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In recent years, Japan has bred a youth culture with a passion for costume and dressing up. This is referred to as Cosplay or Costume Play and it has already made its way all across the world. (Most people Cosplay Anime characters.) . . Perhaps harkening back to the historic days of Kabuki, Japanese youth want to continue the tradition of escape through dress and style.

This, if completely removed from any indication to lolita, is almost true...aside from the fact that the cosplay subculture has been around for a long time and most people don't participate in it. Hense, it is a subculture, not the Japanese youth culture. From hereon I refer to the anime cosplay subculture, not the visual kei one.
The term "otaku" is derogatory in Japan. As for kabuki, it developed in the "floating world" (red light district) of Japan a long time ago as a form of entertainment. At first it was played by men and women, but usually the women ended up prostituting themselves after the shows, so the government forbid women to perform in kabuki and replaced them with young boys. Then the young boys started prostituting themselves after the shows and the government got mad. The next logical step was to instill the actors with a sense that they were not prostitutes, but serious actors, and they were thus rigorously trained as such and it became an art much as it is today. In short, I do not see what the reference here to kabuki manages to accomplish or hopes to point out. The author has, however, rightly hit upon the escapist nature of the style and the transformative power of clothing.

The Gothic Lolita look is an amazing contrast of innocence and sexuality. The child-like physical look of young Japanese women contributes to this alluring illusion. As we all know, the Japanese have some of the most interesting fetishes and sexual habits of any culture on Earth. Female youth have long been exciting to older Japanese males and the innocence of looking like a child may appeal to these women because of the powerful sexual allure...

This is perhaps the most horribly representative thing anyone has ever said about lolita in the history of lolita anywhere on the planet. Yes, Japan has some rather strange sexual tastes and their fetishes are just as strange as any other culture's fetishes, and yes Japanese women do sometimes look younger than their foreign counterparts. But everything else about this statement is the exact opposite of reality!
In anime, there is the image of a lolita as a sexual symbol, and that is related to lolita complex. But lolita is not sexual. Lolita themselves do not find it sexual. Men, on average, do not find them sexual either. Two lolita told me with glee that 99.9% of Japanese men find lolita unattractive, and one man asked me "why they wore it. Didn't they know men aren't attracted to it at all?" Men and attraction do not even factor into the lolita mindset when they are in their clothing. One lolita felt the need to stop shopping at her favorite store after her boyfriend came in with her and remarked how erotic the petticoats are. Lolita have boyfriends, but they do not have boyfriends who like them because they wear lolita; they have them because they like who they are and visa versa. So it's not powerful sexual allure.
There was one program where they took a beautiful lolita and stuck her in front of a building all day, and then waited around for men to come up and ask her to go out with them. There were some takers...like, the .1% who do find her attractive. I hear they were more likely to be otaku.

...but also because it presents a way for them to escape growing up at least for the moments they are dressed in the Gothic Lolita style. The attention these women*girls* get must validate them in some way; it must make them feel special. Or it could just be that they dress this way to be closer to their idols.

Yes. But it's not always because of attention. Some girls wear the clothing because they don't care what other people think of them, and they want to feel special in their own eyes. Lolita is a way of returning to childhood and feelings of self worth, a way of closing oneself off from the rest of society. I once found a lolita and talked to her for 5 minutes before I realized she was male! I can garauntee you she did NOT want to be photographed, and obviously did not trust me in the least or want my attention. The same with another rather odd looking girl in an assortment of Moitie that...well, it looked unusual. She was a snob; but even she didn't like the attention she was getting from others. So for some this is true, but it's not that simple. This isn't an either/or, it's an "to everyone their own." They don't need validation from other people's stares.

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The uniqueness of a subculture like this is quickly eaten up by the Japanese mass-market mind. Many stores and magazines like the Gothic & Lolita Bible cater to the women who want to dress in the Gothic Lolita style. A person can look at an EGL in Yoyogi Park and walk across the street to one of the many mall stores and purchase that look from head to toe.

The thing the author fails to mention is that ONLY in Yoyogi Park can a person walk across the street and purchase the clothing. And this is done from either one of the 3 stores on the main road, one of the hidden shops off the main road, or one of the stores relegated to the basement of the popular Laforette building. The only other place the clothing is really sold en mass is Shinjuku, two stops away, and this is also done through the top 4 floors of one specific building, OIYOUNG. Nowhere else, in Tokyo at least, is gothic and lolita to be found (unless you count the gothic subculture shops and fetish shops in places such as Roppongi). The Gothic and Lolita Bible is sold in some regular book stores though.
It's still unique because subcultures feed off of popular media influences and reject them, reworking themselves and evolving, but still staying separate. Hot Topic teens don't seem to fit into the gothic subculture; fake lolita don't seem to fit into lolita.

*Cut of the Style Description*

You're all familiar with lolita. You've read my guide. You can tell when this is innacurate.

The women who dress in the Gothic Lolita style do so only on weekends and for “Lives” or concerts. This is a form of escape for them; a way for them to look like their idols and to attract attention.

Regardless of the assertion that looking like your idols and having everyone stare at you is an excape from...what, exactly?...the author here is talking about the bandgirl lolita. A large number of lolita do only wear the clothes on weekends. After all they have work and school, dress codes, and the whole process of getting ready is extremely time consuming, dresses are expensive, etc. But some lolita hate bandgirls who go to lives. Some bandmen hate the style. The vocalist of my favorite band actually stated that he "dislikes girls who make him feel he's in the presence of a girl" in general. They wear the clothes to fit in with everyone else at the live, and in doing so thus NOT get unwanted attention. As Amemiya stated, she used to go to lives as a girl, but was too poor to wear the clothes, and so when she got older she wore them to compensate for that experience.

Trying to look young and elegant all at once is a purely Japanese phenomenon. Can you imagine today’s American Teens emulating J-Lo and looking elegant doing it? I didn’t think so. Possibly this Lolita look holds the same allure for them as does the “Romantic Goth”, Victorian or Renaissance, style in the West. That allure of a more cordial and better dressed time in history. Or perhaps these young Japanese women are just following a trend to be a part of the conformity of a bigger crowd. Either way this style is a welcomed look in the American Gothic scene.

As to looking young and elegant at the same time, isn't that what a princess is? So if you're emulating yourself as a child, or a doll, or a princess, of course you're not going to look like J-Lo. I do think there is some truth to saying that Lolita is something more likely to have been invented in Japan, but that doesn't mean there aren't people outside of Japan who can understand it, right? More cordial and better dressed time in history......well, as I explained, lolita is Japanese young girl more than anything, and that means living out a fantasy. I do believe a woman dressed like a lolita in the Rococco period would have been known as "strumpet" or "burn her at the stakes!" or something of the sort. Like, it's not unknown for cultures to look to the past of other cultures as forms of nostalgia (ex. the Phillipeans and Sinatra, etc), and there is most likely some of that going on here, but that's not all it is for sure. At any rate, it is not the appropriate way to end this book, as it makes gothic and lolita sound much more western-oriented than it really is.
And just randomly, some goths are curious about gothic lolita, but others have already denounced it as anime blather. But the author would not have known this back when the article was written.

My Verdict: This article is a -2.

The author ought to research the country before she decides to make broad cultural statements, and to talk to lolita more before analyzing their subculture. This article is deletirius to cultural understanding and offensive to me, I dressing lolita not for attention from anybody and hating being connected to a sexual perversion....that isn't my own ^o~ *o hoh*

Well, that is all really. I hope this helped to clear some things up, if you got through it all. Some of the criticism may seem superfluous I suppose (kabuki and stuff)....but I figured if I were to pick apart the article, I really ought to completely pick apart the article.

And I like kaitai. Ends.