fter a rocky couple of years, dogged by controversy, it was inevitable that one-time lingerie giants Victoria’s Secret would undergo a “rebrand”. And here it is, although I’m not sure if anyone anticipated the infamous catwalk Angels being transformed into “The VS Collective”. It sounds as if they spend their free time handing out flyers for rent strikes or bickering about how to run their permaculture co-op. The Collective is “an ever-growing group of accomplished women who share a common passion to drive positive change” and includes US footballer Megan Rapinoe, the Chinese-American free skier Eileen Gu and model, Vogue cover star and “body advocate” Paloma Elsesser. “At Victoria’s Secret, we are on an incredible journey to become the world’s leading advocate for women,” said the company’s CEO, Martin Waters, who also announced the funding of scientific research into the treatment of women’s cancers. In a very 2021 move, they are launching a podcast. In my own 2021 move, I have been rewatching Mad Men, so I see Don Draper’s opportunistic brain behind every sticky corporate step. Historically, what Victoria’s Secret sold was “sexy” and the consumer’s notion of sexy changed long before the brand’s did. Today, consumers want brands to be “good”, whatever that means, which is why huge corporations whip out the rainbow branding for Pride Month, while donating money to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians, as US congresswoman Pramila Jayapal recently pointed out in a series of tweets. As I was rolling my eyes at the idea of underwear being an opportunity for corporate activism, I was searching for a swimming costume. A friend recommended a small, independent British business that makes only the stock it knows it will sell, so I’ve been refreshing the page every couple of days to see if it has the one I want. It is harder than getting Glastonbury tickets. I mention it because its models are un-airbrushed, fat, thin, pregnant, black, white, brown, older, younger, able-bodied, disabled, and this is casual, matter of fact, and it doesn’t feel like lip service. To see costumes on the bodies that will be wearing them made perfect sense: this is what it will look like. I remain deeply cynical about massive corporations using the language of activism for profit but if it means an end to the domination of “aspirational” women’s bodies that resemble no body a real person is ever likely to see, let alone possess, it is better than what went before. Chrissy Teigen: sorry to bother you, but I’d like to apologise For connoisseurs of the celebrity apology – will [insert famous person here]’s unfortunate [insert mishap here] result in the Contrite, the Defensive, the Spiritual or the Grovelling? – last week provided such a tangle of interconnected sorries so complex that it required a PhD on the peripheries of fame to figure them out. To recap: in May, US model Chrissy Teigen was accused of trolling, via Twitter, Courtney Stodden, who had become tabloid fodder at the age of 16 after marrying a 51-year-old actor. On Monday, she wrote a long post on Medium acknowledging that she had been “a troll, full stop” and apologising for her actions (a considered combination of the Contrite and the Spiritual). After this, a fashion designer called Michael Costello came forward to accuse Teigen of bullying, at which point, the seemingly mild-mannered pop star Leona Lewis appeared, in a plot twist nobody could have predicted, to accuse Costello of being awful to her at a fitting, so Costello then had to issue his own mea culpa: “If I have hurt you in 2014... I want to apologise to you,” he said, a classic Defensive. This knotty web of contrition, a back and forth between Twitter and Instagram and DMs and Stories, shows how far down the rabbit hole of social media many famous people have gone, living a digital life more vivid than the real one. At least it is so convoluted and bizarre that the whole apology fiasco might have finally reached its tipping point, where we will no longer hear about how much people have “changed and grown” once a week. Sabrina Verjee: a record breaker at one fell swoop Sabrina Verjee has become the latest woman to annihilate a record in the jaw-dropping world of ultrarunning, completing the Lake District’s 214 Wainwright fells in five days, 23 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds. She trimmed more than six hours off the previous fastest time, set by Paul Tierney in 2019. The vet’s achievement is a feast of amazing statistics. Verjee ran 325 miles and ascended 36,000 metres, including Scafell Pike. She stopped for food breaks or brief periods of rest. She became the first woman to do all the Wainwrights in 2020, but said that completing them in under six days had “become an obsession”. I am fascinated by these women who compete in ultra-endurance events alongside men – and can beat them. Research is limited, because these are niche pursuits, meaning the sample sizes are small, but one theory among many is that the longer the distance, the more it becomes about mental, rather than physical strength, and women are better equipped for endurance in that way. “If what I have done inspires more people – especially girls and women – to get out there and challenge themselves, then that’s an added bonus,” said Verjee.