>>90815Just in case she deletes it, I'll also pos the full text here:
The Anti-Lolita Tutorial from a 45 year old Lolita
In the League Table of "Cool" I notice that all the "Cool" people that list their interests online usually mention that they're a connoisseur of Organic Fair-Trade Coffee beans, publish their gluten free recipes (always the same one, gluten free cupcakes,) enjoy film noir and have keen interest in Japanese Culture.
I'm too old to a) want to be cool and b) be able to carry it off even if I tried. I can't really claim to be an expert on Japan as having The Great Wave off Kanagawa on my stairs and an old copy of Memoirs of a Geisha doesn't count - but there IS one aspect of Japanese sub-culture that has always held a deep fascination. The "Lolita" phenomenon.
While Lolita may have begun as a fashion for Japanese girls and women who wished to step away from sexual fashion I can’t quite divorce it from sexual fetish or see it as anything but the infantilisation of grown women.
Taking its name from the novel “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov I find it hard to reconcile the kind of feminism that Lolitas espouse when actually they are part of a movement named after a character that is an abused child.
I feel that the Lolita subculture is easily confused with fetish - the proponents would say that it’s about emphasising modesty and youthfulness as well as drawing from the Japanese kawaii “cute” aesthetic but if you take a wander through the bargain area of Harajuku and see the girls fully bedecked in their bows and frills and then go to nearby Akihabara you’ll be bombarded with Lolita images; except this time they’re the XXX adult pornographic kind. It makes uncomfortable viewing and the juxtaposition feels very wrong.
One commentator wrote “I think dressing in Lolita fashion hits a lot of nerves with a lot of woman because, like it or not, these clothes are similar to the frills and the general structure of young girls' clothes and, like it or not, even the most enlightened thinkers make the connection. We aren't far from the time when there was a debate about women having any intellectual capacity beyond domestic matters and it is risky to connect women to under-developed young girls in this way”
I know that the Lolita movement is widely misunderstood. The focus is often on the name, and that Lolitas are adult women taking on the role of sexualized children. Despite its name, it’s not about attracting an older man they say, but I have a nagging feeling that I wish they could have chosen something less contentious and more empowering.
There is an argument that Lolita is incredibly female-positive in that it takes these traditionally female signifiers like lace and bows and makes them ultra-visible in a deliberately subversive way.
It's not supposed to be an appeal to the expectation that women should be childlike, or an attempt to pander to paedophiles.
I get that an incredibly small portion of men who are aroused by children should NOT dictate what any woman wears, the Lolita girls should not have the personal responsibility where they worry about sending the "wrong" messages to men.
The responsibility sits squarely on the abuser to NOT do those things no matter what the perceived temptation may be.
Venus Angelic
My gut feeling despite being firmly in the camp that anyone should be able to wear anything they like so long as they are not harming another person is still conflicted. Why aren’t Lolitas dressing like Lolita actually did, like a tomboy? Just because a Lolita girl refutes the sexualisation of her image does not mean that sexualisation does not exist. It’s essentially meaningless.
This is what happens when you put an adult woman in a little girl’s dress. So no, fully grown women dressing pre-sexually is not feminist in any way.
I would get this same urge to stick pins in my eyes if I heard a woman in my workplace talk in a “baby-voice.” I can’t support it, it’s not helpful to me. Emulating children is a way of subverting adulthood and the respect I get as an adult woman. It’s thin on the ground anyway so why choose to make it even thinner?
With all that said, I’m not surprised that the movement has spread far and wide. You might have heard of Venus Angelic (right.) Her video "How to look like a doll" has garnered close to 13 million views and is essentially a tutorial of how to look very young and big-eyed which I find slightly ironic as Venus actually IS very young and big-eyed.
Her career trajectory has shot up since she became You-Tube Famous™ so not only is being perpetually young popular in Japan, you can now make a career out of it. The famous women who also do this are known as Hollywood Actresses. But then they get old and no one wants them anymore. For more on the invisibility of the older woman you can read my article here
Talking about a topic is great but there's no substitute for actually experiencing it. I have, slightly reluctantly but with a strong curious drive to understand more, turned myself from a really average looking middle aged woman into a 45 year old Lolita.
Venus Angelic YouTube still - How to be a Doll
There's so much wrong with this look that it sticks in my craw but I simply had to know what it would feel like when I looked at myself in the mirror. And, more importantly, how would other people react to me. The transformation video is coming up in Part 2 - It's uncomfortable viewing for me, not due to any chagrin about appearing like this in public on a personal level. It's uncomfortable entirely for what it represents. Superficially it's a middle aged woman doing dress up to look younger. I'm not the first woman to do that, it happens millions of times every day, literally. But beyond that it's a rejection of me, of the face and wrinkles I earned over the course of my lifetime, and a plea to others to not accept me as I am but to accommodate me as a ditsy looking dolly.
I didn't go to University for that. I didn't choose a child free lifestyle for that. I don't ask to be paid the same as my male counterparts for that. I don't exercise my right to vote for that either.
Everything I do and everything that I am as an independent woman living in 2015 is undermined by this makeup and it makes my skin itch to wear it a moment longer than I have to.
from the Great Ageing Experiment article
Part 2 of the experiment will be published soon. What happened when Dolly Darcey hit the internet. My assumption based on past experience is that what you look like has a direct impact on the kind of interaction I receive online.
I know this to be true, my other recent experiment (right) where I prematurely aged myself and did the comparison is here. The less stereotypically attractive I am, the more I am ignored. The "prettier" I make myself, the more unwanted and frankly vile unsolicited attention I receive.
In Part 2 I'll show you the transformation video and what happened next - below I've only inserted big-eye doll contact lenses and mimicked the classic "Dolly" pose. Before the makeup and bows are even complete I feel uncomfortable. Check back to see what happened when I've finished. These young girls do this and love doing this, but this old one feels very weird…
Part 2 - The 45 Year Old Lolita
It looks as frightening as it feels. Have a look at the video below, you'll see how I achieved this look plus how it feels to wear it. It's not one of my proudest moments but if there's even one young girl or teen-age woman that reads this and is prompted to think "You know what, I don't have to dress up like this. I can run for President" then this afternoon's efforts with makeup will have been worth it.