'Anti-Victoria’s Secret' fashion show hopes to inspire body confidence in women

‘We want to help change young women’s opinion of what’s considered beautiful’

YouTube (BiteSizedFitness)

Two New Jersey-based sisters staged an "anti-Victoria’s Secret" fashion show featuring all non-models to celebrate body positivity.

Alyse and Lexi Scaffidi had the idea after watching last year’s show and wanting to combat the lack of diverse representation on the catwalk.

Both huge fans of the annual occasion, which takes place on Monday, and of the lingerie brand, they decided to stage their own version.

“We wanted to be angels ourselves,” said Alyse, who stands at 4’11”, “but we knew that wouldn’t be possible,” she told Yahoo Style.

The ambitious duo, who also run a health and fitness brand named BiteSizedFitness, cast 21 girls in their mock Victoria’s Secret show, including one disabled woman who took to the catwalk in a wheelchair and one woman with a prosthetic leg.

“Every year we watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and you start to look at the models and compare them to yourself," Alyse said in a YouTube clip documenting the event.

"You start to think, ‘I’ll never look like that, no matter what I do that’s not who I am’ and realistically that’s not what most of the world looks like,” she added.

“I’m not even five feet tall, no one’s going to let me walk on a runway unless we start to embrace that everybody’s different."

The sisters cast models of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds in their Victoria’s Secret-inspired show, recruiting women for the occasion via friends, family and social media.

Costumes were designed specifically to flatter each of the models’ unique figures and music for the event was written and performed by electronic pop singer Zach Matari.

The duo are already planning to stage another show next year.