32 Moments From “Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story” That Prove Just How Much We Failed Women In The 2000s

Once I became an adult, I’d all but forgotten about Girls Gone Wild, filing it away as just another piece of ’00s misogyny that I and many other women somehow (barely) survived. But, when I watched Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story, that undercurrent I felt throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s came flooding back one-hundred-fold. Here are 31 moments from the documentary series that prove just how little we valued women and girls during that time — and how, in 2024, we still have a long way to go:

Warning: This post discusses rape, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address claims made in the documentary.

15. In a 2005 GGW production training video discussing how to coach women through sex scenes, a production supervisor told the crew, “Once you get them into the position where they’re gonna do this, you can, like, semi-produce it, like, you know, ‘Make sure when you guys get going, you make a lot of noise.’ But my thing is, like, the facial shots looking into the camera is, like, the hottest thing ever.” When discussing whether or not cameramen can pay women for the scenes, the VP of Mantra Films — Joe Francis’s production company — said, “A lot of girls would, as you know, do this stuff for a T-shirt. Some of ’em do it for nothing. A T-shirt and panties, some girls will jump off a building for.”