Over the weekend, France’s anti-consumer fraud agency, the Directorate General of Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Repression (DGCCRF), published an explosive press release about Shein, alleging that the Singapore-based, Chinese-founded e-commerce giant “was marketing child-like sex dolls.”
Other publications have since published safe-for-work photos of the dolls and, yep, they look like children. Mercifully, it’s not at all clear where the “sex” part comes in just from looking at the photos. Nonetheless, according to the DGCCRF, “Their description and categorization on the site make it difficult to doubt the child pornography of the contents.”
According to the New York Times, the economy minister of France, Roland Lescure, threatened to ban Shein in France if the dolls continued to be sold, and quotes him as having said, “These horrible objects are illegal.”
The dolls, and in fact all sex dolls, have now been removed from Shein. “These publications came from third-party vendors, but I take personal responsibility,” executive chairman Donald Tang said, according to the Guardian.
The revelation of the doll’s availability on the app came amid protests over Shein’s plan to open a physical store in Paris this week.
Another apparent problem with a third-party seller—more of a minor SNAFU compared to this—came over the summer when a floral print men’s shirt was displayed on a devilishly handsome model that looked an awful lot like an AI-generated image of accused CEO slayer Luigi Mangioni.
