumb through all catalogues automatically. As their lungs instinctively draw in and expel air, as they have a convincing capacity for making their own ideas seem like his, as they peel through a sale rack more intuitively and effectively than John Ashcroft can flay through civil liberties, so do a woman’s thumbs instinctively advance through the pages of a catalogue, any catalogue. And once inside they buy stuff, even from Victoria’s Secret, because to buy stuff from a catalogue is as compelling as thumbing through it to begin with. The glowering young ladies who wear their expressions like armor do not trouble them.
Last fall we had the pleasure of hosting an L.L. Bean catalogue shoot here at the Tidewater. It was a huge undertaking. An enormous bus served as a makeup room, dressing room, communications center, snack bar, waiting (of which there was a great deal) room and command post. Hair dressers were flown in from Boston, makeup people from New York, and dressmakers from the west coast. The shoot lasted almost two weeks; the bus traveled all over the island, finding just the right spot to feature an attractive model in one of Bean’s jackets. All the team members were housed here and fed. L.L. Bean found our island’s beautiful shores and woodlands, lighthouses and quarries to be good settings for the photo shoot. Why wouldn’t any catalogue feel similarly? After all, the Victoria’s Secret catalogue makes such great use of water, the swimsuits and all, and here we are, a motel right on a bridge in the ocean. Imagine Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum and Laetitia Casta frolicking right here in the Millstream. Wow! I bet they’d let me put the photos right on my brochure. Of course we’d have to keep them over in the west current, away from the overboard discharge unless the municipal sewer is installed by then. (I didn’t have those names memorized, incidentally; I had to look them up).