Epstein’s influence on 2000s-era pop culture

As a woman in my 30s, I’m still reckoning with just how much influence the Epstein network had on pop culture in the 2000s (e.g. Victoria’s Secret, the fashion industry in general) and the sexualisation of girls.

I’ve felt lot of guilt for how much of that 2000s-era informed my own internalised misogyny. While I take accountability for it, it doesn’t change the fact that we were indoctrinated from childhood to see it as normal. And I take comfort in the fact that such things are no longer socially unacceptable.

Examples include fashion magazines being full of underage models (more often from Eastern Europe than not); Wilmer Valderrama and Anthony Kiedis being called out for dating underaged girls.

Just to think that 20 years ago, I was 14 and had friends my own age getting dropped off right at the school gates by their 20 y/o boyfriends and no one who noticed batted an eye. And just in case anyone wants to get racist or classist about it- we were all firmly white and middle class.

Hell, my mum was thrilled when I finally got my first boyfriend, even though I was 17 and he was 20.

Are there any other millennial/gen X women here who can relate?