Our group was given the subculture ‘Male Lolita’ to
research into. To start off I wanted to find out what the term lolita stood
for, in Cambridge dictionary it stated it was “a young girl who has a very
sexual appearance or behaves in a very sexual way”. However when further
researching it I found out that Lolita fashion is a subculture in Japan highly
influenced by the Victorian and Edwardian era. The subculture is best known for
its cross over into Gothic style and the wide array of sub-styles represented
by it’s practitioners. The fashion normally includes skirts or dresses to their
knees, a petticoat, long monochromatic socks, and a wide array of accessories
covered in lace or ribbon. Often looking childlike or like a doll.
A male Lolita is not as popular as a female and has far less information
online, however from finding pictures I discovered they also wear knee high
socks with Victorian style shorts and jackets. They also look doll like with
the frilly shirts and ribbons round their neck. Most their clothes seem to
crossover into the gothic subculture as they dress mainly in black or white.
The news media in Japan usually portrays Gothic/Lolita
as they have previous youth cultures: as a social problem and a moral panic
that embodies the declining morals of Japanese youth. Over the past few years Lolita-related books, movies, comics and internet sites have
rapidly increased at a great rate, but most activity has occurred in the past six years, during
which two hit Gothic/Lolita-oriented magazines went on sale: Gosurori (the
Japanese abbreviation for Gothic & Lolita) and The Gothic & Lolita Bible.
As a youth culture, Gothic/Lolita dates back to the 1990s. It was first inspired by devotees to Mana, the cross-dressing
guitarist for the Japanese rock band Malice Mizer. The name indicates its
distinctive hybrid style: it combines gosu, a Japanized version of Western “Goth” fashion, music,
and hobbies with Victorian/Edwardian-inspired doll-like clothes and fairy-tale
motifs called rorīta,
or “Lolita”
Refrences
Gagné, I. (2008), Urban
Princesses: Performance and “Women's Language” in Japan's Gothic/Lolita
Subculture. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18: 130–150.
doi:10.1111/j.1548-1395.2008.00006.x
Posted by Phoebe Paton.
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