Provocative Modesty: Lolita Fashion Causes Confusion

12/08/2010 mckelly90

For many people, the word “Lolita” conjures up images of Nabokov’s sexually active underage girl. Compare that to the fashion movement of the same name, however, and you’ll find they have as much in common as tofu and sirloin.

 

Lolita narrates the relationship between a middle aged man and a twelve year old girl. Lolita Fashion rejects highly sexualized mainstream clothing styles, and replaces them with an image of childhood innocence. A typical Lolita outfit draws inspiration from Victorian and Rococo-era children’s wear. Very little skin is exposed, and the goal is to look cute and girlish. Most importantly, the style isn’t intended to attract men. Yet association with Nabokov’s Lolita more often than not overshadows the intent of those who follow the fashion. People believe the clothes are worn for sex appeal.

“I was at a meet-up (a get-together  between Lolitas where we all come dressed up and hang out and go places) and, well, we’re all dressed up and together, so we do get noticed,” explained Alyssa Starling, a fashion design student and active member of the Lolita community. “So one of the girls told a lady who approached us that it was a fashion called Lolita. The lot of us actually got called perverts by the lady after that, and she left before we could explain that she was mistaken.”

 

Skim any Lolita fashion forum or blog and you’ll have no trouble finding stories just like Alyssa’s. Some people refrain from revealing the name at all, preferring to use less controversial terms, like Japanese street fashion or EGL (short for elegant gothic Lolita), when in public or with family members. The word “Lolita” carries a powerful stigma, one that most fashion Lolitas find extremely offensive. Given the connotations, it makes one wonder why Lolita fashion is called what it is. Scouring the farthest corners of the online Lolita community provided one solid answer: No one really knows.

 

There’s no way to deny the fact that the fashion borrows its name from Nabokov; according to Merriam-Webster, the word did not exist until he penned it in 1955. It took another 30 years for Lolita Fashion to emerge from the streets of Tokyo. One widely accepted explanation is that “Lolita” simply lost some meaning in a Japanese Customs booth on its trip over from the West, as many English words do. Alice Kelly, an American unfamiliar with Nabokov’s novel, said the word sounded romantic to her. Perhaps something similar happened with the Japanese pioneers of Lolita fashion.

 

Of course, this is all speculation. What’s certain is that, here in America, “Lolita” is tightly laced in a racy contextual corset. A recent post on City Room, a blog hosted by the New York Times, described “girls in thigh-highs” who “suggestively nibbled” cookies at a Japanese Lolita fashion event in New York City. An Amazon.com clothing search for “Lolita” yields both Halloween costumes and sex outfits, sometimes with little difference other than the word “Halloween” in the name. Most results include short skirts, fishnets, and low-cut tops – fashion features typically used to make women’s outfits more sexually appealing. Therein lies another issue: In our society, women’s fashion is expected to be sexy.

 

A male follower of Lolita fashion, Korin Bradley, feels the misconceptions about the style are caused by society’s view of women. “Anything a woman does can be sexualized, really,” he says. “A woman wears something that is different, and it suddenly becomes a “costume” used for a fetish.”

 

This interpretation, while not specific to Lolita, helps explain why many interpretations of the fashion are so radically different from the intent of those who wear it. It’s hard to break free from the  influence of a controversial novel when you combine it with the power of long standing social expectations.

 

In time, however, the intentions of Lolita Fashion may become more well known in mainstream society. Lolita is a newcomer on the American fashion scene. While it started in Japan in the 80s, it only recently began to gain notice here in the states. Most people become familiar with the style over the internet, and there are two things to keep in mind about these people. First, a lot of them are young. According to a poll on the popular EGL community on Livejournal, most members were between the ages of 17 and 22. Second, many weren’t familiar with Nabokov’s Lolita until they heard the world “Lolita” used in a different context. Alyssa first saw it used in online forums, in reference to characters from Japanese comics and animation. Korin found it while researching Japanese music. Several members of the forum LolitaFashion.org posted that they learned the word when they heard about the style, and in a few cases found out about the book through the Lolita community. Meanwhile, those who aren’t a part of the community may not know about the book at all. According to both Korin and Alyssa, it’s just not something that’s read by the younger generation.

 

The younger generation is outnumbered quite a bit in the age demographic. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1 in 8 Americans is considered elderly. The demographic that is most likely to be familiar with Lolita is the dominant age group in the United States. They are also the least likely to be familiar with new trends coming out of Japan. Is there an age gap in the interpretation of Lolita fashion? Definitely. Alyssa said the woman from her story was easily in her forties, maybe older. Many of the similar stories on the EGL community and LolitaFashion.org detailed confrontations with parents, counselors, professors, and in general, people who are at least a decade older than the Lolitas who posted the tales.

 

However,  even if Lolita fashion never shakes off the sexual connotations America has sewn to it, Lolitas themselves will do just fine. To the people who wear it, Lolita is about feeling beautiful no matter what. The rest of the world’s opinion doesn’t matter in the slightest.

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