the CREEPIEST brand loved by girls (disturbing)

time for your photo like go stand against that wall and pose so I can text it to the founder of the company you work for in the folder was every single one of the photos that she sent over the

years for this daily image Randy mville was like my world probably my all-time favorite store so I went to Brandy the other day ever ever ever I it's all from

Brandy Mel love it I love it I love it did you know you were in a cult I didn't either welcome to the cult of girlhood

the one that we all lived and breathed one twisted and molded to feel so normal so natural one where if you look like one of them you are one of them you know

the girls that didn't wear it they weren't as great as I was maybe they weren't as pretty maybe there was something wrong with them the Chic cute

trendy insiders of girlhood the right way to be a girl and this girl of course was written by a group of middle age

white men he was bald with braces it was so funny to me that no one has any idea that this man like in his I don't know maybe late 30s with like sneakers and

sweatpants on is running the Instagram that all these teenage girls are like Fanning over hopefully Brandy notices [Music]

me excuse me do you have this in a large if having a five-step anti-aging skincare routine is now normal to 10-year-old Sephora kids it's not hard

to understand how a normal jenz and gen ala girlhood could only fit into one size better yet with a heart-shaped tag

if I kept being healthy like I wouldn't be able to follow company policy and keep wearing their clothes the reason why I liked it I mean I think it's just because everyone else liked it if

girlhood ever had a dictionary it'd be every girl on Tumblr Pinterest Instagram in a Brandy Melville outfit every it girl from Ariana Grande Kendall Jenner

Emma Chamberlain to every one of your favorite vloggers own at least 17 pieces from there it's actually a problem but I love every single here who could blame them the clothes are so cute unlucky for

Zoe there were no stores near her available in Canada major fomo it's so cute in modern girlhood the brand of clothes you wear is not simply a fashion

statement it is the badge of status of who you are it creates your identity what do your clothes say about you and for Brandy Melville the tag spotted on

tall thin celebrities such as K Gerber and Kendall Jenner was the status symbol that all girls from middle school to college love to

hate but also secretly want I'm never shopping there again like you couldn't make me but like God damn the baby te baby te yes baby te's are cute but have

you ever wondered if the reason we consider them cute is largely thanks to a middle-aged white man who keeps photos of young girls bodies a man who created

the cultish girlhood you and I liveed through called Brandy Melville the story of Brandy Melville is a story about

anti-Semitism racism sexism it's a story about this wider system of exploitation I never anticipated more impatiently for

a documentary that is the expose of a brand that created the teenage girl we all wanted to be and perhaps were no jokes I marked it on my calendar and set

an alarm for 9:00 p.m. ET last night and boy it did not disappoint the documentary mainly focused on the internal disturbing truths of the

company and I want to tie everything in there with the external implications to every single one of us who have lived through and are still living a girlhood

heavily influenced by its cultish Aesthetics fat phobia racism body shaming unethical labor disgusting predatory scandals exploiting underage

teenage girls that laid the foundation of the cult-like girlhood we live through a girlhood created by the middle-aged white men who called it

Brandy Melville what is this this is Success at first it was only full body photos and then they started requesting chest and feet pictures I was

15 years old I was immediately approached by one of the workers she's like you look so cute everything about it was just a dream come true dream come

true the rise of Brandy hille if Brandy Melville had one Mission it was to Define girlhood this is what you want to look like this is your goal mostly

blonde cool girl skinny pretty girl a little basic pale white definitely young and who could have done a better job than a mysterious middle-aged man Brandy

Melville has been a staple in my life since I was in like fifth grade Brandy Melville the clothing store that only sells one size is known for its California thin white girl aesthetic but

is confusingly an Italian clothing and fashion accessories brand established by sovio Maron the brand name and logo were inspired by the fictional tale of two

people brand an American Girl and melvo an English man who met and fell in love note an English man and American Girl

somehow this cute story is not so cute when you think about how it's the fantasy of a middle-aged man with an underage girl which symbolically painted

the power Dynamic of the exploitative relationship between countless underage teenage girls and the cult leader men we will soon talk about all the guy lying come from Stefan and when you go to

Brandy Melville's website the girl in this romantic story can be visualized by countless photos of the young and almost childlike bodies on their website The

Not So subtle signs of the predatory almost fetish force behind such a soft and coish aesthetic the body favored by middle-age White Men Behind the Scenes

as we will later learn how each store was under the surveillance of the cult leaders and buttons exist at the cash register where behind the camera Stefan the owner will ring the button to tell

the cashier to take a photo of the pretty young girl at the cash register and offer them a job compiling his collection of these photos and in every

one of these photos was the dream body of millions of American teen girls but even if you're not in America there is no way to escape this aesthetic people

are buying into not just a white T-shirt they're buying into that Brandy Melville lifestyle Brandy Melville Rose to fame during 2010 Tumblr era and became one of the most popular brands for teens and

young girls with nearly 100 stores over 15 countries and 80 cities worldwide with influential it girl icons like Ariana Grande alongside other famous figures wearing Brandy Melville the

Brandy girl is seen everywhere on the street at the mall in Pon at norstrom she is the girl everyone wants to be not surprisingly annual sales for Bry

Melville topped $22.5 million in 2023 up from 9.6 million in 2019 and this could not

be done without the help of a calculated social media presence that used employees and Shoppers known as the Brandy Girls and now the story and its

audiences are woven into one the Romantic Brandy girl came to life girls who wear Brandy Melville sell Brandy Melville to other girls who wear Brandy

Melville Who start to sell Brandy Melville no job no apartment I was like 30 lb lighter just like very skinny

blonde I walked into Brandy mville and I was like oh my God everyone here is so pretty like I want to work here they essentially like hired me on the spot

were you even looking for a job no I wasn't looking for a job if this is starting to sound somewhat like an MLM you're not far from it let us now look

at why Brandy Melville is truly Brandy hille what is a cult you ask and how do you know if you're in one unlike what you might think perhaps with the Eerie

image of Midsummer in your head or the chilling Legends of people's temple in 1931 a cult does not necessarily need to take shape an alien worshiping devotion

or extreme religious fanaticism in a recent book I finished cultish by Amanda Montel a cult is simply a way of grouping and separation of people like

us versus people not like us for instance Alcoholics Anonymous the pellaton community and so cycle all exemplify cultish behaviors in other

words not all cults are evil but the ideology is extremely powerful and reshape our sense of community enforced Collective values shut down debate and

could even C damaging behaviors in the name of ideology but this was a thing he was the Brandy girl so in what ways was Brandy

Melville not just a cult but an extremely successful one first with its one-size fits it immediately makes the Brandy girl an exclusive type of

identity those who literally and figuratively fit into the childlike sizes and those who don't like I no longer had a thigh gap I hated my body I hated myself a lot of girls suffered

with it a lot of the girls there this is something that was explicitly part of the business model to where anything Brandy Melville tells the world that you

are a skinny it girl there's even been a controversy around their door in Vienna that only opens to a certain extent so no overweight person can pass

through are are you the next person for the interview okay um so stand stand question um sorry just let me asked how much do you

weigh right okay but all this only made Brandy Melville even more popular like a 10

block line waiting outside second on top of the Brandy body it separates insiders and Outsiders with

a distinct face usually with sunk is blond girls filling the store if you're white you had to be in sight in order to create insiders there also need to be

Outsiders rarely do people of color get hired and if they did they're often sent behind the registers or downstairs go down and you go into the stock room and you see all the other people who are

working there who are not way quote if she was black if she was fat Marson didn't want them in the store reported by whistleblower in an interview with

Insider about the company's CEO and third the sacrificial act to commit hey let me know if you'd like to work together sometime you know there was no email signature there was no hi I'm from

this company where are all these photos going of me and like a crop top and a little skirt it is disturbing how much of its followers all the young girls who want to be the face of Brandy Melville

who want to be chosen by leadership as the Brandy girls were willing to sacrifice to worship the brand no employee ever questioned if it was weird

that they had to get photos of their outfits then close-ups of their teenage bodies taken each shift and sent to the CEO every teenage girl Shopper found it extremely flattering when the store

employee tells them they look cute and took photos of them to send to the CEO and I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day everything about it was just a dream come true to me at the time

all these photos of hundreds if not thousands of girls are kept by The Man Behind the Scenes who is also watching over the stores looking for the new

faces and bodies for his creation of girlhood the red button goes off and then you're supposed to take a photo and also offer them a job and the ones with

faces and bodies the men did not like will get fired that he did not like my body type and that I'm not a typical Brandy girl you can find like 700

different reasons to fire them because it was just so easy to hire new ones and the most disgusting part is how the leadership men will pick out the quote

unquote Elite girls to the Brandy Melville apartment where there were reported cases of sexual assault but victims were too scared to report the

cases to risk losing their jobs and visas it's like a never-ending conveyor belt of young teenage girls enthusiastically lining up to be

slaughtered by the mysterious ious Men Behind the Scenes but all tied up in a CSH bowl that made it into a pretty aesthetic not only did everything on the

surface seemed normal to all teenage girls Across America and the world it was aspirational to fit into the elite club of girlhood was every girl's dream

and the ticket was to buy the pieces or even better work there no one ever questioned if maintaining the body of a 12-year-old is the healthy thing to do

as 16 18 20 no one ever questioned If sweat shop labor was used for the baby girl aesthetic no one thought the

girlhood we all accepted was written by a middle AG man who is the cult leader unlike most fashion brands Brandy

Melville has no public CEO no mission statement or brand Persona every store is owned by a different shell company the name is owned by a Swiss company and

the company structure is quote unquote designed to not be traceable the CEO was identified as an Italian man named Stefan marsan a shadowy figure with

almost no internet presence and precisely two Google image results this is the person who shaped our girlhood for a better idea of the masterminds who

shaped the Aesthetics of a generation of girlhood the documentary shared leaked internal messages in the exec group chat called Brandy Melville gags where

everything and anything misogynistic racist fat phobic was shared as a like joke the blatant attitude of Stefan was even more clear through him forcing the

shutdown of a profitable store in Toronto just because he didn't want the quote unquote ghetto people of color shopping there yet despite all the cult

leader had a cult-like following well guess what our Sals went up like 20% so who cares not only did flocks of girls want to work there at minimum wage and

model for free they were fighting to be favorites kind of show me what you got to be picked by the higher ups and those who were picked get a sense a privilege

as one employee even said quote customers look up to you I TJ Maxx is just down the street we know where we are oh you know where you are okay welcome to Brandy let me know if you

need anything gor a group of minorities just came in by the genos keep an eye on them mean girl Vibes weren't just a myth because being a bad employee won't get you fired anyways these young girls weren't hired for their skills I was

even encouraged to pay them more even though they were not good at what they did they were hired because they looked Brandy Melville but what really is

Brandy Melville and how is it able to be so fast in pumping out Styles teenage girls worship easy they simply take what young girls are already wearing and

liking then remaking them a process called Product research that they get to do for $3.99 hire UPS they were like we love your pants and they're like where

did you get them they bought the pants they paid like $50 for express shipping I didn't get paid for my pants that they stole if you look on Brandy Melville's website a lot of their shirts and tops

have names of girls and it is by no surprise that a joclyn shirt is probably the direct copy of a shirt worn by a store employee called Joselyn I guess

you could call him a creative director they select a few of their favorite girls on luxurious trips to try clothes let them select what they like then begin to mass produce them a cheap and

Innovative creative model that brought them quite a few lawsuits but what about quality surely it is a luxurious Italian fashion brand right well it was

certainly no lie that it was quote unquote made in Italy they are made in Italy they are made in a city in Italy that is filled with

sweat shops illegal workers and cheap materials that you use three four five times and then you throw away just that like thin little needle of a tag would like destroy a shirt the locations in

the tags hide the fact that the Brandy Baby te's are still highly likely made by undocumented and illegal workers who are probably not much if any older than

the girls wearing them and the cheap Fabrics used to create the styles that cycle through girls closets within only a few we it is undoubtedly creating a

massive waste issue the question is why do people keep buying social media may have created Brandy Melville but with its ugliness being exposed since years

earlier it seemed to also be the ultimate source to shut it down or is it the perhaps shocking and sad truth is no sales have only gone up since the

exposure of Brandy Melville scandals where hundreds of girls may have quit or shut Brandy out of their closets thousands more are lining up to be the new faces of Brandy to spend their

parents' money on a girlhood created by an abusive and exploitative men fetishizing over young girls bodies the sad truth is people have a short memory

or they just don't care Brandy Melville made zero apology and just shot off comments on their Instagram for a few weeks publicity is publicity how did

this work perhaps they tapped into the worst impulses of a teenage girl the soft spot in their identity everyone

wants to be the cool girl and the lack of enoughness propels more young girls to be swn into the perfect aesthetic girl dream the dream of a racist and fat

phobic man Stefon may have created an identity called Brandy melvo for girls but girlhood does not just come in one size or have One Singular identity I've

definitely been there where not in Brandy Melville but in a teap house store in China I was told by the associate to not even bother trying on the dress because I was too puffy and I

never felt more embarrassed and humiliated but you know what the funny thing is clothes are to suit our bodies Our identities not the other way around if a

brand does not care to make something for you another will and whether it's Brandy Melville or another aesthetic in Trend right now it's easy to forget that

the ultimate purchasing power is in our hands our identity our girlhood do not need to be taught by a middle-aged white man and Brandy Melville is just one of

the many examples of fashion that we both love and hate for the cultural impacts have already been drilled way too deep into our collective subconscious that influences our

judgment a beauty this is not to shame anyone who likes these clothes or shop at any of these places your stylistic choices are ultimately your decision but

it is always powerful to be aware who are the people shaping your unconscious identity that's a food for thought hope you enjoyed this dive into Brandy mvo

like this video and share it to more people to be aware of how our girlhood has been tainted by the hands of the ones who may not have the best

intentions and that's why we look out for each other see you next [Music] week