The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

But, before approaching the crux of this thesis, investigating the
phenomenon’s complications while critically examining the psychology
behind them, this chapter builds up a background to and foundation for
these analyses by providing a history of the Japanese Lolita subculture and
its roots. I begin with an elaboration on the visual elements of the Lolita
fashion identity, explain how it came into existence, and delve into the
specifics of G&L at its inception. I then survey its context as a Neo-gothic
movement via an evolution of Gothic Revivalism, by going back to the
nineteenth century, the period of Victorian Neo-Gothicism and Japan’s
connections with that era, and returning to the late-twentieth to early-
twenty-first centuries and G&L.
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