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Lolita as a New Form of Feminist Resistance
While psychologically Japan still generally conforms to the strictly gendered
divisions in society that Ruth Benedict revealed, especially the priority that
girls should be “lovely and kind” above all else, the Lolita subculture, while
it has developed from this same sensibility that young women should
represent themselves as modest, innocent, sweet, kind and cute,
paradoxically resists the traditional position of Woman.
It is my argument that the Japanese Lolita movement encompasses
nonconformist, even antiestablishment social behaviours and as such is a
women’s revolution.
Sebastian Masuda has gone as far as describing Lolita most
provocatively as “punk… minus the violence”. 173 Lolita, in this sense, is thus
a passive-aggressive form of feminist rebellion, or in Deborah Cameron’s
words “the baby doll face of feminism in Japan”. 174 This is a strong reason
why the movement is also controversial and confrontational.
But how does this resistance operate? In contemplating the new Lolita,
Hannah Feldman has highlighted the problematic aspect that to “desire her
on the one hand, or to simulate her appeal on the other, involves [in either
case the] infantalizing [of] women as well as their sexuality – a move that is
hard to reconcile with the advances of feminism”. 175 She has asked:
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