"A super-cute Lolita look"

[IWouldNotCouldNotWithAGoat]

here

Am I being prudish? Wear sandals with socks for a super-cute Lolita look? This is aimed at teenage girls!! Am I over-reacting or is this just wrong?

It's a New Zealand shop, BTW.

yes. it's the ambiguity that makes writers interested in subjects. and come up with different ways to explore them. sometimes not just ambiguity though, but deliberate focus on controversial subjects.

have you got a migraine sgm? are you ok?

Lolita is a very interesting book, a tale told very cleverly. It makes for very uncomfortable reading.

It got me thinking about the depiction of children and sexuality and the way it's changed over time in terms of what is deemed acceptable and what isn't.

Romeo and Juliet, for example. When they consummate their marriage, Juliet is age 12. (I seem to remember Romeo is about 19, but it's a while since I studied the play).
Romeo would be in jail for rape and the nurse and friar in jail for aiding and abetting if it happened in this country nowadays.
(I believe even in Elizabethan times, 12 was seen as rather too young for marriage, but the fact the play is set in Italy supposedly made it seem okay "cos that's what furriners do....")

it is very revealing, isn't it?

that shakespeare is a pillar of society.

SGM you okay?

Don't type if it hurts. Can you have a lie-down?

It might not have been about your idea of love. It was about Humbert's.

I read it without being told to. I in no way found it titallating. I did find it very interesting. For me it was the story of how a man becomes a predatory paedophile and how desperate it makes him. It was the story of the abuse and manipulation of a child with nowhere to turn.

BTW, even in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's father talks of his reluctance to have his daughter marry so young.

regarding Nabokov... I honestly can't think of a more mainstream and banal subject than the normalization of predatory males' lust for little girls.

Where is the originality? Men have lusted after little girls for thousands of years. It has been written into laws. It was only when feminists began protesting this "normalization" of paedophilia that people began questioning it. The Church has never questioned it. QUITE THE OPPOSITE. IT was nineteenth century feminists that first began to say that men taking advantage of young girls was wrong. Until then it was completely and utterly normal.

So again, I fail to see the "brilliance" in Nabokov's work. He just comes accross as an ancient patriarch worried about losing an ancient patriarchal privilege, and the men who love his book come across the same way

yes it's about how desperate being a paedophine is for HUmbert.
What a "what about teh menz" storyline.

And did anybody here NOTICE the utterly misogynistic and vile portrayal of lolita's mother, whom he despised from the moment he set eyes on her? It made me ill, really. More misogyny. From a man? What a suprise. Not!

IN fact, the idea that a man writing a book about the abuse of a child could be a towering genius has got me so riled i've had to find lots of fascinating quotes about feminists over 100 years ago fighting the proliferation of male abuse of underage girls..

just to dispell any remaining myths that there was anything interesting about Nabokov:

From Sheila Jeffrey's:

The Sort Of Thing THat Might Happen To ANy Man is the title of this chapter, and that is bascially the overiding theme of Lolita
THe main theme, in fact.

"The feminist indignation of the sexual abuse of girls stemmed from their general concern to protect women and girls from aggressive male sexuality and male violence. Sexual abuse of girls was seen specifically as an abuse of power by adult men. This was clear in the campaign from 1885 to 1908 to gain incest legislation. Feminists were determined that all forms of abuse of power to gain sexual gratification would be heavily penalized, so that male relatives would be included in a catergory which comprised employers, stepfathers etc

...There was a massive effort to arouse public opinion to the male bias of the male justice system, symbolized by the title quote of this chapter, "This is the sort of thing that might happen to any man," taken from a judge's summing up of a sexual abuse trial which caused feminist indignation in 1925. Feminists complained that the offence of sexual abuse was not treated as if it was at all serious and that sentences were completely inadequate...."

Stepfathers abusing their stepdaughters? This could happen to any man? THe effect of child sexual abuse on the perpetrator ?!?! And great concern about his inner life and how the incidents affect him ?!?!!

As you can see, there is nothing original or interesting in Lolita.
IT is the banal, endless, concern and humanization of the predator and the persistent dehumanization of the child who is being destroyed by the privilege we allow men in our society. Men are still barely punished for child abuse, most girls are still too ashamed to bring a case against the abuser.

So please tell me.. how is Lolita a work of art?

"The Sort Of Thing THat Might Happen To ANy Man"

is what he thinks, yes.

He being a really truly fucked up character, who believes he is acting perfectly rationally and doing only what anyone else would do in the same situation.

I think we are going to fundamentally disagree here. Can you really only accept a piece of literature if it is abot good people doing good things?

Don't be silly trillian.. wot on earth has good people doing good things got to do with this?
I thought Emma Donoghue's ROom was fucking brilliant and there's a psychopathic rapist in there.

I just feel a huge huge silencing of the trauma of women and girls surrounding this book. I feel that a man's inner world is given more credence than the actual devastating destruction he is causing as we read it. WTF was all that misogyny directed at the mother. That in itself tells me the irony was wafer thin.

If child sexual abuse wasn't so prevalent, widespread, accepted and indeed promoted by men, then you might have a point.. About six months ago there was a book on Amazon on how to teach paedophiles essential tricks so that they won't get caught.. in other words how to abuse a child in a way that it will always appear as though the child was lying should they speak up. We campaigned here at MN and it was removed from Amazon, but it is still in circulation.
A How To book for fucking paedophiles getting published! Any book has to be looked at in the context of the culture it was written.

yes.. I know that.. My point is.. what's the point?
That's women's daily reality. That's who men are. How is that great art? Especially when he kind of justifies his revulsion for her: the mother was painted in a terrible light

Is it really too hard for women to believe that this book is as popular as it is because Nabokov is a paedophile apologist?

That's a more likely explanation than double irony.

The makers of the original film are to blame for the "iconic" Lolita look. The heart sunglasses, the knowing look over the top of them....were the girl to have been protrayed as a grubby realisti schoolgirl then it may have done a lot to minimize damage.

Since being on MN and coming to this section I can no longer enjoy many films.

I haven't seen the film MUmbling

I am going to agree to differ at this point