The internet is busy complaining about regressive body standards and the male gaze. But those of us with the intellectual rigor to look closer know the return of the rhinestone wings is exactly the cultural reset we needed.
Last night, as the harsh, unforgiving strobe lights of the 2026 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show washed over my complimentary glass of vintage Moët, I had a revelation. While the internet was busy composing its predictable little think pieces about objectification and archaic beauty metrics, I was witnessing history. The Angels are back, and quite frankly, the cultural reset is staggering. Having spent the better part of a decade pretending we wanted massive global brands to be relatable, the collective sigh of relief in the VIP section was palpable.
The pink carpet alone was a triumph of the human spirit. Seeing Megan Thee Stallion, Tate McRae, and Livvy Dunne navigating the aggressive flashbulbs and the manic energy of the press gauntlet, I was struck by the sheer, unadulterated agency of it all. For too long, the culture has demanded that women be "comfortable," or "authentically represented," or "treated as multidimensional human beings." But as a twelve-foot pair of marabou feather wings grazed my shoulder in the holding area—nearly knocking my date, a prominent Hollywood showrunner, into a towering display of body mist—I realized how suffocating that expectation had become. Sometimes, true liberation looks like a structurally unsound rhinestone corset that makes it physically impossible to sit down.
The critics, naturally, have missed the point entirely. They look at a woman walking down a glittering runway in four million dollars worth of conflict diamonds and a G-string, and they see exploitation. I look at her and I see a gladiator. I see a survivor of the grueling, three-hour spray-tan tent. I see a woman who has bravely overcome the modern societal pressure to consume complex carbohydrates. We demand so much emotional labor from women today; isn't it actually deeply progressive to ask nothing of them except that they maintain an exact 24-inch waist while balancing 80 pounds of fiberglass scaffolding on their clavicles?
To understand the gravity of the moment, you simply had to be in the room. The sheer athletic endurance required to pout while walking in six-inch stilettos across a floor slick with glitter cannot be overstated.
The aerodynamic drag of the celestial wings alone requires a level of core strength that frankly puts our armed forces to shame.
I mentioned this undeniable truth to a mid-tier streaming executive during the second musical interlude. We were standing dangerously close to a pyrotechnic display meant to highlight a new line of breathable shapewear. He agreed, tears glistening in his eyes, that abandoning the brand’s brief, disastrous pivot to inclusivity was the only way to heal a divided nation. When you try to be everything to everyone, he whispered to me over the deafening bass of a pop anthem, you forget how to sell a ninety-dollar lace teddy to an insecure college student. It was one of the most profound things I have ever heard at a fashion week event.
The rollout of this year's show was, in fact, a masterclass in subverting expectations. By simply hiring the tallest, most terrifyingly symmetrical people on Earth and putting them back in the exact same outfits they wore in 2011, the brand has executed a brilliant post-ironic commentary on consumerism itself. When a model winks at the camera while wearing an ensemble entirely constructed from Swarovski crystals and fishing line, she isn't selling sex. She is daring us to interrogate our own complicity in the late-capitalist spectacle. It is practically a Marxist text, provided you have the intellectual rigor to squint.
As I left the venue, stepping over a discarded feather boa and a publicist quietly weeping into her headset, I felt a deep sense of peace. The discourse will rage on, of course. The keyboard warriors will complain from the comfort of their sweatpants. But those of us who were actually there, breathing in the intoxicating, heavily branded mixture of hairspray, ambition, and sheer panic, know the truth. The Angels haven't just returned; they have descended to save us from ourselves.