On Millennials, Purity Culture, And The Epstein Files | Mary Pezzulo - Patheos

I was born in 1984. I’ll be forty-two this fall. That makes me a Millennial.

I was born at Saint Ann’s Hospital, which is now Mount Carmel Saint Ann, just moments across the border from Columbus, Ohio, in the suburb of Westerville. I was raised in Columbus, two blocks from Whetstone Library and just a short trip to the Ohio State University campus. My Methodist grandfather had a stately house in Beechwold, and my godparents live in German Village over by the South Side. That makes me a Millennial from Columbus.

I was baptized in the Catholic Church, catechized and confirmed a Catholic, and that makes me a Catholic. I will be a Catholic for the rest of eternity, no matter what I do. The seal is permanent. They can’t suck the oil out of your forehead. In my younger years, my family was involved with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. When I was a teenager, my pious mother forced me to join the youth arm of the Legionaries of Christ’s youth group even though I hated it. I was also homeschooled in a tight-knit homeschool group of likeminded families, most of whom went to the deeply conservative church with the communion rail, the one run by the Dominican Friars in Columbus, and I have wonderful memories of that group. Later in life, I got sucked into the culture of Franciscan University of Steubenville and Father Mike Scanlan’s personality cult.

This is the culture I know, the one I was raised in: that of a Millennial girl, from Columbus, in and out of one high-control religious movement and another. That’s the perspective I bring to everything.

It’s been pointed out all over social media lately, that just about everything about a Millennial tween and teen girl’s aesthetic, can be tied to the billionaire Les Wexner.

I think the first post that made this point was by an anonymous author, but I wish I could find them so I could thank them for pointing it out. I’d never thought of it this way before. The fashions we were supposed to like: the Limited, Limited Too, Abercrombie and Fitch, and so on: these were his brands. Those form-fitting knit tops with rugby stripes that never fit me quite right. Those awful infantilizing shorts and t-shirts with Elmo or Winnie the Pooh on them. Those embarrassing low-rise jeans with the big roomy legs. The abomination of a lace tank top sticking out the bottom of another shirt that didn’t match it. Those fashions were dictated to us by the brands we saw at the mall, and the brands belonged to Wexner. The way we smelled and groomed ourselves, was also a Wexner production: he owned Bath and Body Works, where fashionable Millennial girls got their body washes and cheap perfume. Every girl I knew had a favorite Bath and Body Works scent. Mine was Moonlight Path. My friend Leah’s was Sun-Ripened Raspberry. My other friend, Elysha’s, was Happy Daisy. And the scandalous fashions we weren’t supposed to think about were Wexner’s, as well. I’ve told you about the time my friends and I plotted to preach chastity to Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret also belonged to Wexner.

It is now known that Les Wexner is all over the Epstein Files. Epstein was Wexner’s financial manager for twenty years. Epstein was Wexner’s power of attorney. One of the victims of Epstein reported that she was assaulted at Wexner’s house, and it was his security that didn’t allow her to leave. At one point the FBI labeled him a co-conspirator. He has denied all wrongdoing, of course, but I don’t think anyone believes him. There are photos that appear to show him partying with Epstein, and he sent Epstein a drawing of a pair of perky-looking breasts for that infamous birthday book.

I realize Wexner himself didn’t design the fashions the brands he owned sold. But I’ve been thinking about the fact that everything teen and preteen Millennial girls thought was fashionable, was owned by a man who made a pedophile his power of attorney, and sent him a drawing of breasts.

Growing up in Columbus, of course, I heard “Wexner” all the time. So many things in Columbus are named “Wexner” because of his philanthropy. I remember going on a field trip to the Wexner Center for the Arts with my girl scout troop and admiring the bizarre architecture. The emergency room where my grandmother went when she got sick was eventually renamed the Wexner Medical Center.

Both of those buildings are on the Ohio State University campus. Ohio State was even more ubiquitous than Wexner’s enterprises in my upbringing.

Back in the 1980s, when television channels signed on in the early morning and signed off for the night, the very first thing you’d see on our local PBS station at seven AM was a montage of beautiful scenes from Ohio State’s campus and an instrumental performance of the Alma Mater song. The Catholic schools declared a dress-down day as long as you were wearing your scarlet and gray ahead of important Ohio State University football games. There were paintings of Ohio State’s mascot, Brutus Buckeye, in all the shop windows for every football season.

The Ohio State University, of course, is now famous for a whopping sexual abuse scandal of its own. The abuse spanned twenty years, most of the time I lived in Columbus. The University had to pay forty million dollars to the victims. Jim Jordan, our Congressman, was allegedly involved in the cover-up, though he also denies all wrongdoing. For most of my childhood, when I was wearing the scarlet and gray and listening to the Alma Mater song and trying to understand why a buckeye is a sports team mascot, people were being sexually abused at Ohio State.

Of course, while I was living in Columbus, shopping at malls and learning about modern art at the Wexner Center, I was also an extremely conservative Catholic steeped in purity culture.

When I say “purity culture,” I’m not talking about the Catholic Church’s actual teaching on human sexuality. I’m talking about the culture of shame that went along with it.

The homeschoolers who all went to that deeply conservative parish said that their children would never date but rather practice courtship. The teenaged homeschoolers took swing dancing lessons on Sunday evenings, so that we wouldn’t sinfully bump and grind at parties. When the homeschool theater troupe put on a production of “The King and I” in the parish social hall, one homeschooling mother said that was scandalous because the king has more than one wife. When my friends from the homeschool group and I were allowed to watch “Shadowlands” at a slumber party because it was about squeaky clean C. S. Lewis, my friends didn’t like it, because Lewis’s wife had committed the mortal sin of divorce. We all revered the saintly John Paul the Second, who wouldn’t change the Church a bit on pelvic issues and who hated the nasty feminists who said we should change.

At the meetings of the Legionaries of Christ youth group, we were informed we were responsible for inspiring young men to chastity. We mustn’t emulate sluts like Britney Spears. We had to keep clean and pure, or our brothers in Christ would sin and it would be all our fault. We learned strategies for wearing those trendy low-rise jeans and form-fitting tops in such a way that our skin wouldn’t show. The hideous lace tank tops that went under anther mismatched shirt, were extra long with nice high necks. This, we were told, would save souls, including our own.

When I went to Franciscan University, I shuffled around campus in ankle-length boho skirts. I snapped myself on the wrist with a rubber band whenever I felt an impure thought coming on. I went to confession at least once a week, and I always remembered to confess those impurities. Meanwhile, I was being prayed over regularly by Father Scanlan, who would kiss me and stroke my cheek and clutch me to his chest. This was presented to me as a perfectly normal and virtuous way to be a Catholic.

I now know that there were sex abusers involved in all the little Catholic sects I’ve been a part of.

That parish which hosted the squeaky clean homeschool group, was pastored by a man who went on to be removed from ministry for a credible accusation of abuse.

John Paul the Second, who we all revered, is now infamous for covering up sexual abuse. He was enamored of Father Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who has now been revealed to be a sex abuser of historic proportions, right up there with Epstein himself.

The Charismatic Renewal is now known to be rife with sexual abuse. The Franciscan University campus was an epicenter of this abuse. Father Scanlan and his cronies were monstrous abusers. I confessed my impure thoughts to at least three different predators on that campus.

Every aspect of the culture I know, as a Catholic Millennial from Columbus, was touched by sexual abuse.

The way we dressed, the way we smelled, the things we got excited about, the sports teams, the movies and the activities. The Catholic guilt. The way we were told to avoid sexual contact to stay pure. The things we would have done to be sexy as well. The rules, and the ways to break them. The people we went to to receive God’s forgiveness if we felt a rule had been broken. The secular culture and the Catholic one. Everything was controlled by powerful men, who were themselves abusers or who helped cover up sexual abuse.

In a very real way, we don’t know how to be good, and we don’t know how to be bad either, because everything about our culture from the virtuous to the playful to the transgressive to the mortally sinful was dictated by powerful men who viewed us as objects to be used.

If I wanted to have a healthy relationship with my sexuality, how could I possibly know what one is like? How could any of us? Where would we go to get that information? How could we begin to understand what it looks like? And what are we supposed to tell our own children?

I don’t have answers to any of this, but these are the things I’ve been pondering.