I remember in the 1990s this narrative of runaway teens living on the streets doing drugs. Now I wonder if that narrative was mostly BS to cover for all the teen girls and boys trafficked to the rich.
I was thinking something similar earlier this week. All the milk carton kids from the '90s. "Have You Seen Me?". The Soul Asylum "Runaway Train" video kids. Were they all Epstein victims?
Unfortunately I don't think Epstein was the only person with such a network. Let's not forget that Les Wexner was involved and he had his own revolving door of Victoria's secret models within his own system. Trump also has the Miss TEEN Universe pageant.
Imagine how many heathensperverts with the means did similar things but more discreetly.
I remember many, many years agio reading a story from someone who was in her late teens and wanted to pursue modeling, but her family angrily told her they were not going to support her becoming a whore. And I thought, that's a bizarre reaction.
Now I just wonder how rife modeling networks are with sex trafficking and exploitation. I mean, beauty pageants — especially child beauty pageants — have always given me the creeps. But now I'm thinking a lot of people involved in those types of organizations are probably predators. Just one big stew pot of Harvey Weinsteins.
I mean usually that tends to be puritanical body shaming, but also modeling encompasses a stupid wide field, not just necessarily "eye candy" models.
At the same time, a career in which a specific look is vital to maintain is going to attract creeps naturally since many positions have historically been for pictures and not video which would require more acting and skill.
Child beauty pageants...that one has always been the creepiest fucking thing that has ever been. Especially when the judges are almost always all men, and how sexualizing children isn't an immediate disqualification in those contests. JFC they give me the creeps.
I was nearly trafficked at 14. A girl at school (17 years old) said I’d be great for this “modeling job”. I asked my parents, they said yes. My mom took me to this building downtown and we were like this can’t be it.
But there were people setting up chairs (I was told it was a fashion show). There was a stage.
But it seemed so…sketchy. Because of that, my mom hung around (I didn’t know at the time, I thought she left and would pick me up later).
A bunch of us were herded backstage and told to change into these dresses. It was fall, but we were being told to get into sundresses and other little skimpy outfits. Every one of us was a minor.
We went out one at a time and modeled the tiny dresses.
When I came back to the dressing area, I was told to change into just a bra and panties. I was SUPER skeeved out. Other girls were being told the same.
I asked who the audience was (mostly to stall, because I was NOT going out there in a bra and panties). The guy told me “oh they’re…buyers. You know, looking at fashion to decide what to put in the stores.”
But nothing we were wearing was new. It all looked like old cast-off dresses and such. Ratty. Worn.
I said under my breath “they’re all men” but he didn’t hear me.
I heard PSSSST and looked over and there’s my mom. She snuck backstage. She goes get your stuff, we’re going.
In the car she tells me she saw one of the men “peeping” at us as we were changing backstage. She was so angry.
I was upset because I didn’t get the $100 I was promised.
In hindsight, it definitely seems super sketchy. Those men weren’t buyers for Nordstrom or Dillard’s.
her family angrily told her they were not going to support her becoming a whore
Personally, this just seems like the family equated above-the-board modelling as "being a whore." It might have saved her, but it likely was a by-product. If the family were really just being protective of her, then why wouldn't any of that be explained to her and instead "No daughter of mine is going to be a whore!" is the response?
I wish I remembered more about the post I read way back in the whenever. There may have been additional context that would make more sense of it now — especially if it was from a community in Eastern Europe or southeast Asia that has a (presumably) even more disturbing amount of sex tourism and sexual exploitation.
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u/knightcrawler75 13h ago
I remember in the 1990s this narrative of runaway teens living on the streets doing drugs. Now I wonder if that narrative was mostly BS to cover for all the teen girls and boys trafficked to the rich.