My dad and I had a conversation after I translated this.

"Where are the apples?"
"I dunno. I bought them yesterday."
"But there are no apples in the fridge."
"There have to be. Did you look in more than one place?"
"Yes I did but...oh! They were behind the milk. Why were they behind the milk? Apples don't belong behind milk."
"They were shy."
"That's horrible. Don't give inanimate objects souls, especially food. Especially round food, because we're suppose to love round things and want to protect them like a baby." *chomps apple*
"...Where the heck did you hear that?"
"Takemoto Nobara." *munch munch*
"...???"

So I dunno. I always thought it was because a square egg would hurt the chicken's buttocks. But that aside, I both agree and respectfully disagree with Nobara on this article. The clothing a lolita wears is definitely protection from the outside world (for further explaination see my notes on article 1). But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're acting that way just for protection.

In Japan cute is a major concern, and so perhaps they just like cute things and don't like studying. I think in order to be a lolita you have to have some sort of insecurity or childhood dream in Japan, and so Nobara is attempting to appeal to that side of the lolita. This article means, more or less, that by mimicry in their clothing of a butterfly, a toy, things wayward and childish, Lolita are escaping from reality and the future.

And indeed, lolita do not seem good with planning for the future. A proportionally large number of them try to go into the fashion business, only to realize that they don't have the connections necessary to go anywhere with their skills. So these girls probably do have worries but they don't want to bother explaining them or don't feel they should. Part of lolita is an escapism that they don't even bother to hide.

Of course, it's still likely that the new fall fashion is one of the greatest concerns among the younger lolita though, since Japan is extremely brand oriented and materialistic, and it hurts not to get the dress you want if you really love a brand *my Buffalo neubuck black and white platform sneakers -cough cough cry-*...but that's just a larger part of what has been pegged as a mental illness in Japan, where people find escape from pressure and unhappiness, loneliness, etc, in consumption and needlessly spending money. That, mixed with the pressure of having everyone always judging you, must lead to a very strong tendency in lolita to overspend, and to look towards fashion as an escape and a border between themselves and their overly appearance-based society.

As can be glinted from this particular column, there's a slight but pervasive, deeply rooted current of transience, nihilism, and accepted uncertainty towards the future in many of the Japanese youth's minds now. I personally assume this is due to the tendency towards weak human relationships, over-emphasis on consumption, lack of religion, problematic mother-child-husband relationship (see Anne Allison's work), poor schooling system, and breakdown of the lifetime-employment system and rise in neeto as the economy's been on decline for at least the past decade while religion's become largely a thing of symbolic motions. It puts a lot of pressure on the younger generation.