In a rare moment of across-the-aisle unity, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House of Representatives wrote to Shein on Thursday expressing concern that the e-commerce leviathan may have facilitated the sale of “sex dolls with a childlike appearance” to customers in the United States following their discovery on its French marketplace.
Led by Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz and co-signed by 34 members of Congress, the letter reflected the lawmakers’ indignation at what they described as the Chinese-founded e-tailer’s “lack of judgment and its inability to ensure third-party sellers comply with its marketplace policies intended to prevent child abuse and exploitation.”
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“While we commend reports that Shein imposed a ban on the sale of all sex dolls and has taken steps to temporarily suspend all sales by third-party vendors on its marketplace in France, it is unacceptable that these products were ever allowed to be sold on Shein’s website,” they wrote. “We are also concerned as to the possibility that these childlike sex dolls were available for sale in the U.S., encouraging pedophilia and the sexual exploitation of children.”
The missive cited Peter Fagan, former associate professor of medical psychology and director of the sexual behavior consultation unit at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who previously cautioned that contact with childlike sex dolls would likely have a “reinforcing effect” on pedophilic ideation and, “in many instances, cause it to be acted upon with greater urgency.”
The inquiry has asked Shein’s reclusive founder and CEO, Xu Yangtian, also known as Chris Xu or Sky Xu, to respond by next month if the childlike sex dolls were ever made available for sale in the United States, including in states and territories that have statutorily banned their sale, such as Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah and Hawaii.
The lawmakers want to know if Shein has notified U.S., state or territorial law enforcement or consumer protection agencies about the availability of the dolls on its platform. Most of all, they seek to understand what steps Shein will take to recall any U.S. customer orders of dolls that may have already been fulfilled, as well as how it plans to prevent future listings and sales across all countries where it operates its marketplace, including in jurisdictions where they’re not explicitly illegal.
“We cannot end the sexual exploitation of children if these repulsive products are built, sold and shared,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “We must ensure e-commerce platforms will not be complicit in the spread of these horrible items.”
In another act of cross-party collegiality, Buchanan worked with Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida, to reintroduce into the House in February a bill called the Curbing Realistic Exploitative Electronic Pedophilic Robots—or CREEPER Act—to make it a crime to import, transport, buy, sell, distribute or possess a sex doll with the appearance of a child.
Buchanan introduced the original iteration of the CREEPER Act in 2020 after NBC 6 South Florida reported that a lifelike doll resembling an actual girl in the Miami area was being sold on Amazon and other websites after a photo of the child was stolen and her likeness appropriated.
“It is incredibly disappointing that a major global retailer allowed childlike sex dolls to be sold on its platform, products that are known to fuel pedophilia and endanger children,” Buchanan of Shein. “Congress needs to pass my CREEPER Act to impose a national ban on lifelike sex dolls resembling children and stop these obscene products from encouraging predatory conduct.”
Shein, while not directly addressing the letter, said that the company has imposed “strict sanctions” on sellers involved in the sale of the childlike sex dolls and initiated new measures to strengthen oversight across its platform.
It has also implemented a “complete ban” on all sex-doll products, removing every related listing from its website and, as a precaution, temporarily delisting its entire adult products category while new “enhanced” control measures are underway. This includes beefing up its keyword blacklist to further prevent the circumvention of product listing restrictions and the formation of a cross-department marketplace integrity task force to review findings from Shein’s ongoing internal audit, recommend corrective measures and coordinate with regulators and other stakeholders.
“The fight against child exploitation is non-negotiable for Shein. These were marketplace listings from third-party sellers, but I take this personally,” Donald Tang, Shein’s executive chairman, said in a statement. “Trust is our foundation, and we will not allow anything that violates it. Every related product has been removed. We are tracing the source and will take swift, decisive action against those responsible. We will also review our internal processes thoroughly and strengthen our safeguards to protect our customers and the integrity of our marketplace.”
‘Shame on you, Shein’
Shein has been a lightning rod for controversy practically since its inception more than 10 years ago.
Its impossibly vast array of trend-driven clothing and shoes, which it supplied at ultra-cheap prices—lower than even H&M or Zara—seemed too good to be true. As the online retailer, buoyed by housebound shoppers during the Covid-19 pandemic, ascended to the near domination of consumer hearts and wallets, a growing chorus of critics began questioning everything: its relationship with the Communist Party and the persecution of Muslim minorities, an alleged propensity for stealing the work of independent artists, the environmental consequences of near-disposable fossil-fuel merchandise, the potentially exploitative conditions under which its workers labor, and, with sometimes troubling racial overtones, the inscrutability of both its supply chain and Xu himself.
Shein also continues to be dogged by reports that its products contain hazardous chemicals at quantities breaching European Union regulatory limits, including phthalates and the “forever chemicals” known as polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS. In a follow-up to its 2022 study on Thursday, the German arm of Greenpeace said that 18 of a total of 56 tested garments, or 32 percent, contained unhealthy levels of chemicals linked to reproductive disorders, growth disorders in children, weakened immune systems and cancer. More than seven jackets, it pointed out, exceeded PFAS limits by up to 3,300 times.
While workers in producing countries are often exposed if they’re unprotected, the environmental charity said, consumers can also be left vulnerable directly by absorbing the chemicals through the skin, the inhalation of textile fibers in the air or, in the case of babies and small children, by taking mouthfuls of the contaminated clothes.
The title of Greenpeace’s report: “Shame on You, Shein.”
“In early 2025, Shein again claimed major improvements in its chemical management— including (i) publishing a Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL), (ii) expanding internal testing and (iii) excluding non-compliant suppliers,” the organization said. “Our results suggest these measures are not effective. Shein products still contain hazardous chemicals above EU limits.”
It said that it has identified a pattern: some items flagged in earlier tests have reappeared in near-identical form and with the same hazardous substances. Shein, Greenpeace said, removes individual items once exposed, only to replace some of them with “near clones—likely from the same supplier.” It said that given the “extreme product range and vast supplier base,” the e-tail powerhouse “appears unable to control the chemicals used in products sold on its platform.”
Shein said that it hasn’t been able to verify the findings because Greenpeace didn’t make the test results available in advance, but that it has initiated its standard safety protocol and has removed the offending items from its marketplace globally while it investigates.
“We also note that some of the products highlighted by Greenpeace remain available today on other major e-commerce platforms,” it said. “This raises important questions about why such concerns are directed publicly at Shein before the underlying information has been shared with us or addressed consistently across the wider industry. We welcome constructive engagement with Greenpeace and all relevant stakeholders, and remain ready to work collaboratively to improve product-safety outcomes across the entire sector.”
The hits could keep coming.
With outrage brewing in France over a commercial beachhead in Paris—Shein’s first permanent physical store—and the aforementioned dolls on its website, the opprobrium has soared to new heights, leading to the almost-suspension of the Singapore-headquartered firm and the banning of outdoor Christmas decorations by the department store BHV Marais, which Parisian police said had used public spaces to install furniture and Shein banners without authorization.
This week, a coalition of thousands of French retailers initiated legal proceedings against Shein after accusing it of unfair competition. The 12 federations and 100 large brands are demanding up to 3 billion euros, the equivalent of $3.5 billion, in economic compensation from the company for luring away customers through what they say are false promotions and substandard merchandise.
The French government has also asked the European Union to launch an investigation into whether Shein is running afoul of European rules to foster safer digital spaces that protect the fundamental rights of internet users. Its own data-protection and antitrust regulators have already fined the Dublin-based company that operates Shein’s European websites and apps the equivalent of $220 million this year for offering fake discounts and using cookies without consent. Failing to comply with the wider bloc’s Digital Services Act, which, among other things, mandates the protection of minors and the removal of any illegal content, could result in Shein’s permanent suspension, along with a fine of up to 6 percent of its annual profits.
But the retailer formerly known as SheInside could have a more existential problem on its hands. Hot on the heels of the Trump administration’s closure of the de minimis “loophole,” which Shein leveraged to traffic its small, under-$800 packages tax-free, the EU has decided to dispense with its own 150-euro ($172) duty exemption as soon as the first quarter of 2026.
“This is a defining moment,” Maroš Šefčovič, the European commissioner for trade, remarked last week. “Reaching a political agreement on abolishing the current 150-euro customs de minimis threshold sends a strong signal that Europe is serious about fair competition and about defending the interests of its businesses.”
Whether Shein can now safeguard its own is now the $66 billion—its valuation in 2023—question.
