I started writing about the Epstein files with the initial goal of talking about beauty standards. I’m laughing at my own naivety. Just so you know, I failed at that goal.
Very quickly, I realized we’re no longer talking about one man, we’re talking about Epstein culture. It’s another level of rape culture, but even that feels insufficient. I won’t end up talking just about that either. I’ll talk about everything. Epstein culture seems to have been a foundational layer of civilization and the right hand of power. Actually, not even the right hand of power. It was power itself.
In the files, we see men from every corner of the elite: politics, academia, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, royalty, Hollywood, top law firms, and, broadly speaking, the ultra-rich.
At this point, I want to offer a deep apology to conspiracy theorists, an apology I don’t know how we’ll deal with in the next pandemic, when we’ll once again have to argue that vaccines aren’t evil. Where do you even begin, and how do you salvage anything after all this?
The files pulled back the heavy curtain of patriarchy (and of “normal” reality) and revealed the truth about its darkest corners. For the first time, it’s so clear that society can’t look away and pretend not to see that these corners are rooted in the sexual exploitation of children.
We can’t look away, unless there’s a big enough distraction to force us to look elsewhere. Because it’s widely acknowledged that right now we’re spectators of a war that, while certainly intentional, may also have been sparked to make us forget the files and what was found in them. As it was vividly put: “If everyone named in the files was to be charged, the entire government, the entire System, would collapse.” So, don’t look. As Trump, whose name appears in the files thousands of times and who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 28 women, said: “Are you still talking about this?” It’s called diversion politics.
Years ago, I wrote that there’s a realization that comes after 30, especially after engaging with feminism, which is more disturbing and disgusting than the rest: that most of the male attention we received in our lives, came when we were 12–13 years old.
I said that young girls, as targets, are the easiest prey for a bad man, because they’re still embarrassed and afraid, they don’t react, they won’t shout, they won’t defend themselves.
The hundreds of men in the files are just the tip of the iceberg. These are billionaires, oligarchs, the people who run the world. That’s what I used to say, and I would add “not all men.” Today, I’ll say it seems to be a whole lot of them, especially those who aren’t afraid to act because they believe there will be no consequences.
As The Guardian puts it, the Epstein files offer women an unprecedented chance to “eavesdrop” on conversations they would never normally hear. It’s the most deeply disturbing and enraging lecture hall imaginable. We’re hearing what a (massive) global elite group of men think and say about women when they believe women aren’t listening.
Part of the tech elite hides behind a puritanical veil of respectability, although that veil is gradually dropping. You used to try to talk to ChatGPT about pornography and it would say, “this content may violate our usage policies.” But gradually, Silicon Valley is allowing conversations about sex. People already have romantic relationships with chatbots, waiting lists for rape dolls are huge, Elon Musk’s Grok generates non-consensual porn of women and underage girls without consequences, and on the social media accounts of teenage girls with millions of followers, countdowns to their 18th birthdays are openly posted, because that age marks their debut on OnlyFans. (With podcast bros as their “agents”, profiting both from the women on OnlyFans and from insulting them to their audiences.) We used to worry that “teen” was the most searched term on porn platforms. Those times feel innocent now.
Citizens Reunited states that the files revealed how closely the “broligarchy” (tech billionaire bros) was tied to Epstein’s circle. The sexual exploitation of children for profit is not a bug. It’s not a moderation issue. It’s a feature of the system. As Carole Cadwalladr says: “Epstein’s world is our world. That’s the darkest revelation of these files. The culture of child sexual exploitation is woven into the internet.” The algorithm tracks, identifies, exploits, and amplifies every related male impulse, and turns it into profit. The system is simply doing its job.
A culture that worships female youth and innocence despises female age and experience. That’s pedophilic culture. Hatred toward adult women and sexual desire for underage girls are two sides of the same coin.
We are crones, witches, hags. Because we are a threat. Because, with rare exceptions, see Ghislaine Maxwell and others who serve these men, we are protectors of children and of a world where rich men cannot act with impunity.
Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian references a phrase by editor Tina Brown: “we are living in a pedophile’s ball”. All this is happening while the beauty standards of the late ’90s and early 2000s have made a triumphant return. I spoke some time ago about the end of body positivity, the return of heroin chic and the extremely thin female body, along with low-rise jeans, the infamous quote “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” preventative baby Botox, and facelifts starting at 35.
The beauty industry no longer sells aesthetics or anti-aging. It sells youth. It sells imagined adolescence. Adulthood, and especially maturity, is treated as a flaw, a problem to be hidden and fixed at all costs, because it’s seen as repulsive and unacceptable. A woman over 30, 40 or 50, who knows who she is, who is successful and wise, is demonized. She becomes the “spinster with cats,” the witch who must be burned.
Author Feminista Jones asks: “Are women finally making the connection between the beauty industry’s obsession with anti-aging and the pedophilic nature of patriarchy? Has it finally clicked that your obsession with not looking ‘old’, meaning over 25, serves the predatory male gaze?”
These impossible beauty standards for women were created by men attracted to underage girls. Pedophiles. Male desire for small, fragile, girlish bodies reveals a desire for women who are docile, who don’t take up space, who submit. It has always been about power. Power over young, vulnerable girls who couldn’t reject powerful men’s advances, and power over us, adult women, so that we spend time and money chasing something we can never regain, risking our bodies and mental health in the process.
But why do I say everything is Epstein? It’s not theoretical. Fashion and beauty culture in the late ’90s and early 2000s were shaped by the Epstein “aesthetic.”
Brands like Victoria’s Secret, PINK, and Bath & Body Works shaped Millennial culture globally. They were everywhere: magazines, music videos, films, and they primarily targeted girls and teens. All of these brands belonged to L Brands, created by Les Wexner, whose finances and fortune were managed by Epstein. This is not an exaggeration. Epstein helped define what an entire generation of women was supposed to look like.
These brands didn’t just sell products. They defined desirability for a whole generation, merging youth with sexuality, putting pre-teen girls in thongs and push-up bras, and tiny shorts stamped “sexy” or “flirt.” And these brands spawned countless clones with massive influence. I still remember the Irish rape case where a 17-year-old girl’s underwear was used in court as evidence that she “was asking for it” because it had a logo saying “little devil.”
A generation of girls who grew up in the ’90s absorbed all of this: the clothes, the messaging, the plastic bodies in the shop windows. Many internalized these standards long before they had the language to talk about sexualization, power, or patriarchy. We’re talking about a very specific moment in history that can be precisely identified.
The women who grew up then are now 40+ and still trying to untangle issues of body image, sexuality, aging, and self-worth.
Jameela Jamil says this industry hasn’t just normalized the pedophilic horror story of Lolita (Epstein’s private jet was named after it), it glamorized it. The story of a girl groomed and then raped by her stepfather.
The Lolita ideal is still alive. It’s the aesthetic ideal: childlike and teenage features. To this day, post-MeToo, many women, even women in their 40s, go to great lengths to adjust their aesthetics, faces, bodies, voices, and behaviors to mimic 15-year-old girls. All for the male gaze.
Men who are secretly pedophiles and run podcasts try to tell us it’s natural for men of any age to desire teenagers due to higher fertility. They claim it’s biology and evolution. And yet Marilyn Monroe, in her 30s, was the ultimate global sex symbol.
Let’s say it again: beauty standards from the ’90s until today were created by men attracted to children.
America’s Next Top Model (another Netflix documentary that sparked discussion) exploited this culture, selling fashion and body positivity. But ANTM wasn’t just a competition, it was a reality show. The contestants were the product. Not just their bodies, but their pain, their suffering, their humiliation.
The girls had to follow orders, submit completely, starve themselves, risk their health, lose bodily autonomy (extreme mandatory makeovers), endure sexual abuse on camera, and then be gaslit and blamed. That was the only way to stay on the show. It’s exactly the same as Epstein’s promise: “Behave, do what we tell you without complaint, and we might promote you to become a famous model.” (These words appear throughout the files.)
And now to the bigger picture. An article by The Verge finally made everything make sense. It argues that the entire anti-woke movement appears to have been coordinated. It’s no coincidence that the worst people were in that circle: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, and of course Donald Trump. Their interests aligned. And they had a vested interest in crushing the hope of social justice.
The files show that the anti-woke movement was not driven by people who “cared about free speech.” Nor was it a grassroots movement of ordinary conservatives. It was a coordinated effort by an unimaginably powerful network of men who felt threatened by MeToo. Their emails suggest that Epstein himself organized actions against the movement.
Epstein’s influence campaign began in the early 2000s, especially in science. He closely monitored MeToo and acted as a consultant for men who saw themselves as victims of cancel culture. He wrote that with so many men being accused of harassment, he had become in demand and was asked for advice daily. The Guardian reports that in one email he wrote people were asking him, “when will this madness end?” A coordinated effort emerged to undermine both the movement and the women who spoke out.
At the same time, this shows something else: for a brief moment, MeToo achieved what no one expected: it limited the impunity of the powerful. In 2008, Epstein secured preferential treatment and near freedom despite charges. But in 2019, renewed scrutiny led him to federal prison, where he died awaiting trial for trafficking minors. That seems to have set off alarm bells.
And then look what happened. Peter Thiel made a strategic move that contributed to what I call The Great Regress™. He funded the so-called “vibe shift”, meaning the return of slurs as “edgy,” feminism as “cringe,” and the narrative that feminism is the enemy of men. “Anti-woke” became the convenient label that masked the real goal of avoiding accountability.
It was a brilliant strategy. The anti-woke movement sustained itself and snowballed. Journalists wanted something new after MeToo, but more importantly, every conservative male influencer, and every bro with a podcast, ran with it. They built their racist, homophobic, misogynistic rhetoric on top of it, monetizing a growing population of men who felt lost after consecutive economic crises and shifts in male identity.
White House invitations, handshakes, photos with Trump, none of it is accidental. The manosphere became the perfect laundering machine, washing away these men’s actions through a massive wave of misogyny that crashed over MeToo, and drowned it.
Epstein helped shape this reality. Because with enough money and power, you can create an entire culture that reverses the course of collective consciousness.
The article goes further. It suggests he may have played a role in destabilizing democracy in the US through alliances, ideological influence, and political connections, creating instability that served their interests. As he wrote to Thiel in 2016: “Brexit was just the beginning.” Exploiting collapsing systems is easier than finding new opportunities. (His words.) The article concludes that we are living in the world Epstein wanted. (And I haven’t even mentioned eugenics.)
Epstein had politicians from around the world sharing confidential government information with him, and he advised them on everything from taxation to military action. Under the guise of dinners and vacations on his island, he was shaping global political strategy. Except at those dinners, the main course was underage girls or, if you go deeper into conspiracy theories, even babies, something I’m increasingly inclined to believe.
In Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere, HS Tikky Tokky says it clearly: “the government owes us.” The manosphere was weaponized by forces that wanted a Trump government, against woke culture. Elon Musk buying Twitter and reinstating a platform for hate, was that random, or part of the plan? Yes, he’s unstable, but who’s to say someone didn’t plant the idea at one of those dinners, knowing he’d take the bait? At this point, nothing seems far-fetched to me. These connections make perfect sense. Plans can have multiple layers, plan A, B, C, and we only get to see 1%.
The traces get covered. The “liar’s dividend” is a manipulation tactic where deepfakes and AI-generated content allow public figures to claim real incriminating evidence is fake, helping them avoid accountability. In simple terms: they use the tech those exact billionaires own, create fake evidence, bury the real one, muddy the waters, and weaken truth itself, because it becomes impossible to know what or who to believe. As a bonus, they undermine trust in media and democratic institutions.
And it wasn’t that hard, because for years we turned a blind eye and laughed at those shouting that the elite was eating babies. We looked away while women survivors spoke out, and we let them be labeled crazy, institutionalized, or conveniently “disappeared.” And now, with wars all around us and democracy seemingly gone, we wonder how the hell we got here.
Well—it wasn’t out of the blue.
—Dig up the golf courses.
