Opinion · Social Life
“This is so disrespectful to REAL models.” That was one of the top reactions on Victoria’s Secret’s Instagram after Kylie Jenner wore the $50 million Fantasy Bra on October 18. It was her first time ever walking the show.
So yes, the backlash is real, and part of it is fair. Several longtime Angels never got that moment. But I think a lot of the reaction slid from “honor the veterans” into “tear down the new person.” Those are two different things, and only one of them needs the other to lose.
What is actually being discussed?
- The 2026 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show took place in Los Angeles on October 18. The Fantasy Bra returned for the first time since 2018.
- The bra was made with jeweler Jacob & Co. It holds 4,410 diamonds and is valued at about $50 million.
- Kylie Jenner wore it in her runway debut. Veterans Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio and Candice Swanepoel walked the same show.
- Comments called the choice “disrespectful” and “what being privileged looks like.” One comment saying the brand “ruined the show” passed 10,000 likes.
- Chief creative officer Adam Selman said Jenner “extends beyond fashion, beyond culture, beyond TV” and that the brand was “giving them what they want.”
Sources: The Daily Beast, IBTimes UK, Newsweek, The Tab
The first complaint was about loyalty
Start with the strongest version of the critics’ case. For years, the Fantasy Bra was a career milestone. A model wore it after seasons of walking the show, not on her first night.
Fans on Reddit pointed out that several veteran Angels never wore it at all. Many critics also said up front that Jenner looked good. Their point was not her face. It was the order of things.
Some fans even had a name ready. Barbara Palvin walked the same show six weeks after giving birth, and one fan asked, “Where are her wings? She deserves them!” The critics were not against the show. They had a picture of who it should honor.
That instinct makes sense to me. We tend to value rewards more when they took time to earn. It is the same pull I wrote about in the effort heuristic: the same result looks better when it took longer. A milestone handed out on day one breaks that story.
Then the target moved
Read the comments in order and you can watch them change. “The OGs deserved it” becomes “she’s not a real model.” Then it becomes “just because she has money.”
The first line is about the veterans. The last two are about her. And she is not the one who made the call. A brand offered her a spot, and she said yes. Most of us would.
I’d argue this is where respect turned into something else. You can say “Adriana Lima earned this” without adding “and Kylie didn’t deserve to be on that runway.” The first sentence honors someone. The second only knocks someone down.
To be fair to the critics, Jenner is not a typical rookie. She arrived famous and rich, and a lot of the anger is really about who gets access in the first place. That is a reasonable thing to question. But it is a question about the casting rule. It is not proof she walked badly.
The brand had its own logic
It helps to look at the choice from the other side, too. Victoria’s Secret retired its Angels in 2021 and spent years trying to rebuild. Retail analyst Simeon Siegel told Newsweek the brand’s real challenge is restoring relevance.
Seen that way, the pick was not random. Selman described the show as a big entertainment event and said the brand wanted an unexpected pairing. A famous name in the most famous piece is a bet on attention, and attention is what a comeback needs.
You can disagree with that bet. Plenty of fans did. But notice that it was a bet the company made, with its own goals. Jenner did not choose herself over Lima. A marketing plan did.
Instant status invites a hazing reflex
There is research that fits this pattern closely. Anthropologist Aldo Cimino asked a large U.S. sample to imagine joining different groups. When a group gave newcomers more automatic benefits, like status and protection, people wanted to haze those newcomers more.
A Fantasy Bra on your first walk is about as much automatic status as fashion can give. By Cimino’s logic, the urge to bring that person down a level is predictable. It does not need any real flaw in the newcomer to start.
A second line of research explains what the urge turns into. Madeline Heilman and colleagues found that women believed to be hired through preferential selection were rated as less competent, even when their performance said otherwise. The effect held as long as that performance was a little ambiguous.
Runway walking is about as ambiguous as performance gets. There is no score. So once people decide she got the spot for the wrong reason, “she’s not a real model” is the easy next step.
Rookie contracts, new-hire pay and a diamond bra
This is not a fashion problem. It shows up anywhere a newcomer gets a big reward before the veterans think they should.
The rookie who got paid first
In 2010, the NFL’s top draft pick, Sam Bradford, signed a deal with about $50 million guaranteed before playing a single game. Veterans and owners both objected. The next year, the league and the players’ union agreed to a rookie wage scale that cut those deals sharply.
The change was big. The next two top picks, Cam Newton and Andrew Luck, each got about $22 million guaranteed, less than half of Bradford’s.
Notice where the fix landed. Nobody solved it by deciding Bradford was a fraud. They changed the rule that produced the contract. The lesson: when people resent a newcomer’s reward, the lasting fix usually comes from changing the rule.
The new hire who earns more
In tight job markets, companies often pay new hires a premium to fill roles. SHRM has warned that this “pay compression” can leave longer-tenured staff resentful, hurt morale and push people to quit.
The employer set the number. Yet the tension usually shows up between coworkers, aimed at the person sitting at the next desk. The one who signed the offer gets the side-eye, not the one who wrote it.
The lesson: the person closest to us often absorbs anger meant for a decision made somewhere else.
Respect is not a fixed amount
Put these together and one pattern stands out. When a newcomer jumps the line, the anger is often a fair complaint about the line. But the newcomer is visible, and the people who moved them up are not. So the anger lands on the face in front of us.
That has a cost. It turns a good question, “how should this brand honor the people who built it?”, into a pile-on about one person’s worth. The veterans don’t gain anything from that. Lima doesn’t get the bra back because Jenner gets called fake.
The fairer version of this debate would sound different. It would say the Angels deserved a real tribute, and that the brand chose reach over history. Both of those can be true while Jenner simply did the job she was offered.
It would also leave room for the newcomer to be judged later, on her own work. If she walks again and it falls flat, that is fair to say. Deciding she failed before she has a track record is the part that turns respect for one group into contempt for one person.
A quick check before you pile on
The next time a newcomer gets something big before the veterans, at work, in sports or online, it can help to ask:
- Who made this decision? If it was a company, the complaint belongs there.
- Can I praise the veteran without insulting the newcomer? If my sentence needs both halves, I may be venting, not honoring.
- Am I judging the work, or the path? If the work was fine, “they didn’t earn it” is a claim about the system, not the person.
Respecting the people who came first is a good instinct. It just doesn’t require anyone to be pushed off the stage.
Editorial note: This is an opinion piece based on public reporting as of October 23, 2026. Social media comments quoted here come from news coverage and may not represent most viewers, and this piece does not assess anyone’s personal motives. The featured image is AI-generated.