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Her name is Peggy Siegal, and she is a powerful and influential entertainment publicist based in New York. On her 60th birthday, at a party hosted for her by Alfred and Judy Taubman, Dixon Boardman, Pepe Fanjul and Joe Allen at the Plaza Athénée, she presented her guests with a booklet she wrote, called, “How to Look Like Me At 60.” No, she wasn’t joking. The booklet contained the names and numbers of her plastic surgeons, personal trainers and nutritionists. She really thought she was hot. In fact, she looked like a horse that died four months ago. On her 70th birthday, at a lavish party thrown for her by Gigi and Averell Mortimer in their Southampton home, Peggy again presented her guests with a how-to manual for delusional narcissism, this one called, unimaginatively, “How to Look Like Me at 70.” She thought she was still hot. This time, she looked like horse that died 6 years ago, but had gotten 7 neck lifts along the way.I learned about these little books Shallow Peggy wrote about her favorite topic, Shallow Peggy, in the Epstein files. There are 7393 results in the searchable DOJ Epstein file database that mention her full name; 2887 more if you search only for Peg. I have thus far only been able to get through about 200 of Peggy’s files, but what I’ve found so far is alarming. Because we have lives to live, I’ll summarize them in bullet points. And then I’ll tell you why it matters for the rest of us that she is still walking the earth, presumably outlining “How to Look Like Me at 80” in between plastic surgery appointments. Here’s what I’ve found:Jeffrey Epstein hired Peggy to “fix” his image after he was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor child in Florida.When some people in Hollywood began to ostracize her for, you know, doing damage control for The Worst Person in The World, she claimed to never have known him before 2009. But there are emails between the two from 2005 in the files.Peggy has also claimed, recently in fact, that she took him as a client because “in the old days before the #metoo movement” you just assumed a guy like Jeff had done the time for his crimes and you moved on. What she did not say is that in email after email in the files she whines on and on to her dear buddy Jeffrey about how unfair with #metoo “witch hunt” is for poor old Harvey Weinstein and dear sweet Woody fucking Allen.In addition to paying her what appears to be $30,000 a month for her services, wired to her from various offshore accounts, Epstein also paid for Peggy and her daughter Mattie to take luxurious trips around the world.He additionally paid $100,000 to remodel her New York apartment, although it appears that the Brooklyn interior design company he contracted to do the work got spooked when they found out who was paying. Epstein assured the designer no one would find out it was him. The designer immediately engaged their own lawyers to get out of the deal. Epstein then appears to have paid another $100,000 in some sort of settlement with the company — perhaps to keep them quiet?On one of these fancy trips with her daughter, this one to Kenya, Peggy writes Epstein an email in her characteristic biting, cruel, lighthearted, narcissistic, oddly flirty tone, telling him she’d like to purchase a child for him while she’s there. She asks him if he’d prefer a boy or a girl, and says it would be oh-so Angelina Jolie of them. She is well aware, as she writes this, that Epstein is a pedophile who traffics children. Her job is to convince the world he’s not. She simply does not care what he is, because she’s getting expensive STUFF from him. She says she will pose for him in front of a mud hut “with Obama’s relatives.” She also says that if the Massai warriors “don’t eat us, the Somali pirates will,” a sickeningly racist statement from one of the most powerful women in the entertainment industry.Peggy went to Epstein’s island at least once. She also appears to have flown herself to St. Barts in hopes he’d invite her to hop on over to the island to hang out. She gushes about her neck lift, in a way that seems desperate for his approval. He does not invite her to his island that time, and she seems sad. There are other files in which she talks about having “shaved” for him. My best guess from the tone of all this is that she was a bit in love with him, and he, knowing he could use this against her eventually, was fucking her sometimes just to keep her on his leash.Peggy often writes in brutal mockery to Epstein about people who likely consider her a friend — though in Hollywood, no one is likely every truly anyone else’s friend, as the industry attracts narcissists and psychopaths just a much as banking and politics do. One such email has her complaining about Denise Rich taking her out on a yacht, which she parenthetically calls a ship of fools. She then eye-rolls about how, to thank Rich, she supposes she’ll have to get involved in some charity something-or-other related to the cancer Rich’s “dead kid” had.Peggy’s bitchery comes off as some sort of bid to connect with Epstein by showing him she, too, is horrible. Like she’s finally found a kindred spirit in him. His responses to her long, gushing, breathless emails, when he responds at all, are limited to one or two words. This is classic for coercive control. He bread-crumbed the hell out of that dead-horse-faced cunt.Peggy got Epstein lots of tickets to fancy Hollywood parties in the years after everyone knew he was a convicted pedo. She got stories about his redemption and loyal friends placed in media outlets like Vanity Fair.In 2011, Peggy provided tickets for Epstein to a creepy show called SLEEP NO MORE, in which the audience participates in white beak masks of the type worn during the plague; they are encouraged to wander through 100 rooms in six stories of a Chelsea warehouse, observing horror scenes that include human teeth, blood, animal eyes, hair samples. Only the very rich could afford this show.Peggy shared confidential correspondence with Jeffrey regarding financial dealings that involved her and her brother Gary in the wake of their parents’ deaths. It appears Peggy deeply hated her mother for giving her father’s money to her brother. This is an estate dispute in which she is trying to screw over her own brother by going against her parents’ will, and Epstein is advising her on how to do that.Eventually, together, Peggy and Epstein appear to successfully screw Gary out of more than $1 million. Epstein helps her set up a special offshore bank account for it. She then asks Epstein if his “future wife” has to be an American, implying that as thanks for helping her fuck over her brother, Peggy would like to procure a child for Epstein to fuck. This is the exact quote: “Plz advise. If it wasn’t for you...I would still be leaving messages for my idiot lawyer. Does your future wife have to be American? Will Turkish or Greek do? Asking the chief rabbi in Patmos monastery for a virgin. xoxo Peg”Many people hate Peggy. She whines about this to Epstein. Among those who seem to hate her is Mattie, her daughter. Peggy sends email after email to Mattie, demanding to know why she’s not writing back. The basic gist of this all is, “I send you so much money. Why don’t you love me?” My best guess is Mattie doesn’t love Peggy because Peggy is a raging narcissist and power-whore who backstabs everyone she has ever known. But what the fuck do I know? I also have no idea why she shares all of this with Epstein.Peggy writes to Epstein that she’s flying to St. Bart’s on the plane of Peter Brant. Brant is wealthy, a media mogul. It is deeply unethical for publicists to be on such friendly terms with publishers. Brant was found guilty in 1990 of tax evasion for using more than $1 million of his company’s money for personal expenditures.Peggy brags about slipping DVDs of films — not sure what kind of films — to then-Prince Andrew at Epstein’s place in an email from 2011. In the same email she gushes about how great “Harvey’s” Hollywood parties are compared to all others.In an email from 2018, she tells Epstein she thinks what the media and #metoo “witch hunt” movement are doing to Woody Allen is terrible. She claims even Timothy Chalamet is sick about having to go along with it. She tells JE he’s a silver fox and looks great, that he’s in “tip-top shape,” and fishes for compliments about her own looks post-surgery. He does not give them. She asks how things are on his island, and asks, “Staff still sleeping in tunnels? Retrieved all the furniture out of the ocean? Did you take photos?” She then says, “I am still living around the corner from you,” seemingly in hopes that he’ll come over. He doesn’t respond.In another emails, Peggy tells Epstein about her being diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome and says its hard to get off the toilet but that she will soon look great from the neck up. She is flirting HARD with this man. She gushes for many paragraphs in response to a short email from him that says only “where are you”. She is a pathetic geriatric Pick Me Girl who seems to think that if a pedophile fucks her it means she, you know, looks great at 60, 70, whatever the fuck. Yes, yes, my precious, yes.She places a story in The Daily Beast about how Epstein’s fancy friends are all rallying around him, in which she calls him brilliant. The reporter says she is throwing lavish parties for him. One is a “Break Fast” party after Yom Kippur in which 120 friends brought their children over for a buffet with Jeffrey – in 2011. She knows he’s a pedophile, and throws a party for him with at least 120 kids there.She writes to Epstein to weirdly brag about throwing a fit in a hotel because her room is too small. Very do you know who I am vibe. She describes for him the maids unpacking her bags in the little room, and then then having to re-pack, and them “flying down the hall” with her things to the new, bigger room she has convinced management to give her even though it is reserved for someone else. She brags to Epstein that the someone else will be surprised to find himself in the tiny “closet” of a room she had. She is proud of being an insufferable bitch who fucks other people over and doesn’t think of workers as people.In 2015, Peggy writes to Epstein hinting and wanting an invitation to his island. She name-drops and tells Epstein he is New York’s “most brilliant, mysterious and interesting man.” She also says: “Wishing you a very healthy and happy New Year...and a sincere thank you from the bottom of my heart for your loyal friendship and legal protection. No one has been more generous to me with their time and resources. Your support is a hugh [sic] part of my confidence in my daily ambition to be successful in business and life. Thank you.”The reason Peggy’s emails matter is that she is NOT RARE in the U.S. entertainment industry. I say this as someone who had a bestselling novel that many top studios and networks thought they wanted to adapt for the screen. I’ve had six high-level development deals in Hollywood over the past 20 years, and over and over, regardless of the studio, I ran up against people JUST LIKE PEGGY. Racist, sexist, shallow, narcissistic tools.As the daughter of a sociologist, I learned early on that pop culture is where social norms are formed. All political change comes about a generation or two after a similar change takes place in entertainment. The entertaining stories people see on their screens are extremely powerful in dictating the rules by which a society lives, in determining how we see ourselves and one another. This is why it took the Harlem Renaissance to prime the nation for the Civil Rights Movement.I have long seen my job as a writer and storyteller to be a form of resistance to the racism, sexism, xenophobic and classism of modern American society. And it has been people like Peggy, again and again, who ultimately stepped into make sure my voice, my brand of challenge to the status quo, never made it to the screen. They wanted the money they thought the project would make based on book sales, but they required that I compromise in ways that perpetuated dangerous stereotypes of Latinas if I wanted to play ball in Hollywood. I refused, over and over again.I always kind of suspected the Peggys of the entertainment industry were racist, sexist, child-fucking assholes. And her emails to Jeffrey Epstein, demonstrating the breadth of her connections in the world of money, power and, most importantly, STORYTELLING, confirmed for me that the roadblocks I’ve met along the way were inevitable.The files have us talking about the need for change in politics, finance, even higher education. But we all need to understand that until we have real and meaningful change in the entertainment industry, the public will for social justice and change just won’t be there.Peggy Siegal is still in business. She shouldn’t be.----Written By Alisa Valdez Rodriguez