Shein has hit the Parisian highstreet, opening their first physical store in the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville (BHV) shopping centre amid a child sex doll scandal and cries of outrage from French public and politicians alike.
The online marketplace has long been acknowledged as the epitome of the fashion industry’s worst aspects: over-consumerism, environmental damage, and the exploitation of workers. Selling child-like sex dolls can now be added to Shein’s list of sins, profiting from the continued sexualisation of young girls.
Shein, and all it represents, now sits at the very heart of the fashion world: Paris. BHV have said they hope to increase footfall in the department store through the opening of the shop, with around 8,000 people attending the opening on Wednesday 5th November. There are plans for similar shops to open in Angers, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges and Reims. This points to a far darker issue than the simple goal of increasing footfall in a shopping centre; it highlights the depths to which businesses will sink in the name of money.
France, however, is not taking this lying down. The implantation of such a capitalistic symbol of moral and ethical disintegration into shopping centres has drawn both social and political critique. In light of the sex doll scandal, the European Commission has stated that they take the selling of illegal content, such as child pornography, very seriously, but they have yet to ban or sanction Shein. The French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has called for the European Commission to take action, and to follow up their investigations with sanctions. Meanwhile, The French government has also moved to ban Shein’s online sales in order to check that the platform is complying with French law. The Shein shop is to stay open throughout this investigation, with BHV stating that all imports to the shop comply with EU law. The Paris prosecutor is also investigating Shein alongside Temu, AliExpress and Wish for alleged rule breaches, such as minors accessing pornographic content via their e-marketplaces.
However, the matter of legal action is complicated by the fact that Shein is a marketplace used by third party vendors to sell their wares. Even if products are taken down, third parties can repost their content under a different name in a matter of minutes. A similar scandal hit Amazon in 2022 and 2018, as both sex dolls resembling children and illegal weapons were found on their marketplace. Shein claim they have a team of 900 working on monitoring and safe-guarding, but the fact remains that illegal products are still finding their way into their store, and Shein is being rewarded for this failure with their first physical shop.
Above all though, this scandal reveals an ongoing, sexual appetite for young girls. Where there is a seller, there are buyers, and Shein simply became the latest site of this pedophilic transaction. This sexual objectification of young girls is a patriarchal product that is still being sold and consumed constantly despite attempts at change, and these sex dolls are just the latest iteration of that. Their appearance on Shein is an ominous reminder of the dangers lurking in the shadows, the skeletons in society’s closet – the question is will they be ignored and accepted, or confronted and eradicated?
In France, many are attempting to confront Shein and what it stands for, refusing to accept its place on the highstreet. The group Galeries Lafayette – another big chain of shopping centres – have terminated all affiliation agreements with SGM (Societé des Grands Magasins), the group who owns BHV, to avoid association with Shein. They weren’t alone in their rejection. Outside Shein’s opening on Wednesday, there was also a crowd of protestors with signs that read ‘Protect children, not Shein’, ‘Shein is participating in pedo-criminality’ and ‘Shame on BHV’, alongside the eager shoppers ready to get their bargains, whatever the cost.
And it is the cost of complicity that France, and Europe, must wrangle with here. A shop that deals in dirt cheap clothing soaked in sweatshop blood with ties to the darkest corners of the internet must not be allowed a physical foothold in the highstreet. It risks lowering the bar of what is acceptable in society – and that bar cannot afford to sink much lower.
As we hurtle past the 1.5࿁C global warming warning, and into a future where everything Epstein still hangs over our heads, the opening of Shein in the middle of Paris perfectly encapsulates the modern moment. Women and girls are positioned where they always have been: at the mercy of a capitalistic society that lives to serve the perverted, patriarchal fantasy.
