Part 1, Chapter 7: In Tarrant, S., & Jolles, M. (Eds.). Fashion talks: Undressing the power of style (pp. 117-132). State University of New York Press: https://sunypress.edu/Books/F/Fashion-Talks
ABSTRACT (2008)
“‘Lolita is back’. As early as 1996, Hannah J. L. Feldman made this statement in regard to a newly emerging phenomenon, represented at the time in art and popular culture, by a ‘triumphant emblem of a newly configured’ feminist model for the young woman, who, unlike Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 heroine, ‘no longer represents a young girl’s vulnerability to an older man’s lascivious desires’ (p. 52). ‘To be Lolita’, she declared, now ‘means to take control… and to reverse the pejorative connotations of [male dominance] and aggressive sexual behavior’ (Feldman, 1996, p. 52). Under this particular banner of ‘Lolita’, a fashion-based youth movement has grown, known as Gothic & Lolita, a youth street subculture that originated in Japan and is rapidly gaining worldwide appeal.
The most prominent face of the Gothic & Lolita subculture is the Lolita, herself (gothloli, gosurori), the young woman whose style, based on little girls’ fashions of the Rococo, Romantic and Victorian periods, is signified by her doll-like or childish appearance. As the Lolita also commonly collects and plays with dolls, and sometimes parades with them on the street, this preoccupation is, therefore, often seen as superficial and meaningless, and disregarded as merely another development of a perceived Japanese obsession with all things ‘cute’ (kawaii), which has been represented in terms of an ‘infantile mentality’ (Kageyama, 2006). However, this dismissive attitude overlooks more complex psychological and sociological issues behind the motivation towards participation in the Japanese Lolita movement. It also fails to recognise the subculture as a ‘transgressive model for representing female sexuality’ (Feldman, 1996, p. 52).
As it is essentially a ‘feminine’ movement, the Lolita subculture is unique. What sets this phenomenon apart from the subcultural ‘model’ is that the face of the Lolita is paradigmatically female. Whilst, according to Dick Hebdige’s observation that ‘girls have [in the past] been relegated to a position of secondary interest within both sociological and photographic studies of urban youth, and masculine bias [has existed]… in the subcultures themselves’, the Japanese Lolita movement, as highlighted by Yuniya Kawamura (2007), is essentially a girls’ subculture (p. 344), which may be understood in terms of a tribal empowerment against the so-called ‘Lolita Complex’, a term applied by sociologists in Japan to a ‘male desire for girlish women’ (Feldman, 1996, p. 55).
How, though, does one battle against a paradigm of male dominance, female vulnerability and victimisation, from a position that appears to adopt the very construct that is being challenged? The Lolita, after all, in her embrace of frills and childish frippery, may lead one to suggest that her behavior is, in fact, frivolous and morally irresponsible. Herein lays the paradox. What is shocking about the Lolita subculture is exactly this: Although many members (Japanese or otherwise) choose to deny any sexual connotations in regard to their appearance, the Lolita’s adoption of a seemingly submissive, yet sexually provocative identity (even in the acceptance of the Lolita tag) is controversial and contentious, and therefore rebellious. However, the new Lolita reclaims her right to be feminine. She hijacks the male fantasy, turns it on its head, takes possession of and power over it, and escapes with it to her own realm, one that is instead controlled by a force of ‘girlish’ women.
This chapter discusses the impetus for this Lolita phenomenon in Japan and its increasing relevance and importance for young women worldwide.
References:
Feldman, H. J. L. (1996). The Lolita Complex. World Art (Australia), (2), 52-57.
Kageyama, Y. (2006, 16 June). Cute is king for the youth of Japan, but it’s only skin deep. The New Zealand Herald, B3.
Kawamura, Y. (2007). Japanese street fashion: The urge to be seen and to be heard. In L. Welters & A. Lillethun (Eds.), The Fashion Reader (pp. 343-345). Berg.
Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal 