Bridget Malcolm, an Australian model who has posed for big brands and prestigious magazines around the world, has just revealed heavy secrets about her participation in the Victoria’s Secret fashion show in 2016 in Paris.
She is so beautiful in the photos that you can hardly believe what was going on in her head at the time of the incident. In 2016, Bridget Malcolm added her name to the highly prized list of Victoria’s Secret models. With about fifty young women, she takes the direction of Paris for an exceptional parade at the Grand Palais. In the backstage, with her pink silk robe, she smiles at all the targets aimed at her. But inside, the atmosphere is quite different. “The sadness in my eyes breaks my heart”, she says in 2021 on TikTok in a video that went viral on June 26, 2021.
“I found my bra from the Victoria’s Secret 2016 show! It’s a 30A cup”, explains the model in the introduction. “Today I’m doing a 34B because I’m healthy. In 2017 I was kicked out of the show by Ed Razek [ex dirigeant de Victoria’s Secret] who found that my body was not good enough “, she continues. Back then, Bridget was under a lot of pressure to be as lean as possible. The violence with which she gets fired, despite her model body posing and parading for the biggest brands around the world, is unheard of.
At the time, it was impossible for her to talk about this violent treatment as the Victoria’s Secret show was still the Holy Grail for so many young models. A system that forces models to be silent and manhandle their bodies to enter the selection criteria. In 2011, the Angel Adriana Lama explained for example to the Telegraph having to go without solid meals 72 hours before the Victoria’s Secret show. 12 hours before the show, no ingestion of anything, even water.
Who cares about the mental health of models?
It took several years of work for the Australian to recover from the repeated traumas, which she says have been part of her daily life as a model. “At only 18, I had already lived alone in three different countries. A much older man had gained my trust to abuse me. I had been sexually assaulted several times, she explains in a video published on July 10, 2021. Every week my agent would tell me to take cocaine to lose weight. My different agencies always put more pressure on me to lose weight. “
While a minor and in full questioning about her identity as a young woman, her agencies would also have advised her to “sleep as much as possible to lose weight”. Following which Bridget develops post-traumatic stress, anorexia, orthorexia (obsession with healthy eating), anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and “an inability to be able to socialize without alcohol.” She eventually becomes addicted to Xanax and Zolpidem (a sedative). At 26, she couldn’t leave her home without going through serious panic attacks.
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Denounce to protect the youngest
If today, the former Victoria’s Secret model dares to talk about her experience, it is because she is sober, is doing better, and wants to see things change in depth. “I am one of the lucky models. I was able to have a career of several years in fashion”, she explains, aware of her privilege. And to add: “My job shouldn’t include all this abuse. That’s why I’m opening it today.”
Observing the recent changes of Victoria’s Secret, who replaced her team “Angels” Through ambassadors with a less standardized body (but still thin or barely plump), Bridget Malcolm sees it above all as a performance commitment, which aims to pass itself off as inclusive without any real change in substance. For her, the lingerie brand remains “a machine where we were all crushed and spat out.”
In haute-couture, commitments were made in 2017 by the giants LVMH and Kering to improve working conditions for models (real changing rooms, buffet available behind the scenes) and impose new rules on houses. Thus, each mannequin is supposed to have a medical certificate attesting “of a body mass index allowing the exercise of the activity of mannequin.” The houses have also pledged to withdraw size 32 casting requests and no longer hire models under the age of 16.
New rules that are easy to circumvent in a fashion industry which is used to sending the rules of labor law to the ground. As demonstrated by Victoire Maçon Dauxerre in her testimony book “Never skinny enough” (Les Arènes Editions) released in 2016. She explained that her working hours were not counted by anyone, while her salary was calculated without her consent by her agency which billed her at a high price for all travel and accommodation in lowercase “mannequin apartments”, to share with 3 or 4.
Like Bridget and Victoire, others now dare to speak out so that the modeling profession is more regulated. In France, the Model Law association offers legal assistance to all French, English and Russian speaking models so that they are well aware of their rights.
Initiatives so that young models do not go through all the traumas that marked Bridget Malcolm. The latter is also happy to know that on the public side, things are changing. For her, the decline in audiences for the Victoria’s Secret show in recent years and its cancellation in 2019 are proof that the public wants something else. And the model concludes: “I am delighted to know that a generation of young women will grow up without these shows.”
Dan Hastings
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