8: Dolores Logs In

Dolores Hayes. Most are exposed first to the images laid out that reference an image that her abuser constructed, whether that's in movies or advertisement or pop music. Some of us see her through the peaks that the Book of Humbert. Humbert gives to her true authentic self in his book, Dolores being a better tennis player than Humbert but always letting him win anyways. Dolores crying herself to sleep at night, Dolores dropping a knife onto her foot upon seeing her

friend's father genuinely expressing love to his daughter. But no matter how you see her, we all see Dolores in relation to ourselves just like we see really anything. There's a four part series that you can watch for free on YouTube called Ways of Seeing, which was originally aired on BBC two in nine two, and it's hosted by writer John Burger. Maybe you've been taught this in a class you've taken before, or maybe you have like an

exhausting friend that brings it up at parties. But Ways of Seeing is all about the ways that modern audiences consume mass images and how different image consumption is from the centuries of sacred imagery being more difficult to seek out before mass production was possible. There's some parts of this documentary that are really cool and others that are

really dated. How you can devote an entire episode on how women view themselves by speaking to five white women in Britain of the same financial classes like um come on. But in the first episode, John Burger conducts a pretty interesting experiment that I think uniquely suited to how we see Dolores so okay for science picture. The most popular image in our culture of Lolita Sue Lion gazing over

those heart shaped sunglasses in two. Here's what Burger says in the first episode of Ways of Seeing as you look at them now on your screen. Your wallpaper is around them, your window is opposite them, your carpet is below them. At the same moment, they are on many other screens, surrounded by different objects, different colors, different sounds. You are seeing them in the context of your own life.

They are surrounded not by guilt frames, but by the familiarity of the room you are in and the people around you. Okay, so let's think about the Sioux Lion image in that context. This image has been reproduced countless times, whether it's this exact image or later reimagined versions of it, but the way that you see it is uniquely connected to you, You goddamn snowflake. Whether you like it or not, you're gonna see this heart shaped glasses image in the

context of your own life. So some people are going to see a sexually appealing and consenting underage girl. Others might see an aspirational image. Wow, I want to look like that. Others might recoil from the image. How could they make a girl pose like that? She's so young? Another person might say, Hey, I've forgot I was going

to watch that movie. The image exists in a context and not just the societal context we've been talking about throughout this series, it's also the context of you, how this image comes to you and how you interpret it. John Burger also speaks to how the meaning of an

image changes when placed alongside other images. A picture of Sue Lion and heart shaped Glasses on its own has a different implied meaning than if the heart shaped glasses picture is placed beside a photo of Sue Lion when she was the years older, or if the heart shaped glasses picture is placed next to an image of Stanley Kubrick berating a female actor. When placed next to something else,

the meaning of the original image often changes. I've now emphasized the ways in which reproduction makes the meaning of works of art ambiguous. This is not as negative as it necessarily sounds, if we realize what is happening. What it means in theory is reproduction of works of art can be used by anybody for their own purposes. Images can be used like words, we can talk with them. Reproduction should make it easier to connect our experience of

art directly with other experiences. So, as John Burger is describing this, we see a series of very nineteen seventies images juxtaposed next to each other for our purposes. Think of a bulletin board in a teenager's room where there's pictures of celebrities pinned up next to pictures of friends and family. Think of vision boards that people made back when New Year's resolutions and hope for the future was

still a thing that we had. And while we're at it, let's take that same energy and apply it to the wonderful world of online. Think of how images interact with each other and change meaning based on what kind of Pinterest board they're placed on, Or think of how images interact with each other on a Tumblr page. It's a

full on death battle of esthetics. Each image on its own has the original intended meaning from the artist, and then that meaning probably changes when it arrives to you, And then that meaning can change again when you see it placed on a scrollable grid of hundreds of thousands of other images. To quote a late two thousands inscrutable

Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. In an essay she wrote on her own experiences with Lolita in the upcoming collection Lolita in the Afterlife, one of my favorite writers, Morgan Jerkins, directs us to in a bulk of quote from a January four interview with Playboy writer al And Toffler asks Nabokov if he ever regretted writing Lolita nearly ten years after its original publication. Nabokov replied, no, I shall never

regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle, its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other depending on the way you look the way you look. Dolores exists in relation to you, as we've discussed since the first episode,

and she exists in relation to advertising and commercial images. Today, we're going to talk about how the image of Dolores Hayes has functioned as a community builter, and how the reproduction of her image and the discussion of her character has been connecting people to each other since the dawn of the Internet. Because there is in fact a little bit of justice in this world. People who have more

in common with Doloras Hayes than Humbert. Humbert have found and appreciated her over the years and formed communities around her image as well learned today, these are pretty widely diverse groups of people spanning many races, sexualities, genders, and many are survivors of abuse. So that's ideal, right, do

we do it? Well? Hold on, because if we're building a community around the icon and the image of Dolores Hayes, we need to remember who has prepared and curated the image of Dolores Hayes for us over the last sixty five years. Well, mainly advertisers who are translating Humbert Humbert the abuser's account of Dolores Hayes basically at face value.

And while these fan communities can certainly break through a lot of this noise by bringing the perspective of their own experiences, when an icon is shaped completely by the male gaze, and this image of them is perpetuated by every movie ad or pop music campaign it can ladge onto for over half a century, aren't things bound to get messy? Let's find out. Dolores logs in This is lowly to Podcast. Hello and welcome back to Lolita Podcast.

I am your host, Jamie Loftus, and today we're taking a look at the brief but fascinating history of Lolita fan forums. Now, there's no doubt that there's ones that I have missed here because, as with all things extremely online, these histories are very specific, they're very intense, and they

can be very difficult to find. I'm going to present Lolita forums to you from three points in internet history today, one snapshot from the early two thousd s, one from the mid two thousand tents, and a look at the state of Lolita forums or the nymphet community as it was called up until pretty recently today in the twenties. And will also be touching on the associated esthetic movement

non sexual nymphete fashion. So before we get into the history here, I wouldn't start this episode by saying that, while I think it's important to understand the histories of these forums and how they've evolved over the decades, it's important to acknowledge that, as many of the members I'll be quoting today will tell you, there's been a lot of direct and indirect harm done by online communities that have at any point glorified predatory relationships and child sex

abuse in any way, no matter who these communities are run by. I've heard from so many listeners on our discord and in emails who describe being genuinely fucked up by Lolita Tumbler in particular, and I am no exception to that rule, particularly when encountering unities that are splashy, visually driven and not communicating very much in the way

of context or nuance. It's been a really commonly relayed experience that finding these blogs while still a kid and very much in the process of figuring out who you are, often looking to online peers for guidance on how to be this messaging could be really harmful. I want to share two messages I've received on the subject, both anonymously. Of course, Tumbler introduced me to the Lolita style, mainly

through Laana del Ray. I spent most of my time after school on tumbler esthetic blogs, which created a very rose colored idea of Lolita. I had no context for the actual novel and felt uncomfortable and intrigued by a lot of the media this was around, and me and my best friend were some of the nerdiest girls at our school, nonetheless, who would spend lunch hour singing to Launa del Ray songs, specifically off to the races in my friend's car. Nearly every day when we were home

from school. We would repost things about the music and aesthetic on Tumblr. There's a strange thing for me, since at school I was known as the smart girl. Listening to the music and engaging with the culture surrounding Lolita felt like a way to escape from how it is perceived by others. Who says also pre related to my transition to almost exclusively crop toss and a skirts for a year or so. That ties into a couple other things. Though I am now able to see a lot more

of the flaws within the culture. Let's I've gotten older and had more experiences in my life. I was the subject of a lot of attention from adult men when I was young, and I really engaged with the book in the movie, generally not in a healthy way. I was on Tumbler when the Lolita aesthetic exploded, and I feel like that aesthetic will always be rooted somewhere deep

in my brain. I truly can't overstate how many messages like this I've received from listeners with a wide variety of backgrounds, and how much of it is connected to Laana del Rey. So to the several listeners who have contacted me asking why I'm talking about her so much, it's because current Lolita imagery is very connected to her

early career. From what I've noticed, there's a notable uptick in activity in these online communities, first when movie became more accessible at the same time the internet did in the late nineties early two thousand's, then again in the early two thousand tents, when Lana del Rey came into prominence. Okay, one last meme, I promise this is from Instagram user psyche Delicious three thirty three from just a couple of days ago. Here are a few different panels of the memes.

Those red flags look pretty green when you idolize Laana del Rey as a preteen. I would give anything to be able to forget all the ship I learned from tumbler. Uh, this is over some images of common Lolita tumbler posts. Do not trust bitches who post shit like this, worst mistake of my life. And then lastly, a picture of Lana del Ray with the speech bubble saying this, Yeah, I romanticized the little lad to aesthetics so much that I got hundreds of my underage fans dangerously obsessed with it.

So what. There is a big reckoning going on right now about misinterpretations of the book stemming from Internet culture of the two thousand tens, and it's been fascinating to watch it unfold. And a lot of comments like this cropped up when Lana del Ray's latest scandal involving her using very racially charged language to explain how she is

not racist. But when she did this and every time she does this, there is a wave of tweets from people who were there for her big moment on Tumbler in the early two thousand's and how that has affected their image of themselves. There is a great recent Twitter threat about this from Jezebel staff writer actually rees from this last week on the subject. Here's two of the tweets. Okay, but being on Tumbler when Lana was first coming out

was an experience. Let me tell you. She goes on the gift sets, the cultural appropriation arguments, the SNL thing, where are my veteran benefits? And she's right. I mean, this was a subculture on the Internet from almost ten years ago, and it is haunting people. Many of Llama's credics have characterized her framing of Lolita, which we discussed at length a few episodes ago, as a form of paras social grooming and if you're not familiar with the term.

It consists of two kind of interconnected terms. The first is para social, so i'll go lemony snicket mode for a second. Paras social is a word which here means a psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media. So this is the feeling a consumer gets when they feel like they know someone who is a public figure, when of course that public figure doesn't know them, Like when I talked

to like a framed photograph of Rachel Weiss. She cannot hear me, she does not know me, but I love her performances so much that I feel like she's my friend. Tumbler. Users of the Two Thousand Tents didn't know Lana del Rey, but they did know her image, and her image and music made this young audience often feel like they did actually know her and that she was someone to look

up to. So the second half of that phrase is when we've discussed on the podcast before, and that's grooming, which means quote when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit, and abuse them unquote The implication of para social grooming is basically that a public figure that many kids looked up to and felt like they knew, made them feel like and made money off of convincing

underage fans that the dynamic between Humbert Humbert and Lolita was romantic and something to aspire to. I mean, after all, if it wasn't, why would your para social friend Laana del Right be saying it? And why would all your online friends be so encouraging and excited about it. This cycle, as many have told me, created at times a vortex of misinformation and mischaracterization that young users were spreading to

each other. All this to say, there is no doubt that Nymphete and Lolita forums have over the years provided both a space for teens to congregate around Dolores Hayes and spread a lot of confusion well into the two thousand tents that glorified the Humbert Lolita dynamic and perpetuated information that really messed with people's heads. And yes, Lana's approach to framing Lolita has a lot, a lot, a lot to do with where those misconceptions were coming from.

That said, I think it's really valuable information to know a little more about the history of these forums and all the nuances that come with them. So let's get started. But first, let's rewind the clock about twenty years back to the early two thousands. George W. Bush has stolen the election. Songs like Oops, I Did It Again and Drops of Jupiter are topping that charts. Low Rise Jeans are offensively on Trent and the Sex in the City

and Spice Girls driven girl power. Highly commercialized third wave feminism is kind of the best we have to offer in the mainstream. Adrian Lines movie was a hit overseas in n but in the US was relegated to showtime and home video. Not that that stopped teams with access to a Blockbuster membership to getting their hands on a copy. It's in this era that the first Lolita fan websites begin to crop up. Around this time, there weren't many

centralized places to find conversation around Lolita. It was something you had to really look for, predating all the big social media giants, and something that's challenging but not impossible to find traces of now these days you'll find almost exclusively dead links and dead profiles, but here's a summary of what remains or is remembered in old blogs and reddit posts about these early Lolita message boards and forums, a real graveyard of the Internet. So I'll summarize some

common themes. First, overwhelmingly users identify themselves as teenage girls on these forums. The topics they focus on kind of very There are conversations about the movie, definitely more so than the Stanley kuberc nine sixties one. There are images which are half dead links now of mostly young sis white girls imitating images from the movie, and some discussion of what they thought it meant to be a nymphete,

with a pretty wide array of responses. Some users think that it is about presenting yourself as a cultural Elita, as an underaged person who is interested in people who are much older. Others are more willing to believe that it is an aesthetic or an attitude. Next, there is the occasional post or mentioned from dead linked users who creeped into these forums who are identifying as hum arts.

So this is the Internet of the early two thousands, remember, so Generally claims of being an older, attractive doctor or lawyer are extremely difficult to verify, as they provide no photos or last names. These older men are tentatively tolerated in these communities, it appears, or at least are not asked to leave right away if they gaze from a respectful distance without harassing the teenage users. Then the occasional haters.

There are rogue posts from people who warn these teen communities badly edited HTML, dizzying backgrounds and all, that these teens don't get Lolita, that it was actually a book about abuse, and that by discussing Dolores Hayes or admiring images of her in any way, they were inherently misunderstanding

the texts. These posts are understandably not received very well in these communities, but not without reason, because my final observation is that even in the two thousands, there is a lot of conversation about Dolores Hayes herself, and it's clear that these teenagers have read the book. It would be an oversimplification to say that teen girls were glorifying the message of Lolita. I don't think that's necessarily true

during this era. At least, it would be more accurate to say that they are glorifying the image of Dominique Swain as Lolita in a pre Lana del Rey world. This is the strongest image there was to pull from, along with other nineties era teen seductresses, your Drew Barrymore's, your Alicia Silverstones, and this era is generally a push and pull between wanting to be the girl Dominique Swain plays and genuinely discussing the Dolores Hayes of the book.

So it's a mix of emulating these very male gaze images fed by nineties and early two thousands culture, and some pushing back on them. It's not unknown in these forums that Dolores was an abused child. The teen girls on the forum were not necessarily there to glorify relationships with older men. There are some talks about encounters they had with older men, but just as much talk about

being interested in people at their age. For some users, and I could relate with this, the desire for someone older seemed a little more abstract and more of a response to the questionable maturity of teenage boys on offer. I mean personally, I definitely remember thinking how much better dating an older person would be than the filthy fourteen year old boys that I went to eighth grade with.

So at this time, it's really a mix of different approaches to the material, grounded in a common interest in Dolores. While the core imagery is very tied into and as far as I was able to observe, motivated by interest in Adrian Lines adaptation, the users have clearly read the book. Look, the core difference I noticed with more contemporary teen users is a willingness to tolerate the presence of older men observing the forums and a less whole condemnation of the

power dynamics within the book. What I was surprised by and kind of touched by, was that these were, however, completely dead now communities. At the time, they were teenagers talking to each other about their common experiences, saying that you could be a nymphant at any age. It's an attitude, it's an aesthetic, and the real commonality was processing their experiences through Nabokov's text and often through Adrian Lines movie.

So the first wave of nymphet forums are clearly motivated by the nineties movie and briefly thrive in a pop culture landscape that was not shy. As we've discussed in many past episodes about eroticizing images of underaged teens, even making them at times active threats to older male characters rather than the other way around. But these forums die down and seem to stay dead as far as I

could tell, for a while. But in the late two thousands and early two thousand tens that changes the work of Laana del Rey provides a new generation with a massive resurgence in these kinds of communities, with marked differences

that reflect the changing values of our culture. So what I think is important to keep in mind, and something I feel is often lost in the discussion of Lolita at every point in these communities is this the online culture surrounding the book, And as we're about to learn, Lana del Rey's relation to it was a formative and confusing phase for many of the teens who were active within it at literally any point in time you can direct to I see discussions about this all the time

on the Lolita podcast discord and an emails that I received from listeners. These online spaces are flawed and leave a lot to be wanting in terms of inclusive, civity and nuance, and we'll get to that in a bit, But they're curiated mainly by teenagers who are figuring ship out under constrictive and complicated societal pressures, not unlike Dolorous Hayes trying to figure herself out as a young teenager under the most traumatic circumstances you could imagine. Back So

let's move forward. Enter Tumbler, the micro blogging what a ridiculous word platform established in two thousand seven and exploded in the early to mid two thousand tents. Going back into Tumbler for this episode gave me just just flared up a little bit of PTSD. Tumblers in the early informed my life in a way that I can't even fully describe. For for better and for worse, it still

haunts me. Tumbler is a very visually driven platform, and essentially in the early what happens is that the forums that keep Elizabeth Russell participated in during the two thousand's evolve into nymphete tumb Lers. The main difference is that, due to the nature of this platform, these blogs are generally more driven by images than text, and the interface doesn't really encourage commenting or ongoing conversation in the way that Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or even TikTok does.

That's not to say it's not impossible to have a conversation on Tumbler. It's very possible to build a community, but it's a visually driven community, and the Wilita Nymphet corner of Tumbler came into the analysis space in about fourteen.

In this section, I'm going to be citing both analysis from outside writers looking into the community at the time, as well as Nymphet Tumbler historian eighteen year old Nlijah Mesa, who has made the most comprehensive history of this community on the entire Internet in a YouTube video called the Revisionist History of the Nymphet Community. She's our source on the inside, and I'm using clips of her video here with permission from her. Nalijah got involved on Nimphet Tumbler

at age twelve back in twenty four teen. I'll let her describe how she first learned about it. So for some backstory, I am currently eighteen years old um, and I've been in the ny fact community since I was twelve. I want to say I was there since I joined because I had um listened to off to the racist by Lando the first time I want to comments to mention Lolita and I was like, oh, I wonder what it's about because the song that gives me such this

weird nostalgic feelings that I don't understand. And I found out about Lolita that way, and then honestly, I didn't watch the movie until later, and then I just slowly found out about like the whole num faed thing through Tumbler because I saw a picture lived Tyler and I thought her ouse it was cute, it was a lot of fun. I'm not gonna lie like. I never really saw it as myself pretending to be dolors or pretending

like I was in her situation. I watched the ninety seven Lolada, I was like, damn, her outfits are cute, and I decided to just like that. A lot of people seem to think that the NYMPACT community was filled with privileged white girls who had daddy kinks or um were sexually abused. It's not necessarily the case. Were some of them wealth your white girls, yes, but not a majority of them. They're don't like three, no, after there's

like two, did we all have daddy kings? To know that there was a lot of lesbians like something that you don't know the NYMPHAC community was full of fucking lesbian gays only event. Okay, it was a lot of lesbians in the Pampat community, and also there was a lot of girls who had questions on people their age, Like, it wasn't just people fetishize, like obviously in every community there's good and bad. Of course, it was obviously some girls in the NYMPACT community who did fetishot as alidable.

I will tell you what, not the best majority of them. It was not the beast jority of them. Because we policed within ourselves. We helped each other. It wasn't a one person tells you to do this and you do it. It was everyone worked together. Like we literally had an entire network. It was the NYM fed girl gang where we sent in like pedophiles, creeps, everybody would like cop in our d m s and we would send them

to the police. Then after a while they stopped dm he goes or stopped controlling the track tag because they know they were going to be put on that network and then they knew that we were gonna get a fucking trouble. Ye, So the communities are very close knit and protective of other users. Now, back writers taking a look at this community saw it quite differently. Writer Sarah Catherine Cleaver wrote a butt nam Feed Tumblers pretty critically

for the publication Show Studio. She describes the main components of the blogs at this time like this. Firstly, and obviously, Lolita quotes from the book, stills, memes, and gifts from either film. Kubrick two is better stylistically, but Adrian lens version is the more popular, probably because it's closer to the book, darker, more sexual, and far less perfect. Dominique Swan's screen tests from the same film denotes a real Lolita buff, as do the deleted scenes found in the DVD.

Other age gap films seen over and over again include Pretty Baby, The Crush, Juna Julie. Then there are vintage signifiers, pulp novel covers ranging levels of bad taste, my personal favorite Daddy I'm Coming, photographs of vintage underwear, apparition, street photographs. There's a personal post I dropped my pen leture today and two guys in the lecture went to fetch it for me. And is this nymphat power or what hashtag nymphat hashtag thoughts. This aligns with Elijah's descriptions of the

blogs at this time as well. But Cleaver's conclusions on what these blogs mean, particularly given how young most of the Tumbler creators in question are, comes off pretty harsh. The type of femininity these young women and for that matter, Lana del Ray have chosen to identify with, is one that is doomed from the start. Either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw said, youth is wasted on the young.

These particular girls are wasting their's fetishizing it, treating youth as a theme to be curated, collected, and carefully documented. It's this juxtaposition of the Q and gru wish with the violence that expresses the core theme of Lolita better than any blond team sucking lollipop on numerous book jackets ever. Can yeah you tell those twelve year olds? This perspective was pushed back on by other writers of this time.

Writer Miska Housin wrote a piece for literary journal Plowshares a couple of years later, in response to Sarah Catherine Cleaver that describes the Tumblers a little closer to how Kate Elizabeth Russell describes her forum from the two thousands. Here's what Husson has to say. I wrote an essay about watching Adrian lan adaptation of Lolita, relating to my experiences of sexual abuse as an adolescent and the experience

of reading the novel. A baragraph in the essay was quoted on tumbler and found some attraction on the same nymphant blogs. And this is where something darker, more complex, and more powerful shows itself. The blogs this was shared on had this standard nymphant blog fair steals from movies with age gap relationships, American Beauty, Leon, The Professional Stealing Beauty, and of course Lolita, lines from Lana del Ray songs, quotes from the novel straight up d d l G porn,

but also that quote for clarity. D d l G is with an area of kink and a subgenre of porn that stands for daddy dom little girl, where generally a male partner plays the part of father and the woman plays the part of a young girl when done safely. My understanding is that d d l G is an extension of the b D s M community that involves to consenting adults who are completely on board with the power dynamic being established. And I'm not here to kink

shame if it's done safely then whatever. But as far as the d d LG images on these communities go, it's a little more complicated than that, because as it's portrayed in static, cropped and edited tumbler posts, the potential safety of the dynamic is not as easy to establish.

Elijah Maisa and the other prominent nFET culture YouTuber Skylar Rain resist association with the kink community pretty strongly in order to protect their own communities, both for the safety of underage users and the fact that they don't want the nymphete aesthetic to be sexualized. Here's Kyler Raine speaking to this in a video from two thousand nineteen. Her intro to this video says Skylo Raine promoting nymphet fashion without kink. There is not only one way to go

with a fashion. You don't have to be into like dada LG. You don't have to like older men, you don't have to have some daddy fetish or whatever. So I guess my goal was the channel is to show that yes, it is okay to like these clothes. That doesn't mean you have any sort of kink. You just like a particular style that's inspired from a movie and

it's okay. She repeats a similar sentiment in a video from late Another big point that I want to make before we get into the fashion is that nymphet fashion is a fashion. It is not a king. Please do not try and make it a king. Nimput fashion has zero relation with daddy kings or like old man king And I don't understand why people try to make it that way because like Dolores was never into older guys. She was never into like any sort of daddy of fetish.

And this is essentially where the two thousand fourteen era of nymphete tumbler stands. Fast forwarding to a student named Rachel E. Davis at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wrote an honors thesis called tell Me You Own Me, Give Me Them Coins post feminist fascination with Lolita, Lana del Rey, and sugar culture. This paper examined tumblers from into Seen. Davis's takeaways are also really interesting and connects the curation of these blogs to the ideas and expectations

that both post feminism and neo liberalism. Took me six episodes, but I said, I said neoliberalism. Sorry, As these words are used in Davis's paper, neoliberalism is defined as stay with me, We're headed somewhere quote, a form of governance that argues that market forces, rather than state intervention, should

be allowed to drive the economy unquote. Post Feminism is defined as quote a fusion between neoliberal subjectivity in a feminist politics reimagined through the logic of consumer morism unquote. Davis says in her abstract to this paper that in the tumblers that she analyzed, there was a prevalence of posts expressing depressive, suicidal, and self destructive ideas. Indicates that these individuals may experience the failures of neoliberalism and post

feminism as personal failures. This mention of depressive posts was not mentioned in previous work written on nimphet tumblers, but it's unfortunately not surprising that these and self harm posts would find their way into these communities. Tumbler had and has a very complicated history with hosting blogs that promoted romanticized and instructive methods of self harm and encouraging eating disorders.

Take my word for it, and this paper is the first mention of these kinds of posts entering the community. Davis draws a clear line on how these concepts relate to the trends commonly found in these blocks, which extend back to the comunities that Kate Elizabeth Russell described. Davis describes the work of Adrian Evans and Sarah Riley in

their teen book Technologies of Sexiness. As Evans and Riley pointed out, quote, the constant transformation required by this kind of consumerism means that femininity is constituted as a site of self surveillance and discipline end quote. The danger of this ideology lies in the fact that the cycle of consumerism never ends, which quote sets people up to fail while encouraging them to locate these failures as their own individual failures rather than as failures of the social structure

or in the logic of neoliberalism itself. End quote. So translated, she's presenting the idea that these blogs that primarily feature Lolita content as well as sugar baby blogs, replaces of self expression as well as an area for self surveillance. I will add here quickly in case you don't know that a sugar baby is defined mind as a quote. Transactional dating practice typically characterized by an older, wealthier person and a younger person in need of financial assistant in

a mutually beneficial relationship unquote. Davis's paper goes on to discuss the intersection of the Lolita slash Nymphete and sugar Baby tumbler communities, citing blogs with names like Nymphett's Life or Dolly del Ray. Lolita blogs of this time skewed more fatalistic and oppressive, consisting mostly of movie images and deep sadness, whereas the sugar baby blogs were more aspirational, featuring luxury goods type, crops of women's bodies, stacks of money,

girlish lauderie. What these blogs had most in common were a preoccupation with Lana del Rey, the problematic, unkillable queen of the Internet. And then I Jamie Loftus, host of the show Hello, went back into Tumbler in two thousand and twenty to find out if nymphete tumblers still existed and what they look like now. And so before I share my extremely scholarly findings, there are a number of important changes that took place on Tumbler between and now.

First of all, it's just not as popular as it used to be. But one of the big reasons people fled from the platform was a site wide ban on all quote unquote adult content in late This exploded a number of communities and boiled down to the Nymphet Tumbler community of this time entering a phase of transition and

a huge schism within the community. I'm going to kick it back to Elijah here to explain what was going on in the community at this time, which basically boils down to Tumbler disempowering the hashtag nymphete tag, as well as a number of d d l G kink bloggers infiltrating the space that Nymphet Tumbler used to inhabit. This drives a wedge into the community that ends up splitting it into but well, some of us outgrew it perfectly fine, every body else grows aesthetics. Some girls still liked it,

but the problem was constant harassment by older men. We can do ship and eventually the d D O G and kingsters moved into the n infant tag and we were like, funk it, we gotta go. We gotta go. Because when the community ended, a lot of us were already following each other on Instagram or we moved to follow each other on Instagram because we didn't want to lose contact with each other. Because a lot of us became friends. I have farmed lifelong friendships through nymphatic community.

I have three people who I cannot see my life without because of that community life. So the community that once thrived on the hashtag nymphat page split into two communities, one that is far more diverse and race, gender, and sexuality. Elijah explained where the split and interest as it pertained

to Lolita ended up falling between these two communities. New Fan and Coquette felt very much like celebrating Dolores as first as the fun bubb wee girl she was on summer camp with her friends, swimming in the lake, when she was with her mom, picnics with her neighbors before Humbert even enters the picture. It was about celebrating her as a person and as who she was before anything happened to her. Is immortalizing the happy child that she was.

To see that, Billette feels like celebrating crying traumatized Doors on the road with Humbert. It feels very much like immortalizing the traumatized Lolita instead of the happy Doors. And I just cannot sunk with that. This is a fascinating split to me, two groups of majority teenagers who are fixating on very different points of the same book. Now, the spirit of Nymphet Tumbler, so like stills of Alicia Silverstone in the Crush, fashion spreads and on and on,

definitely still exists, but they're evolving. Since Davis's paper was published in early a lot has changed. And I think it's also worth mentioning that the me too movement that began in late has had a clear effect on the community. I took a look at a couple of tumblers that are still semi regularly posting from July. Here's what a post from her dash name dash is dash Dolores dot tumbler dot com says, as someone who has sexually assaulted as a child, Dolores Hayes means so much to me

and I will defend her. Hell yeah, this is very different from what we hear earlier and lovelidus online history. Now in the Nymphet tumblers are fewer in number, but the tone is generally less likely to romanticize the relationship between Dolores and Humbert and squarely condemn abusers of children, specifically abusers of Dolores Hayes. This is done while celebrate

eating and analyzing Dolores carefully. Current leading blogs with names like the Dolores Hayes Network dot tumbler dot com, Coquette Dolly dot tumbler dot com, Lolita on the dotted Line dot tumbler dot com, starlet Low dot tumbler dot com, and on and on. The posts I'm setting here are from and the old aesthetics of previous Lolita blogs are still present here, but there's now a larger focus on discussing how Lolita relates to trauma and survival, about Dolores

Hayes herself, and a lot of anti child sex abuser memes. Now. One of the main interesting new features to Nymphete Tumbler are disclaimers that almost seem to anticipate some of the criticism the blogs are expecting to receive for existing at all. But unlike the early two thousand's, the latest wave of Lolita aesthetic blogs firmly distanced themselves from d d l G or anything that encourages the sexualization of underrage girls. The front page of the Coquett Dolly Tumbler says the following.

This blog does not condone the relationship between Humfort and Low. My Lolita posts are purely for the sake of fashion and the Venia aesthetic famine bodies. As I've stated many times on this blog and others I run, Dolores Hayes is a victim, a fact that tends to be forgotten amongst the dark beauty that is Lolita. The Dolorous Hayes Networks header reads this, This network slash page is dedicated

to Dolores Hayes of the novel Lolita. This page does not condone or romanticize the contents of said novel, and was created as a space for those of us who see Low as exactly what she is, a twelve year old child. Some of the images presented here may seem to be of questionable content, though that is unavoidable because

of the content of the novel itself. No edits gift sets or text posts are meant to show the relationship between del Worst and Humbert as loving or romantic, and again, these blogs do still have the nymphet Tumbler esthetic going. We've got images from Lolita, Pretty Baby, Lana del Rey Romeo plus Juliette with Claire Danes, pictures of an underage Mula Kunis as Jackie in that seventy show, wearing a T shirt that says I am so a virgin, as well as gifts of old school nineteen sixties beach blonds.

So the old aesthetics that have marked these blogs from the start are still present, but now they are marked with the reminder that the person posting the image understands that Lolita is a story of abuse. This is new. There's a post from a user called cubitum EMUs I butchered that I feel so old. There's a post from this user that many nymphet blogs reposted that describes the

difference between the Lolita aesthetic and the Lolita lifestyle. Lolita esthetic pink plaid skirts, cherry cola, dewey grass picnics under the bright blue sky, Lolita lifestyle taking an advantage of buying an old man being manipulated, pedophiles, daddy issues, lifelong trust issues. Other posts comb the text of Nabokov's book more carefully than scholars. There's an excited post finding a mention of Dolores having freckles that says, quote further descriptions

of Dolores she has freckles unquote. Other posts site particularly manipulative sections of text from Humbert with this commentary. This shows that despite having convinced himself of this whole devious nym fete sing, he is aware deep down that Dolores is just a regular kid. Hell. These tumblers are posting excerpts from Ways of Seeing by John Burger, one of

the most seminal text on aesthetics. These users are pretty aware of what they are engaging with, so while the fashion and aesthetics of past adaptations are include did the main focus is Dolores Hayes herself. Users remember that it's mentioned that she's conversational in French, that she was a tomboy, that she was bisexual. This was written in all caps in a post I saw, and I think it references Dolores mentioning that her earliest sexual experience was with kissing

a girl. Dolores is always the main event in these tumblers. There is no mention that Lolita could conceivably be a love story. There is no suggestion that Dolores was ever interested or welcoming Humbrid's abuse in its place. There is just as much, if not more, content like this, and just a warning because this is audio only. I do now have to do that boomer thing where I like to describe a meme to you, so I'm sorry. All

of these memes are extremely anti child sex abuser. One features a repeated image of a girl with brown pigtails saying this, my name is not Lolita. Lolita is not a love story. I hate Ubert Humbert. I'm literally twelve U six fox kill petals protect kids. My trauma isn't cute or sexy. I'm a child. I'm not at fault. I'm the victim. This has four hundred and forty seven notes or tumbler likes, basically. Another post shows an illustration of a girl in overalls holding a knife. The text

says the following, there is no excuse for pedophilia. It's not a sexuality, it's not free love. The only rights you need is the rights to fucking die. One hundred and sixteen thousand, five hundred forty nine notes and that is Lolita. Aesthetics and nymphet tumbler in. These users are determined to protect Dolores Hayes. It may not be the most nuanced discussion on the Internet, but I get a

hand it to him. These types of spaces didn't exist when I was a kid, and looking at them now, I know they would have resonated with me at that age. The blow that we were discussing earlier, with the heavy sexualized imagery back in still very much exist now, but there are these new features to them, the fact that Lolita has been culturally warped to fit a very particular oversexualized,

rigid aesthetic. As we've been discussing for this entire series, younger fans of the book are actively trying to unlearn and resist what the monoculture is serving them, and that's really cool. So I think we can see in all of the online spaces we've looked at so far, the very fact that they are curated and controlled by those that have far more in common with Dolora's Hayes than Humbert Humbert gives these spaces a uniqueness and a power

that all of the older male driven adaptations lack. But at the same time, these blogs are very informed and driven by the visuals of these adaptations. It makes my head hurt, but it gives me the smallest bit of hope because the way that teenagers are curating their own online spaces now is happening around and within cultural conversations that just we're not being had twenty years ago, and we can see with this example alone that that is

making a difference. It's tricky because, based on many listeners who have contacted me, and pulling from my own experiences with lowly to online, I do think that a lot of the tumbler culture I experienced as a team funked with my head a lot and maybe did not produce a net good effect for myself image or for my

perspective on sexual abuse. But I'm hopeful that that seems to be changing, however imperfectly, And what discussion on internet culture being released in wouldn't include the tick and the talk. TikTok is probably the most relevant social media app for young people at the time of this recording. It is more focused on comments and algorithm driven engagement, and it features short videos for all my boomers out there. It's also where Madison Beer, the TikTok star briefly canceled over

romanticizing Lolita in became famous. So naturally there is a pretty healthy discussion about the book Lolita happening over on TikTok as well. Like many spaces we've discussed, TikTok is about a fifty fifty split of users demanding that people stop romanticizing Glalita and the other half is people romanticizing Lolalita. The latter type of video is mostly inspired by the movie,

as was the case on tumbler as well. Examples are fan edits of Dominique Swain as Lolita eating a banana while Lana del Rey plays lip syncs of girls mouthing the line I was a daisy fresh girl and look what You've done to me while looking seductively into the camera on their phone. On the other end of this discussion are mainly young users who have read the book and resent romanticizing its legacy. So let's take a listen to a couple of those. The first is from a

user Mr dot White. I'm definitely saying that wrong. Mpakov shows you in every way how a predator's brain works. He beats you over the head with how bad Humbert really is as a human. How do people miss this? And that people use the loris and their songs. I'm looking at you on the del rey as this sexually permiscuous teenager blah blah, she was twelve number was institutionalized multiple times. He abused his wife. I don't understand how people second is from user of hen good morning. It's

message is for you stop fromantasizing. Located in nineteen nine seven. It's not a good fucking movie. It was made by converted white men in Hollywood. It's not a good fucking movie. And finally, it's nerdy mixed pan. We'll talk about a book that I never thought I'd like this one right here before you asked, no, it has enough want to do with the Japanese fashion might be saying, Todd, doesn't that book glorified pedophiles? And it honestly depends on how

you read. Now, if you take Humbert, who is the titular character, you have to remember this book is written as a memoir for his word, then yeah, it does glorify predators. Or if you have the nuance of knowing that this is written from the monster's perspective, you'll be able to see the cracks of reality come through in the writing. There are times where Humbert admits that Dolores is scared of him, that she cries herself to sleep at night, and that he is a terrible human being

for what he is doing to her. Am I suggesting that some of the most pertinent and transformative criticism surrounding Lolita is taking place on TikTok and tumbler and not in academic journals. Yes, I am, I absolutely am. And a lot of this analysis, as you just heard, relates directly to Lana del Rey's romanticizing Lolita. And we haven't even made it to YouTube yet, m hyah. Lolita content

on YouTube is all over the place. Most famously, the entire movie has been up in its entirety for free for nearly a decade, and there's also a lot of fan cuts of the movie and the press material surrounding it. There's also a fair amount of content analyzing Lolita. The best of it, in my opinion, comes from Miss Lola or Dolores, who we spoke with a couple of weeks ago. Her content about Lolita not only performs well, it's very nuanced. In the hour long we need to talk about Lolita,

she talks about movie and stage adaptations. Reading Lolita in Tehran. R Kelly to the grooming and mistreatment of underaged people by a famous YouTuber. She's also done a video reviewing Lowe's diary and attempt at rewriting the Nabokoff book from Dolora This Perspective, and another video about Launa del Rey

as a problematic faith. I want to share a little more of our interview here because nuanced discussion and YouTube do not always mesh and I found her approach and experiences to be very relevant to the current state of Lolita discourse. So here's a little more of our conversation. YouTube is a unique platform and that it has like exceptionally intense paras social relationships. So I knew if I was going to do a video about such a serious topic,

I wanted to try to use that to my advantage. UM, and I think that's the reason why many people felt comfortable reaching out to me and opening up. I got like a flood of responses. Was it before before the Lolita video? After? During what was the what was the kind of the process there of reaching out? Well, at the end of the video, I had a cult action UM where I said, you know, if you're going through a situation and you need someone to talk to you

can reach out to me. UM, And I got like dozens at this point, I've received hundreds of letters, a whole flurry of conspiracy theories about um, who I knew or if I was. You know, it got so it got so wild because the first video blew up so much that people thought I was like a plant or something, as if that's how YouTube works, which it's not. I I got so much hate and love and you know, but this is the thing is I wouldn't say that

it's equally taxing. But even though it makes me happy that all of these young girls are reaching out, and although I'm so glad, and I still keep in touch with some of them, you know, or they'll send me updates six months later saying, hey, like my mom left my stepdad and we're moving to a new state and like or um he's getting charged or all of this, or like thank you so much. UM, that's wonderful. But it is a lot of emotional labor for Like, again,

I wasn't trained. I did child psychology in school, but um, that's not enough. UM. I used to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Um, but sometimes at night I just lay back and I think about the horrible things people have felt safe confessing to me. Um. And again, I it's wonderful for the teenage girls, and it's but you know the problem with these Paris Thilos relationships is when they're not really listening to you, when they just

like hear someone talking about a thing that they like. Um. They these these men who think you understand me, and it's like, no, I don't understand you. I understand my abuser because I've gone to therapy. Uh. It's it's the kind of project that I honestly thought I would I

would want to like, I would want to undertake. But after that initial video, UM, it took me almost a year to release another video on Lolita because I was just so overwhelm and and it's you know, it's every time I released a video on Lolita, I get another slew of emails. Thank you so much again to Dolores and remember to check out her channel linked below. Finally, I wanted to touch on the fashion subculture called non sexual nymphete fashion that I referenced at the beginning discussion

of this community primarily exists on YouTube. I learned about it pretty early into my research process, and like Lolita tumbler in the twenties. It may not be what you expect, so we touched on this at the beginning of the episode as well, But to reiterate what is the difference between Japanese Lolita fashion and nymphete fashion. Lolita fashion is a fashion subculture that again in Japan in the seventies ish. The history of this community is kind of hard to

trace and revolves around cute aesthetics. It's defined by voluminous crinoline skirts, puffy sleeves. You know, not imagery really associated with Lolita, the book or the movies at all. It's an extremely popular fashion movement and was created as a reaction to the rigid gender expectations and aesthetics in Japan, and it's now become a prominent movement worldwide. Designer Naoto Haruka explains Lolita fashion like this back in two thousand

and eight in The Japan Times. One of the salient points about Lolita is that it is really a fashion that is not intended to attract men. The women are creating their own world into which they can get away from the pressures of the larger society. Lolita fashion also pulls inspiration from French Rococo Aesthetics and Alice in Wonderland. Remember Lewis Carroll from episode one. You can go back if you like. So it's not related to Lolita or

Nymphete fashion. So I'm just gonna stop talking about it now. So, Dolores Hayes has spawned a hyper feminine fashion movement that exists alongside and in direct conversation with Nymphete, Tumbler and current nymphet online communities, which is why it's generally just

called nymphet fashion. You're about to hear Skyler rain Again, a twenty something prominent American member of the nympet fashion community on YouTube, Instagram, Tumbler, other places I probably haven't heard of, who ironically first got interested by dabbling in Japanese lovely to fashion years ago. Here's a bit from Skyler's video. Watch this before you get into nymphet fashion from you understand that Dolores Hayes was twelve years old

and Humbard Humbard was like thirty seven. Don't try and make that golos. That's not aesthetic. The nimfet aesthetic is like it's Cherry's, it's getting them, it's picnics. It's like lots of greenery and butterflies, flowers, daisys, all of that kind of stuff that's like the perfect nymphetiessthetic kind of

isn't aesthetic. Don't try to make it for my Skyler started making these videos in her early twenties after getting interested in the fashion of the Seven movie, and started getting actively engaged in Nymphat Fashion her freshman year of college. Her channel has now been active for over four years and has a small but mighty subscriber base of around thirteen thousand subscribers, with even more on Instagram, um and Tumblr.

Skyler's main objective is to legitimize ninfant fashion as something that can exist independent of kink or sex and instead exist on its own merits as nineties Lolita the book inspired fashion, and for her younger audience, Skylar is pretty clear where she stands on the fetishizing of the low vida Humbard relationship, speaking to that here in a video called criticism for Ninfant Fashion and the Community in May.

One thing I want to bring up is to all of my younger audience, because I know that there are some younger people who watch me don't try to go after old guys. That's not what nimfant fashion is. That's what the fetishizers do, which is something I don't support. It's extremely dangerous. I can guarantee you, guys, if you read the book Lolita a k a. The actual story of Lolita, not the movie adaptations that had to be censored in order to not be banned everywhere because it

would be too controversial. If you would actually read the book and see all of this suffering, that will lead a went through how horrible and mean, how Umbert was. Because what you guys are seeing in the movie was just a movie adaptation of Lolita. You're not getting the actual Elita because lots of things are different in the book. The idea of an old guy treating you like a princess or something, get that out of your head. Get that out of your head because that's not what Humberd did.

What humber did was groom her. And that's what these old predator guys would do to you. So don't contact them. If they come to you, block them, don't interact with them more. All the stories. Stay away from old guys, because I promise you it's not going to be our romantic ending. So the majority of her videos are fashion focused, but Skyler is also using her platform to meaningfully engage with the text that the fashion movement is pulling from,

and this goes for the entire community. In her video are You a Nymphete? The original meaning of nymphete, Skyler goes in deep on the origin of the term nymphet from Humbered Humbered buying a buck off and how that relates to her community. I'm going to explain in why the Google definition slash what's it called Merriam Webster definition of nymphete is wrong if we're talking about it in the original sense. So Google said that a nymphete is

an attractive and sexually mature young girl. Then Miriam Webster said a sexually pre precocious girl barely in our teens. Also a sexually attractive young woman. Personal news of namphitt n they're saying that in the novel, this is the way nymphete was used. So like, that's that's weird. And Nabokov had his own words to say about exactly these definitions. The interviewer asked Nabokov, like, what connection does his interest

in butterflies have and this is what Nabokov said. I have reworked the classification of various groups of butterflies, have described and figured several species on subspecies. My name's for the microsoftic organs that I have been the first to second portray have safely found their ways into biological dictionary. Compare this to the wretched entry under nymphete and Webster's

latest addition. From this we can see that Nabokov wasn't exactly happy from the Webster edition and Nabokov trash talking Webster doesn't even stuff there. And another interview, he goes on, I think that the harmful judges who defined to day in popular dictionaries the word nymphete as a very young but sexually attractive girl without any additional comment or reference should have their knuckles wrapped. So um, can we agree

that the Google definition is uh not correct? I think everyone should be going to Nabokov when we're trying to say, like what the original definition of nimphete is. And now for my last interview I have with Naboka fair out of Mr Humbert's manic gaze, there's no nympheta. The Nymphet only exists through the obsession that destroys Humbert. This is an essential aspect of a singular book that has been

falsified by an artificial popularity. This is probably the most important of the interviews that I mentioned throughout this whole thing, so the pull from the Altar Tumbler Lolita community. Skylar Rain dedicates a lot of time to the aesthetics, but she's also releasing twenty minute videos doing deep dives on the book, the authorship of the book, and story specifics. I literally sent this video to the book of his biographer, Brian Boyd, who I spoke with back in episode two,

and he was really impressed by it. Skylar suggests the following for people hoping to get into an infant fashion who want to engage with the community and be a quote unquote good representative of this community. In her most recent video, she encourages the nymphet community to educate newcomers on the anti child sex abuse stance of the community, as well as providing context for the abuse that takes

place in the book. She encourages people to use the hashtag no King nymphette here she is speaking to that in watch this before you get into nymphet fashion. I started a tag that you can use on Instagram or Tumbler or whatever. The tag is just no King Nimpette. But with this tag, I wanted to be able to bring together all the people within the nifut fashion community who are very much so against the sexualization of nimfut fashion or the Lada. They just simply like the fashion.

The theme that runs through all these communities is present in Skylar's ninfant fashion videos as well advice and support for other people looking to join the community. She warns newcomers of likely bad faith retaliation from others in comment sections. In the same video, Skylar pushes against the body normativity of n infant fashion. While she is a thin, white passing woman herself, I don't know what her exact background is. She tells her viewers that it's fashion, it's close, it's

an aesthetic, and therefore it for everybody. I don't need to tell you this, but teenagers are a source of infinite ridicule. When I was one, I actively tried to distance myself from things that were popular, and then enjoyed most of those same things. In secret in an effort to display that I wasn't like other girls, when in fact I was exactly like other girls when I was in high school and then a little bit older on Tumbler.

Reading Lolita at all was a botched attempt at assuring the people around me, and more importantly, reassuring myself that I was not like other girls. Other girls were reading Twilight and Sarah Desson, which I also read, but only in the privacy of my own home, with the intimacy of a library book that had already been page through by fifty other teenagers before me, in varying shrounds of secrecy, which is why I approached the online culture surrounding Lolita

misguided as some of it is, with some overprotectiveness. While these communities have overcome a lot of the male yeahs abuser centric narratives that adaptations and references to Lolita have had over the years, looking at these blogs also compounded my frustration with the Adrian Line adaptation of Nabokov's book, as well as Lana del Rey's musical messaging, because these two are unquestionably the visual backbones of these communities, and

both are narratives designed about child sex abuse by grown adults who are pushing that marketable, consenting narrative and doing it in a very visually appealing way. Scrolling through these images now, it just strikes me how it's very possible to make an image of Dolores Hayes that is beautiful and meaningful without selling her story out. But no one's

really done that on a large scale. And this community loves Dolores Hayes, and so they work with what they have, even though most of what they're given by pop culture is deeply flawed, as in those Tumbler disclaimers that we read earlier. These communities have to constantly be working through this cognitive dissonance. I know she's being abused. I know Humbert can't be trusted. It's just that the only image is available serve Humbert's narrative. What else are you supposed

to do? There need to be better options for this community. There needs to be a better adaptation of this story. So I hope this episode was helpful in contextualizing how we see Dolores, whether that means how we see her from across a bookstore while we're being marketed to how we see her scrolling through a timeline online and for young people who strongly connect to her, how people see

themselves within her. It's aesthetically driven, absolutely, but based on what I know of the internet communities, it has a whole lot to do with the content of the story as well. And as usual, the culture at large underestimates

teenagers constantly. They are reading the book, and while the way that it's interpreted certainly ranges quite a bit, it's disingenuous to say that the people in these communities are incapable of doing a new one's to read of the book, particularly right now, they seem to be reading it in a pretty radical way. So I'm not saying that nymphet

online culture is above criticism. It isn't. It has at different times included wild misreads and includes a lot of romanticizing prepared situated by popular movie adaptations, and how pop culture has swallowed dolorous Hayes whole and includes a lot of romanticizing perpetuated by popular movie adaptations. Elijah Maisa explains in her recent video why black girlhood is not valued in the Dolet community. There is a need to stop

centering whiteness and rigid femininity with appreciating Dolorous Hayes. She speaks about it here, so I want to include a little bit of that video as well, and I did some editing for clarity. I just wanted to talk about black girl home and why I feel like within the community specifically, black girlhood is not viewed with the same grace that white girlhood is. I think it's unfair that

black girls are hyper sexualized already. And if a black girl wants to do something that is normal to her, she wearing a denomni script with the baby fat too top and bamboo ear rings, why is she not viewed under the same numphat aesthetic lens as say a white girl, and you know, listening a typical nymphat clothing with the bardo top and the sailor shorts speaks Fundamentally, they're the same outfit a tube slash crop top and a mini skirt or short shorts, but one is viewed under the

num fat lens, but the others are viewed as more adult or she is over bisexual, even though she's just wearing clothes and fundamentally fit the same pattern as a white girl does. Where we can be in the most frelly pink baby ish outfits and still be coded as hyper aggressive and hyper sexual and white room that's never really seemed to understand the fact that they did not

see us as well the numbers of communities subliminally. And the thing is nymphat aesthetic at his heart is about for claiming girlhood and not necessarily innocence ex something you have to be an innocent person to reclaiming girl and I think purity like complexes and purity politics are just not helpful. But it's just abouid claiming your own girlhood and your self in a way that feels comfortable with you.

And I don't want to say femininity either, because I think feminity is very different for everyone, and I think that is an unfair box to put people in, especially when you consider like the amount of non binary no as there were, or like trans and beds and fall less. So I think like femininities and the gild were either. It's not really about the reclaiming femininity is more about claiming the way you grew up. So that's why I said girlhood for shorthands, but I guess you could say

a childhood too. Reclaiming girlhood as Malaijah describes it is a better description of the goals of deliveracities online than I've read in any scholars paper and requires that the community to be inclusive of what that means for everybody.

Dolores Hayes as a character whose experiences have spoken to a wide array of people, to nymphettes who present more feminine and fun let's who present more masculine, to young people of all genders and races, and that is absolutely a fact that needs to be taken into consideration in future adaptations. Do Laura's is seen, like we've been talking about in relation to you, and the power that sort

of icon has shouldn't be underestimated or squandered. Do Laura's feels more present in these communities than she does on most of the covers of Lolita, or, for that matter, in most of the movies, because it's mostly kids her age processing her experiences. And I'm just going to throw

in one final God damn it, Lana del Rey. Next week, in our penultimate episode of Lolita Podcast, we speak to some of the women behind these images, the young actors who have played Lolita over the years, through interviews and archival looks. At their lives. We'll take a look at the challenges, emotional stressors and lack of protection afforded to these actors, all while their respective Humbert's continued onto happy careers. Why is that talented actors treated as images for consumption?

Next week on Lolita Podcast. Lolita Podcast is an I Heart Radio production. It is written and hosted by me Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichtman, Beth and Marco Luso, Miles Gray and Jack O'Brien. It is edited by the wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music is from Zoe Blade. Theme music is from Brad Diggert and My guest voices this week are Robert Evans, Caitlin Derante, Melissa Lozada, Oliva, Maggie Mayfish and Daniel Goodman. See you next week when I Well