Another day, another *checks notes* *checks notes again* satanic panic(!?). This week the internet lost its head at Balenciaga, accusing them of condoning, even glamorizing, sexual violence against children. Let’s recap the melee as briefly as possible for anyone whose router was unplugged for the last week. The Balenciaga Gift Shop campaign, shot by Gabriele Galimberti, depicted children holding bondage-adjacent teddy-bear bags (leather harnesses, padlocks, fishnet). A second campaign featuring Nicole Kidman and Bella Hadid showed a $3,000 bag with papers about child-pornography laws strewn across the desk. All this was the tinder that ignited the internet-wide backlash.
Balenciaga has apologized but is also seeking $25 million in damages from the shoot’s production company, North Six, and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins. Stylist Lotta Volkova (who hasn’t worked with the brand since 2018) was forced to go private on Instagram after it was trawled for proof of satanic behavior behind Balenciagan walls. Even ambassador Kim Kardashian is “re-evaluating” her working relationship with the brand. Outrage was also fuelled by the right-wing petroleum that is Fox News, further pushing the conspiracy that a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring is trying to control our politics and media. It’s very Pizzagate but make it fashion.
The discourse is peaking, though I’m not sure what we’re all debating? Oddly I feel the need to state the obvious and say out loud that child abuse is wrong, unequivocally evil. This is no small accusation lobbied against Balenciaga, no casual dig. Child abuse is serious and disgusting, and safeguarding children should be paramount. It’s the genuinely heinous horror of pedophilia that’s driving this furor forward with such frenzied ferocity.
But the idea that a cabal of pedophiles is trying to manipulate mainstream media and normalize the sexualization of kids via a Balenciaga campaign feels—dare I say it—a little far-fetched? It’s the kind of theory you’d immediately dismiss in person, and yet online it’s being given a legitimacy rarely lent to such outrageous claims. It all feels ridiculous because it is ridiculous. It is extreme and inflated beyond critical thinking. It does not feel proportional.
I suspect (and I have no insider knowledge) that the bears and kids were a deliberate arrangement designed to provoke a reaction. It’s characteristic of a brand like Balenciaga—one that’s built on unwavering confidence and certainty, and erm, a certain deviancy from mainstream ideas of beauty—to push the envelope. But for me, the juxtaposition is just a very unimaginative way to be controversial. I am more bored than offended, but I do understand how for others it could seem distasteful. I’ve got to say, though, without a doubt, the leap to “pedophile cabal pushing their ideology into the mainstream” is a reach.
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