Melania Trump has put the Epstein files back in the headlines after her husband tried very hard to remove them. In a stilted speech at the White House podium last week, she minimised her own relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and called on lawmakers to "give [Epstein’s] victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress”.
Yesterday, Donald Trump, when asked about the first lady’s request for further investigation, referred to the survivors as “the women, the victims or whatever”.
This kind of casual contempt is what we have come to expect of an international scandal that has brought into the sunlight some unspeakably gruesome power abuses over children and women. Pam Bondi, we have been told, will no longer testify to a congressional committee about "possible mismanagement" of the justice department's investigation, as she is no longer the US attorney general. The US Department of Justice claims it fulfilled its legal obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act by releasing over 3.5 million pages of documents. It considers the review of Epstein-related files over.
Only one person, to date, has been brought to justice – Maxwell – and not one man. So what are we left with? The revelation that those who are wealthy and powerful enough can survive credible evidence of the worst kind of crimes without arrest, charge or even investigation.
Valentine’s Day protest outside Victoria's Secret in New York. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty
Entitlement is the residue of privilege and now there are those who will sleep better at night knowing that even if their most damning emails are released, it will only serve to prove that they are above the law and there will be no reckoning.
It feels like a watershed moment; but there was a striking day in the Congressional hearing that brought to light how these values have seeped steadily into our culture, like a poison gas, for decades. That day was when retail billionaire Les Wexner took the stand. I watched his smug laughter as his lawyer audibly whispered: “I will fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words.”
I remembered his face from a 2022 Hulu docuseries called Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons that heavily featured Wexner, the mastermind behind the famous lingerie chain. The documentary exposed then that Wexner had given Epstein power of attorney, which gave him carte blanche over Wexner’s personal and business financial affairs, for over 20 years.
Before Wexner, children’s clothes were generally practical or cute, and advertised to parents
There were various sordid stories about their collaboration and connections, including testimony from a young artist who alleges she was trapped in Wexner’s house by Epstein, who assaulted her with his accomplice Maxwell. Another featured Epstein posing as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret to harass and exploit aspiring and professional models.
What stood out to me, though, was the cultural impact that Wexner, in cahoots with Epstein, has had on women and girls.
In 2002, Victoria’s Secret started a teen-oriented line called Pink, which they claimed was to target adolescents in order to make them lifelong customers. As the horrified documentary director, Matt Tyrnauer, said himself: “It’s tweens wearing scanty clothing with giant lollipops and hula hoops. Either I’m in a kind of Lolita Nabokovian parody or this was real. I’m afraid it was real.” This was not just some kind of sordid customer loyalty programme, but a way to legally showcase teens as sex objects on the high street and in family shopping malls.
This wasn’t Wexner’s first foray into sexualising children and young teens. He effectively invented “tween” culture with his brand Limited Too (a spinoff of a famous womenswear store) owned by “Tween Brands”. It was the first store that marketed fashion, jewellery, beauty products and makeup directly to seven- to 14-year-olds. It marketed these things as aspirational and adult to pre-teens. Before Wexner, children’s clothes were generally practical or cute, and advertised to parents. Children had traditionally found clothes shopping something of a necessary bore, but now it was a way to behave as teens before their time. A quick Google image search brings up 90s and 00s Limited Too catalogues featuring little girls in Pretty Woman-style caps and huge hoop earrings – and others in bikinis and crop-tops that expose their midriffs.
In 2007, Emily Yoffe wrote an article for Slate headlined “Lolita’s Closet” that critiqued Limited Too and other stores that had copied the trend it had set. She wrote: “What I don’t want her to bring home from the mall are clothes that inspire this sort of paroxysm: ‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.’” When she took her 11-year-old daughter shopping at Limited Too, she found the tops were either encrusted with rhinestones and glitter or emblazoned with insulting sexist slogans like "I Left My Brain In My Locker”. Yoffe wrote: “Abercrombie, the ‘tween division of [US clothing chain] Abercrombie & Fitch, got in trouble for marketing thong underpants – with phrases such as “eye candy” printed on them – to prepubescent girls. Now scanty panties for girls are standard. At Limited Too there were pairs with rhinestone hearts or printed with cheeky sayings such as “Buy It Now! Tell Dad Later!”
Les Wexner with model Stella Maxwell at the 2016 Fragrance Foundation Awards in New York. Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty
I’ll give you one guess who owned Abercrombie and Fitch at the time. You are correct. It was Wexner. They were heavily sexualising our children right in front of us, and many people bought their Lolita fashions and unwittingly dressed their children up for the paedophile gaze. The visionaries behind these stores wanted to ogle little girls and see more of their skin. They wanted those girls to feel more like their older siblings and family members who already had boyfriends, so they paid for some billboards and TV spots and some prime real estate in shopping malls and waited. Child depravity – but make it fashion!
Abercrombie and Fitch have had two terrifying documentaries made about them. The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool alleged sexual exploitation and abuse of young male models and sales assistants by Mike Jeffries, Wexner’s CEO. White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch focuses on the sidelining and firing of employees who were not young enough, white enough and thin enough. This is the pervasive way in which these culture makers shaped our world in front of our eyes and even inside our own heads.
Wexner’s brands were known for sizing down, leaving tween and teen girls who were usually a size 10 struggling to fit into a size 14 or 16. This was designed to affect their self-esteem and make the “waif look” aspirational. Girls will starve themselves if you put the wrong tag in their jeans or crop top. Wexner’s companies didn’t just get their customer base to buy clothes to sexualise their own children; they tricked women and teens into starving themselves to look more like sexualised children.
We moved from shoulder pads and power suits to baby-doll tops and heroin chic. With each passing year, we were asked to look smaller, thinner and younger
Think about the trajectory of women’s fashion from the late 1980s, when Wexner and Epstein got involved, through to the 2000s, when their high-street influence was at its peak. There was a significant move from shoulder pads and power suits to baby-doll tops and heroin chic. With each passing year we were asked to look smaller, thinner and younger. And I’m ashamed to say I fell for it. I think most of us did.
Instead of teens aspiring to look like adults, adults were consistently invited to look more like teens. Tweens were sold ageing-up and we were sold ageing-down. This meant everyone could be invited into Lolita’s closet, where we could live together, undernourished and filled with self-loathing. In 2008, Limited Too rebranded, disturbingly, as “Justice”. Justice is no longer a bricks and mortar brand, but you can still ShopJustice.com online. Their home page currently features training bras for tweens. It’s tragic to think that might be the only justice we ever see.
If you’re hoping we might be in the dying embers of this damaging culture, brace yourself. Limited Too has been trying to make a comeback. The timing is no accident: it is highly compatible in this brave new world of Ozempic, Botox, looksmaxxing and heroin-chic revisited. Perhaps this was always the intended final destination of the Lolita Express. And maybe the Lolita Express was not just a private jet, but also a public catastrophe.
Deborah Frances-White hosts The Guilty Feminist podcast. Her latest book ‘Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have’ has just been published in paperback by Virago.
The Nerve is collaborating with the Guilty Feminist for an evening of conversation and entertainment - at the Leicester Square theatre on Thursday 30 April. Deborah will be joined on stage by Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell and Nerve co-founder Carole Cadwalladr to talk about our post-Epstein world, why no men have been prosecuted and how we can use this moment to effect change. Get tickets here. (Members have been sent a discount code for a 20% reduction - we will resend an email next week)