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Confronting a Patriarchal Hegemony
Patriarchal control in Japan and the objectification or repression of Woman
is partially exercised through visual media, particularly imagery from
advertising and popular culture, again via the trajectory of the Cute. * Elise
Tipton, writing in 2000, the time when the Lolita movement was beginning
to peak, stated that “most [media depictions]… reinforce[d] the image of
women as cute (kawaii), childlike, and by extension… powerless”. 142
Included in this type of imagery is the sexualised Woman-child (Fig.
75) which, in its abundance, creates an unstable environment for the
Gothloli childlike adult to exist. However, while these types of images,
specifically, effectively undermine both women and children, I strongly
maintain that the Gothloli identity, aside from the fact that it may be
connected culturally to this paradigm, is intended to operate differently and
oppositionally.
To begin with, according to Donald Ritchie, the actual attraction to
Cute and adoption of a cute identity reflects in the individual a sense of
purity. He claims that this “innocent rectitude is important [especially] to
* Of course this is not specific to Japan. It is the type of imagery that prevails in Japan that is
problematic, in that it often worships the Child-woman, or the Sexualised Child, and thus
exacerbates the Lolita Complex, or the fascination by older men with young girls. This is the major
discussion contained in this chapter and will be further explained. My argument, however, is that
although the Gothloli is implicated in this type of imagery she, paradoxically, resists this
connection.
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