Getty Models at the 2018 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show
“American Idol” alum Jax can’t quite believe how her new song, “Victoria’s Secret,” has not only gone viral — but also inspired the retail brand’s CEO to issue a letter to its customers about the song and the company’s past mistakes.
Jax, who placed third on season 14 of “Idol,” said she never intended to “take down” the brand, but in an Instagram post on August 12, 2022, the singer admitted, “it’s pretty bad a** that we all got the attention of a CEO of a BILLION dollar company!”
Jax Wrote ‘Victoria’s Secret’ Song For Young Girl She Babysits
On June 4, Jax premiered a portion of her “Victoria’s Secret” song in a video on social media, taken while she was picking up the young girl she babysits, Chelsea. Jax shared that the day before, when she picked up her from the mall after shopping with friends, Chelsea was distraught over a comment her friend made while they were bikini shopping at Victoria’s Secret.
“This one little brat said something that made me cringe,” Jax said, sitting behind the steering wheel. “Tell ’em what she said.”
Reluctantly, Chelsea revealed, “She said the bathing suit made me look ‘too fat and too flat.'”
Clearly frustrated again after hearing the comment, 26-year-old Jax said that those kinds of statements — and the way stores like Victoria’s Secret perpetuate the message that there’s a “perfect” female body type — drove her to develop an eating disorder as a young girl.
In an August 9 interview with Variety, Jax said, “Chelsea’s always telling me about things a girl said to her — her body, her ears, you name it and she’s insecure about it. So I’m like, gosh, ding, ding, ding. I’ve been holding back on writing a song about what I’ve been through with my body for a very long time. It was like a light bulb. I could actually do something good here for these kids.”
The message in Jax’s song is clearly resonating. That video has had over 39 million views on TikTok alone, and the song debuted on Billboard’s Top 100 chart on August 13.
Victoria’s Secret CEO Writes Letter to Customers About Song
Jax has had great success with her music on TikTok; in fact, she was named iHeartRadio’s first TikTok Songwriter of the Year in 2022 after her song, “Like My Father,” went viral. But she’s never elicited the kind of reaction “Victoria’s Secret” is getting — including a response from the CEO of the giant retail brand.
On August 11, Victoria’s Secret posted a handwritten letter on Instagram from CEO Amy Hauk, who thanked Jax for “addressing important issues in her lyrics.”
In the body-positive anthem, Jax contends that the real secret about Victoria’s Secret is that “she’s an old man who lives in Ohio, making money off of girls like me… she was made up by a dude.”
Coincidentally, the song has gone viral at the same time Hulu premiered a three-part docuseries called “Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons,” about the scandalous connection between Jefferey Epstein and disgraced Victoria’s Secret head Les Wexner.
According to a July 19 profile of the film in Time Magazine, Ohio-born Wexner bought the lingerie company in 1982 for $1 million, turning it into a billion-dollar company within a decade. His company, L Brands Inc., also owned The Limited, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. As the “Me Too” movement emerged and complaints about Victoria Secret’s over-sexualized marketing ramped up, Wexner stepped down in 2020, but remains the richest man in Ohio, with a net worth of $5.8 billion.
Jax told Variety, “The point of the song is he realized he was getting called out by a culture of women standing up for themselves. So then he liquidated all the money and ghosted and went off the grid. Now we’re all sitting here with body problems and he has billions of dollars. That doesn’t sit right with me.”
Hauk, the new CEO of Victoria’s Secret, acknowledged in her letter about Jax’s song that the company is transforming to better advocate for customers of all sizes and shapes.
“We make no excuses for the past,” she wrote. “And we’re committed to regaining your trust.”