Sign the Victoria's Secret petition on change.org

As a mom, I've got nothing against getting your sexyback.  But until tweens and teens are mature enough to handle mature content, there's no reason for them to be watching, viewing, engaging or even wearing sexy material.

Enter Victoria's Secret.

According to the company website, their new campaign is called "Bright Young Things" (a campaign supposedly targeting college girls promoting their younger "Pink" line) and aimed at spring breakers and this new "get wild" lifestyle that is popular in movies like the aptly named "Spring Breakers"(rated R - as in no one under 18 should see this movie, who wear underwear in the ads for the film that look remotely like the Victoria Secret line in question here). 

One look at the colors, the models and the styles, and you know it shoots a bit lower on the age scale than a frisky co-ed cavorting with abandon in a beachside community like Cancun or South Padre Island.  

Icing on the cake? Okay with brightly colored underwear - what's the big deal, you ask?

The bras and panties have emblazoned on them slogans on them like "wild" and "call me".  And hipsters that say, "Feeling lucky?" And we thought "Juicy" and "Pink" across the butts was bad when that came out... what's next, the girl's cell phone number right across the back?

This is the campaign in question, one of the least raunchy campaign shots.
The girl in the ad looks pretty young to me... and rail-thin.

Here's what I wrote on the official petition started by Diana Cherry of Seattle on change.org - you should enter your own thoughts and concerns, please! (Click here to visit the petition - over 12,500 signatures so far.) 

"Young girls have all the cards stacked against them... sexuality at every turn in books, music, movies, social media, and YouTube videos. At every turn, they are asked to "be sexy" and pout, and strut, and show off their "assets" like a Kardashian. This clothing line is over the top - "call me" and "wild"? Really? Thongs and lace? The folks around the boardroom are destroying their reputation for sexy - Victoria Secret has always been the place to go for adults feeling frisky and wanted to feel sexy (not cute, sexy). Maybe research and skewed focus groups makes someone in the boardroom feel better about this decision, but it is wrong. Dead wrong. Turn around, bright eyes... every now and then you fall apart."

Here's a bit of what Sheila Moeschen on Huffington Post wrote on this topic, which is far more articulate :

"...Lingerie lines like 'Bright Young Things,' part of PINK, forge a continuum that keeps girls infantilized well into some of their most formative years as young women. Fashion is always political. Women's clothing in particular carries significance for the way it may be used for self and political expression, as a mode of resistance and for art. What we wear under our clothes matters just as much if not more in this respect as lingerie -- used in nearly every kind of media from advertisements for yogurt to music videos -- serves more than a functional purpose, it is a material system women use as a means of self-discovery and empowerment. It is hard to feel empowered with the words 'Call Me' or 'Wild' stitched across your underwear, not because these phrases invite unwanted salaciousness but because they parrot unimaginative, proscriptive statements that limit fantasy, play and the parameters of ideas about sexiness. In this case, those ideas fall squarely within ones yoked to a weird kind of feminine arrested development: girls who seem like women playing at being girls.

The 'Bright Young Things' targeted by Victoria's Secret's latest campaign are individuals, not 'things,' and they will eventually grow up, much to the company's best efforts to sell them on the contrary, to harness considerable consumer power. And with enough dialogue and education, rather than literally buying into someone else's notions of sexual or feminine identity, they might just manufacture their own...."

Yep, those are formerly bright young things and tween idols Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, starring in "Spring Breakers" (rated R), posing for the film's ad (above) in their underwear.

For comparison, this is a Victoria Secret photo aimed at their "normal" target audience - women 25-54.
Same bright colors, more mature creative concept/ad design (underwear in the bedroom/home, and not out on the beach or at a spring break party!). More fun and frisky than in control.
The audience we know they have done very, very well targeting.
Women who are old enough to vote, own cars, and pay for their
own lingerie with their own paychecks and credit cards.
Listen up, VS.