Around the end of 2020, "lolita fashion" began trending on twitter following a certain twitter user's assertion that the fashion was connected to grooming and child sexual abuse. Lolitas across the world responded by flooding the tag with positive examples of the fashion. Many users, and even the official Twitter hashtag, made a point to mention that the fact that the fashion and the book are not connected. All of these posts culminated in a popular youtuber creating an image that loudly proclaimed, "Lolita fashion has nothing to do with the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov", which has been widely shared across Instagram.
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| From @lovelylor on Instagram |
This is just the most recent example of lolitas banding together to fight the misconceptions that have arisen from the name of the fashion. The discussion, if it can even be called that, is old hat by now - someone (usually an observer who has no experience with lolita or any other kind of alternative fashion) denounces the fashion and attacks its wearers. Lolitas defend themselves against the accusations, and "solutions" are proposed to prevent further misunderstandings. People talk about how to educate the "normies", how to raise awareness about the fashion and its history, and even debate changing the name of the style entirely. Blog posts are written, Instagram posts are shared, Twitter threads get made, Facebook discussion groups and Discord servers burst to life with activity. It's clear that this is an issue that many members of our community feel passionate about.
But I, personally, want to add something to the statement so often made by so many lolitas about the relationship between the fashion and Nabokov's novel. Lolita fashion has nothing to do with the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.... and even if it did, it wouldn't matter.
The history of lolita fashion is difficult to trace on the best of days. There is no definitive way to prove how the name of the fashion originated, and whether it was meant to portray any particular meaning. But if one day we discovered that the fashion truly was named after Nabokov's book, would that discount everything about lolita fashion and the subculture that surrounds it? Does the name of the fashion override all the unique history, philosophy, and ideals behind its creation?
Lolita has never been a fashion about emulating historical, or even literary, accuracy. No matter its inspirations, no one is going to mistake a lolita dress for clothing from the actual Victorian era. When Momoko says, "Ideally, I would have been born in the Rococo era" in the pivotal ending scene of Kamikaze Girls (2004), she is not referring to literal 18th century French society - she's talking about an imagined, romanticised version of the past that never truly existed. Juliette et Justine is named after a series of books by the Marquis de Sade, but the brand's aesthetic has nothing to do with the horrific acts of sadism and sexual violence described in those writings. The fashion cares far more about the feelings and aesthetics invoked by its inspirations than the actual truth behind them. These are the clothes of romantic fantasy and fairy tales, not the realities of everyday life.
Kamikaze Girls / Shimotsuma Monogatari (2004)
If this sounds cruel, childish, or self-absorbed by the standards of today, that is by design. This philosophy has been part of lolita fashion since its very existence - it is part of what makes the fashion its own alternative and subversive subculture, rather than a kind of mainstream fancy-dress. Wearing lolita fashion is an implicit rejection of the "real world" in favour of one's own. Unlike historical costuming or cosplay, it doesn't care for the boundaries of authenticity or accuracy, creating instead its own unique set of rules and etiquette. Thus, rather than adhering to societal norms, lolitas exercise their agency by instead following their own sense of aesthetic and personal ideals - even if it means putting a target on their backs. This attitude is at the very heart of what makes the fashion what it is.
Of course, there are some ideas in history, art, media, and literature that are so terrible and full of pain that one should never take inspiration from them. I don't believe that lolita is ever worn with the intent is to harm others - we simply want to be able to enjoy the things that make us happy. And in the case of the name of the fashion versus its history and meaning, even if it is one day made clear that lolita fashion was named after a book that contains details of pedophilia, the fashion itself is so far removed from anything of that sort that any connection that may once have been is essentially moot.
However, this is not something that will be understood by most observers. The nature of alternative fashion is that it will always be misinterpreted by those in the mainstream. Many will simply refuse to listen or understand what we have to say, and no amount of explanation, education, or sharing of resources will change that. It is time that wearers of lolita fashion embrace its status as a counterculture and stop trying to make themselves more palatable to these kinds of people. We do not owe it to anyone to explain why we dress the way we do, and we don't need to justify the history and philosophy of our clothing any more than someone who wears Gucci or Prada, Zara or H&M.
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| From Gothic and Lolita Bible 07, December 2002 (accessed via http://www.lolitahistory.com/gallery/index.php?/category/34) |
If lolita fashion really needs a name change, that should be decided by members of the Japanese lolita community - the people who started the fashion, pioneered its philosophy, and helped build lolita culture to what it is today. Otherwise, neither lolita fashion, nor lolitas themselves, should feel the need to change anything in order to accommodate the prejudices of outsiders and onlookers. Because if lolita teaches you nothing else, it should be that you do not need anyone's approval to continue doing what you love.
Fun fact: the first issue of the GLB has a glossary explaining the most common terms. And in there it's stated that the name of the fashion *is* derived from the book. But not only not many people know that (despite that page being scanned and available on Lolita History, and mostly text so that an app able to translate from an image could handle it), as you said, what does it matter now? Even when that glossary was printed in the GLB, the editors of the magazine knew that the fashion wasn't about glorifying paedophilia but about empowerment and celebrating femininity, let alone now, 20 years after the first GLB was published and more since the fashion evolved into what we recognise as lolita.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware of this! However, the name "lolita" has been around for much longer than GLB - I remember reading in an article (I think by Yuniya Kawamura?) that the first instance of the word being used to describe the fashion appeared in the 80s. So who knows if GLB's intepretation of where the name came from is even correct, given than GLB1 was published over a decade later? I think, like so much of lolita's past, that is something that's kind of lost to history. The *real* meaning of lolita has survived though, and in the end, the fashion is what its wearers make of it. <3
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