7.03.2006
The Lolita Look
NOTE: This post has been slightly altered to reflect some of the discussion that's been raging on in the comments. Though you may be a puritan and not like such behaviour, it's the internet, and if the tools are available, why not use them?
LA Weekly is featuring a dubious (!) article about the "Lolita" or "Little Big Girl" (LBG) looks which have sparked enormous communities in their own right. I wanted to post it here because of the way these communities partly sculpt themselves from a famous literary source (which I haven't read). Humanities meet couture.
What intrigues me is the way that the reporter Lina Lecaro makes anxious gestures towards a feminist reading of the pheonomenon. Is this trend yet another infantilization of grown women, or does the combination of pigtails and "heavy makeup" represent a playful, even political deconstruction of infantilization itself? It's hard to tell when Lecaro goes in the same breath from talking about literature to Britney Spears as sources for the look. Maybe the discomfort between these two is the point. Now that's badass. Lecaro claims, "It’s not about trying to look younger, really, it’s about a juxtaposition of innocence and grown-up self-confidence (though some feminists might say otherwise), and mixing the hard with the soft." To me, what's fascinating is not so much the "mixing" as the overlapping, contrasting and erasure of both youth and age. It's where they refuse to mix that really screws with things.
P.S. The article's pictures are uncanny as hell. (UPDATE: they’re still uncanny.)
P.P.S. For an alternate, more thorough, perspective on this topic there is an EGL site on livejournal (thanks aeryn).
Funny you should mentio nthat, because the article makes explicit mention of "early Courtney Love minus the raunchiness." It also claims that Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland beat CoLo to the "kinderwhore" punch. So to speak. You’ve got a finger on the pulse Randino.
Lolita and Little Big Girl are NOT the same. The article, which seems to rely heavily on eBay for research, seems to blend the two together, but they are in fact, quite different.
: 7/03/2006 11:18 PM
Who the hell is Lina Lecaro and what thell does she have to do with Gothic Lolita?
If you want a Gothic Lolita fashion icon, look up the Japanese man that brought it to mainstream Japanese culture, hun. His name is Mana. He used to be in a Gothic Rock band called Malice Mizer, and he's currently in a band called Moi dix Mois.
This fashion is Japanese and more complicated than your two paragraph misguided "articule" gives it credit for.
: 7/03/2006 11:29 PM
Came here via "Randino". I think that "a getup that no man seems immune to (even if they won’t admit it for fear of seeming pervy)" gives the game away. Some women are just scared of getting old and men are notoriously attracted to younger women. The taboo against sex with children is a modern invention, still not universally applied, and is related to the notion that women have rights. "kinderwhore" is right on the button.
Not only was that article and most of the comments apart from Bloom and James wrong, they were appaling- I'd even say offensive to Lolitas.
I'd like to know where any of the information in that article came from because it was very misguided. Perhaps people should take a look at the Elegant Gothic Lolita community on livejournal for a bit of REAL insight into the fashion and subculture.
(http://community.livejournal.com/egl)
And as for the comment left by Miss Melanie, please do your research before making offensive and slanderous comments like that, please! We would do you the same cortousey.
: 7/04/2006 12:26 AM
Hi James, I'm well aware that there is much more to Gothic Lolita fashion than my two paragraph post involves, but I was never claiming to offer a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon. For that, there are many, many websites (and inaccurate articles) out there. I was merely making an observation about something that interested me, and opening the floor for some discussion, an objective that I've clearly accomplished.
In fact, though I'm not entirely fond of your patronizing tone, I'm glad to have some references to look into. So bite me and thanks all at once!
20/20 HINDSIGHT: Clearly this is a topic that people have strong feelings about, but I'm curious about the fact that the woman in the article identifies herself as Lolita, and also identifies herself as someone in the process of discovering the turf. What makes her claims any less legitimate than others'? Is there a membership card or something? A checklist?
I can appreciate that some people may take issue with her effort to "translate" an in-the-know phenomenon to a broader audience, but at what point does critique cross into restricting another person's right to self-expression?
Coming at it from a different direction, if too many people latch onto a trend, I think, then the trend itself must become evasive to survive. How many times has "real" punk gone underground when confronted with the heavy hand of the media? Be a bit creative, rather than rehashing the same (literally) conservative nonsense that always marks these situations for disposal. If you wall yourself in the food will run out.
I think you raise a good point, and it is one that the GL community seesaws on constantly (that of the 'rules' and creativity). However, there are some places in the article where it becomes clear that the woman doesn't know what she's talking about. (Some parts that will clue you in to her very vague researching are her continuous references to eBay, where 99% of the things marked 'lolita' are not, and some to Google, where, for all we know, she is pulling up more articles just like hers.)
As to her claims being legitimate, I think you said it yourself: "She identifies herself as lolita, and also identifies herself as someone in the process of discovering the turf." Well, that's all fine. There are a lot of girls (and some boys) that are Lolita in their *heart* or in their *head*, but until they start wearing the clothes, they're newbies. I don't know what (if anything) you do for a living, but would you expect a new person, first day on the job, to be able to write a comprehensive article on the job and all of it's [office/customer/etc] politics and intricacies?
No. So why would you expect a newbie to a very formal, detailed, elaborate fashion to be able to do the same?
The problem with these sort of articles, is that Lolita is very often mixed up with LBG, kinderwhore, adult baby, french maid style, and various other styles that 'sully' the Lolita name. People read these articles and think, "Oh, this is what Lolita is." They run around in sexualized clothes, calling them Lolita, and then people get a bad image.
Lolitas get angry because we don't want to be associated with these things. We're not acting out any kind of desire to be five years old, we don't want to call our boyfriends Daddy, we don't want to attract pedophiles!
I also don't think Lolitas care as much about whether we go mainstream or not--unlike some subgenres of clothing that are all about breaking rules and subverting the current trends, Lolita actually heavily revolves around brand name clothing. Granted, the brand name clothing is imported from Japan, but it's still brand name. :)
: 7/04/2006 3:08 AM
I'm not even into EGL and it's plain that chick isn't a Loli...
A trashy Courtney Love clone yes, but definitely not a Loli. Its way too tacky for their taste.
: 7/04/2006 9:31 AM
I apologize for the patronizing tone, but attempting to seperate Gothic Lolita and kinderwhore/LBG is a constant and seemingly endless argument.
To be honest, I'd like Lolita to stay out of the mainstream, for fear of Lolita becoming a "buzzword".
: 7/04/2006 11:09 AM
bloom, that comment is amazing. I think your analogy about a newbie on the job is a good one, as it clarifies the source of more hostile reactions to the initial post. I'm still not going to remove the article, because debate is better than censorship, but if you want to make a post of your own here, or pass along some places where one may get a more accurate picture, they're very welcome.
Thanks to all for the well-considered and insightful comments!
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