The Jimmy Saville episodes and groupies
Robert mentioned in the Jimmy Saville episode that Saville was able to come into contact with teens as a DJ early in his career and it didn’t arouse suspicion because the music scene always had a lot of teens hanging around, and Saville basically controlled access to famous musicians… and today it struck me just how normalised the exploitation of young women was. For people younger than 20: back in the day, it was normal for musicians to travel with groups of women, called groupies, who just followed the band from concert to concert. It was very well known and normal, there were movies about it (Almost Famous), some were famous, like Bebe Buell (Liv Tyler’s mom) and even freaking School of Rock had the line, “groupies are sluts, they sleep with the band”! Obviously none of these women were even in their late twenties or thirties, plus there’s the question if they could consent at all, given that they were fans, and the drugs didn’t help, either. And the whole thing was marketed as impossibly cool. Insane that that was a thing. Of course, celebrities using their fame to exploit people is still a thing, but back then it was just so normalised and glamourised. Just think about how many fanfics there are about popular musicians meeting an ordinary teenager after a concert, imagine that happening, and it was a total freaking nightmare.