It’s possible to be too religious. To get to a point where you’re so pious that you think even God can’t forgive your sins.
That partly describes former Victoria’s Secret model Kylie Bisutti, who has just come out with an interesting new book, I’m No Angel: From Victoria’s Secret Model to Role Model. Bisutti recently announced that she is leaving modeling because it violates her Christian faith and the Bible’s teachings about modesty. Before getting into my hesitation to fully endorse the story of the brave young woman, let me just say a few things about what Kylie Bisutti gets right in her book.
The fashion industry is deeply messed up—in fact, it is downright iniquitous and misogynistic. Bisutti recounts the horror stories: anorexia (she didn’t suffer but models she knew did), bloody feet, cheap, roach-filled apartments in far-off countries, no money (in the early days it often got stolen and doled out to agents), sleazy photographers. The worst part, and the thing I genuinely don’t understand, is the obsession with being sickly thin. The vast majority of men I have known and been friends with in my life have liked women who are healthy and have some curves. But I guess the fashion industry, largely through magazines, is selling clothes to women, so it’s not really about the guys. But then, what woman wants to have the body of a teenaged boy?
And this leads me to a proposition that I’m sure will not be well received: that the fashion industry, and the images it sells to the rest of us, is the way it is because it is run by self-hating women and gay men, both of whom feel threatened by or resentful of genuine female sexuality.
Before you start launching emails and tweets calling me a hater, let me note that I’m not the first one to make this argument—it was probably made most effectively about ten years ago by critic Lee Siegel in the New Republic, a left-wing magazine. In a piece about the TV show Sex and the City, Siegel noted that while the show was supposed to subvert conservative ideas about women, “there is a quality to Sex and the City’s subversions that is more bitter than playful, an element that is almost vindictive.” Siegel argued that the show was less about sexy single women and more a celebration of the reckless and promiscuous lifestyle lived by some gay men. He then went on, and deserves to be quoted at length:
“Commenting on Sarah Jessica Parker’s recent pregnancy, [Sex and the City director] Michael Patrick King said: ‘Sarah’s our workhorse, our show pony. We put her in high heels and tell her to run thirty blocks. Now, all of a sudden, she has to be babied.’ In its caricature of women who talk about sex like men, and, like men, have orgasms every time they have sex, the show represents a kind of counterattack on women’s biology. The expensive, mismatched, chic-ugly clothes that Carrie wears; Sarah Jessica Parker’s confused interpretations of her character as a black girl one episode and a self-conscious suburban cutie the next; Samantha’s robotic-erotic, stud-like manner (and the sweaty, atrocious acting of Kim Cattrall, who could not stand still and convince you that she is a person standing still); the women’s starry-eyed gold-digging; their countless humiliations: the picture of heterosexual life projected by Sex and the City, though it sometimes hits the nail right on the head, is the biggest hoax perpetrated on straight single women in the history of entertainment. The series’ misogyny is matched by its homophobia: the only regular gay characters, Stanford and Anthony, are self-hating and flaming, respectively. Perhaps the exhilaration that the show provokes in some of its fans stems from the reactionary character of its assumptions about sexual identity.”
After reading I’m No Angel, I watched footage of the kind of fashion shows that Kylie Bisutti once partook in, and I thought of Siegel’s words. Contrary to the propaganda, Victoria’s Secret isn’t something that “empowers” women or celebrates their bodies and sexuality. It does the opposite, trying to desexualize women through a kind of low-level torture and abuse. From the bloody toes crammed into absurdly high heels to the protruding ribs and dyed and burnt hair, it’s more like an assault on genuine female mystery and sensuality. “As a lingerie model, your job is to flirt with everyone in the room,” Bisutti says. I ask you, who is more apt to parade around in their underwear making an ass of themselves and flirting with the opposite sex? Anyone who thinks it’s more likely to be a woman more than a man, stand on your head.
So Bisutti is spot-on when it comes to the fashion industry. But where I’m No Angel left me cold was in its zombie Christianity. Maybe it’s just because I’m Catholic and we have a strong intellectual tradition, but I’ve always been been put off by Christians who are so zealous that they can’t make a move or interpret a single thing in life without citing God’s providence. Hurricane avoided your house? Alleluia! Mail came on time? Thank you Jesus! This current runs through I’m No Angel. Every chapter opens with a Bible verse. She falls in love with a great guy but has to make sure he’s a Christian before she can commit. God is in charge of everything, from the friends she makes to the cockroaches in the dump she lived in as a beginner in Osaka.
The piety even winds up hurting Bisutti herself. The way she lost her virginity in high school was not exactly a trip to the moon on gossamer wings, but the shame she feels about it is excessive and long-lasting. In a touching scene she goes to a Christian campfire meeting, writes the regret on a piece of wood and throws it into the fire. Yet a hundred pages later she brings it up in conversation on her first date with Mike, the man who would become her husband (who, praise God, turns out to be a—divorced—Christian). This is an example of being holier than the pope—the sin of not believing that God can forgive a sin and you no longer have to have it burden your life.
Kylie Bisutti is a strong, beautiful woman who made a hard choice and deserves praise for it. I’m No Angel is an interesting and worthwhile read. But if I may be so bold, God forgives you, Kylie. As the wise therapist and priest Father Benedict Groeschel once put it, even if you can’t believe that God could forgive you, believe it anyway.
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