"I've become disillusioned with you."

What a horrible thing that must be to hear from someone you care about...but I think, perhaps it hurts just as much saying it as it does hearing it. A little while, I said something to someone I really oughtn't to have said. And, incidentially, it was exactly that same thing. And it made me think a little about myself, and lolita, and other people...

And I realized how much of a child I still am. As far as being able to hold a job...or, more accurately, accell at a job, drive, pay for bills, live on my own....I can do that. But when it comes to other people there's just some little part of me that wants to run back into myself.

That is lolita. In Japan, the pressure to conform to societal standards is much greater than here, and it has lead in the past decade to things such as hikikomori (people who lock themselves in their houses or rooms and refuse to come out for years on end), and a recent rash of group suisides. Nevermind the people who daily jump in front of the subway on the way home. I recently read that 70% of Japanese could be considered depressed. Then there's the school bullying, 2ch gumin...it's like in Mihara Mitsukazu's Doll book. "Kitto, tenshi ga iru" (There must be angels!) In that society of false friendships and discrimination, where you expect your neighbors to greet you warmly as you step out of your house and gossip about you after you've turned the curb, wouldn't a girl want to believe in angels? Or at least to believe that something was watching over here, or that someone cared about her?

Lolita clothing is a way of escaping from society. It is not so much to become a doll as to become a young Japanese girl once more. And while you get the same sorts of subcultural formations among lolita that you do among foreign teenieboppers and female subcultures, there is a slightly different dynamic. By wearing the clothing, the girls are saying to non-lolita, men, neighbors, "we don't care about you." The clothing acts as a physical and mental barrier from others, and although maybe used to get attention, is used to escape societal pressure and fulfill the girl's own selfish ideas of beauty (this excludes bandgirl lolita, who dress up to go to concerts and fit in. Their number seems to be dwindling).

When Japanese children are little, they are taught that there is an "inside" and an "outside", and the inside is family, friendly, and clean, and the outside is strangers, dirty, and scary. These things get intertwined within the minds of the youth. And so when lolita wear their clothing, the same clothing they would have worn as an ideal in their childhood, they are creating the family, friendly, and clean, their house, in the middle of the road outside. That is why many lolita will say they are selfish; they are forcing others to accept their rejection of society without paying attention to set rules. They are behaving as a child would in forcing others to acknowlege that they are rejecting societal norms. This is also why so many non-bangirl lolita are antisocial in Japan, and why 30 is the general agreed age to stop being lolita for good (some will say 26 though), By 26, you really ought to join society.

...well, this made me think about myself. And I realized something; I'm still very much a child when it comes to other people. Whenever someone loves me or tries to come close to me, I try my hardest to push them away, to look for reasons to run from them or hate them....

It's because, like the lolita, I have a hard time with strangers. Not only trusting them, but also accepting the fact that I would be close to another person, and that that person is someone completely different from me. And though I know I have to stop (I can't go on hurting people!)...it's just so hard.

No one should ever become disillusioned with another person I don't think. It means they have expectations towards that person, and expectations only lead to disappointment and discrimination. It's unfair to a person to expect something from them that they've never offered...but they're hard, aren't they, human relationships. No wonder lolita can mean so much to some people....

But it's an escape, still...I don't think I can run anymore. If I were just hurting myself it would be fine, but I could really hurt other people as well. I think other lolita should think about that too, who they want to be, and who those around them are.

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