Abstract
Since the release of Kubrick's film in 1962 visual representations of Lolita have proliferated. Yet, such visualisations tend to re-signify ‘Lolita’, departing significantly from the way she is constructed in Nabokov's novel. This article considers why the figure of ‘Lolita’ fits so seamlessly into the logic of the fashion media in the West. It points to the fashion industry's fixation with the ‘woman-child’ and infantilisation, as well as the centrality of clothing and consumption in Nabokov's novel. Particular attention is paid to Marc Jacobs’ advertisement for Oh, Lola!, banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Agency in 2011. Methodologically, the article presents visual analysis alongside findings from audience studies conducted with female participants.
Introduction
The most iconic image of the character Lolita, with red lollipop and heart-shaped sunglasses, was taken by a fashion photographer: Bert Stern. 1 The heart-shaped glasses did not appear in Nabokov's novel Lolita (1955) nor in Stanley Kubrick's filmic adaptation (1962). Instead, they were chosen by Stern to appear in the publicity image he shot to accompany the release of Kubrick's film (Cook and Triggs, 2013: 53). 2 That Stern worked in fashion is not insignificant given that Lolita – as both text and image – is frequently referenced in the fashion media. More specifically, the heart-shaped sunglasses – bought by Stern from a seaside dime store (Cook and Triggs, 2013) – have become visual shorthand for ‘a young, sexually available girl’: a meaning that departs significantly from the way Lolita, as a concept, was constructed in Nabokov's novel (Bertram and Leving, 2013: 17).
Writing an article about Lolita style fashion photography almost seems trite, given the prevalence of this look and the way it is woven so seamlessly into the discourse of fashion. 3 Yet, that is precisely why it is worth exploring, worth denaturalising. In this article I consider why the trope of Lolita is of such import to the fashion media. I trace citations of the word ‘Lolita’ 4 as well as the visual quotation of Lolita signifiers. In so doing I consider the role played by fashion in Humbert's construction of ‘his Lolita’, in turn considering the way this facilitates her entrance onto the pages of fashion magazines.
Methodologically, I present textual analysis of fashion images from the year 2011 alongside findings from reception studies I carried out in 2012. These were held in focus groups with female participants aged 16 to 59, living in the UK. This method allows me to tentatively theorise how these women made sense of Lolita in fashion photography through their own ‘discursive resources’ (Malson et al., 2011). All participant names have been anonymised using pseudonyms of their choice and I consider participant statements to be ‘discourse in a different mode’ (Young, 1990: 12). This article therefore contributes to debates on ‘audience’ in Feminist Media Studies.
It should be noted that the fashion photography I consider here does not feature actual children but rather women play acting the tension between girlhood and womanhood. This ties in with broader practices in the fashion media, where models tend to possess ‘not the bodies of actual children but rather those of ectomorphic or purposefully underdeveloped adults’ (Jobling, 1999: 126–127). It should be noted that this article does not address the subcultural Lolita style that originated in Japan in the mid- to late 1990s. This style, although taking its name from Nabokov's novel, is nevertheless ‘distinct from connotations normally associated with the word Lolita’ (Monden, 2013: 165).
Nabokov's Lolita and subsequent misreadings
Vladimir Nabokov first published his novel Lolita in 1955. The manuscript was refused by four American publishers before finally being accepted for publication by the Olympia Press in Paris (Appel, 2000: xxxiii). Written in English, Lolita tells the story of a middle-aged man, Humbert Humbert and his paedophilic obsession with girl-child Dolores Haze. Dolores is just 12 when the novel begins, and is daughter to Humbert's landlady, Charlotte Haze. Humbert lodges with the widowed Charlotte Haze and subsequently marries her to remain close to Dolores (whom he names ‘his Lolita’). Upon the untimely death of Charlotte (she is hit by a car) Humbert abducts Dolores, neglecting to inform her of her mother's death. A road trip across North America ensues, with the pair lodging in a number of hotels: during which time Dolores is sexually abused and bribed by Humbert. She soon learns of her mother's death but is told by Humbert she must stay with him or be taken into foster care, making it near impossible for the child to extricate herself. The novel concludes with Dolores married to a different man and carrying his baby. She later dies in childbirth. Described as ‘a threnody for the destruction of a child's life’ (Pifer, 2013: 145), the novel has been twice adapted for cinema: first by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 and subsequently by Adrian Lyne in 1997. Transposing Lolita into a visual medium has led to a proliferation of media discourse on the subject meaning ‘Lolita, in her innumerable pop-cultural refractions … has come to signify something very different from what Nabokov presumably intended’ (Bertram and Leving, 2013: 15).
Yet misreadings of Lolita were in circulation before these cinematic adaptations. Thus before considering visual renditions of Lolita, it is important to bear in mind Goldman (2004: 88), who questions: ‘through what interpretative or epistemological frame should readers view Lolita's sexuality?’ The first thing to note is that Nabokov's Lolita is narrated entirely by Humbert, meaning his perspective ‘suffuses the novel’ (Goldman, 2004: 102). This has led critics to ‘sometimes [conflate] Humbert's view of Lolita with Nabokov's’ (2004: 87). Some critics have even shared in Humbert's warped perspective where ‘By arguments similar to those used by convicted rapists in order to view themselves as non-rapists, reviewers depicted Dolores Haze as both morally unworthy and at least partly responsible for her own victimization’ (Bayma and Fine cited in Goldman, 2004: 87–88). It is Humbert's deft use of Romantic prose that serves to ‘exonerate him’ as innocent poet and ‘implicate the nymphet’ as deviant temptress (Walter, 2012: 142). This reversal is curious given that the myth of Romantic innocence is more commonly deployed to idealise childhood in the West (Higonnet, 1998). This strategy allows Humbert to rationalise his abuse of a child: by ‘restructuring Dolores Haze into the sign Lolita’ he ‘makes her signify his desire’ (Bronfen, 1992: 373). ‘Lolita’ is Humbert's warped and mythologised version of Dolores Haze, whose thoughts, feelings and perspectives are seldom – if ever – presented in the novel (Pifer, 2013). In the context of this article, then, the important point is that ‘Lolita's fall and perversion begins and ends with Humbert’ (Goldman, 2004: 96).
Visualising Lolita: From film to fashion photography
The first edition of Lolita was published with a pale ‘Modernist green’ cover, characteristic of the Olympia Press (Bloom, 2013). Three years later, when the book was due to be published in North America, Nabokov expressed his wishes for the cover. In a letter to the publisher he stated: ‘There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl’ (Nabokov, cited in White, 2013: 155–156). Nabokov revoked his ‘no girls’ policy only with the release of Kubrick's film in 1962 when, as Zimmer notes, Lolita had been given ‘concrete form’ (2013: 172). At this juncture, Stern's publicity image came to grace the cover of Nabokov's Lolita in tandem with the marketing of the film. Yet Stern's interpretation of the character Lolita has been criticised by scholars, with Pifer (2013: 145) reading it as ‘lascivious’ and ‘a blatant misrepresentation of Nabokov's novel, its characters and its themes’.
This (mis)reading of Lolita has carried over into media discourse more generally. Rather than being Humbert's textual invention – the empty sign into which he pours his meanings and desires to justify the abuse of a child – the word ‘Lolita’ has come to stand for ‘a sexually precocious young girl’, as stated in the 2016 Oxford English Dictionary. This meaning of the word recurs across media discourse. For example, Valenti (2009) observes that in 2006 Playboy magazine listed Lolita as one of the ‘25 sexiest novels ever written’. Responding to this, Valenti writes: ‘I love Nabokov and I thought Lolita was brilliant. But sexy? Seducing a twelve-year-old?’ (2009: 62). Similarly, in Alexa Chung's pseudo-memoir she cites Lolita as her favourite book and her ‘favourite character to reference when getting dressed in summer months’ (2014: 31). Thus, while Nabokov presents ‘Lolita’ and her clothing as the laborious textual product of a paedophile's obsessive mind, the paedophile is absent from the shorthand; we are left with ‘Lolita’ as a signifier of a girl who is ‘sexy’ and ‘precocious’ – the latter suggesting that it is she who wishes to engage in sexual behaviour at an earlier stage than is usual. Testament to the complexity of visualising Lolita, Betram and Leving (2013) devoted a book to the vexed question: ‘What should Lolita look like?’ The authors commissioned 80 graphic designers to create mock covers for Lolita, publishing these alongside essays on the subject. Fashion plays a key role in many of the covers: from white ankle socks to red lipstick to striped bikinis and patent Mary Jane shoes. It is this visual discourse of Lolita that is of interest here and, in particular, the way Lolita is imported into fashion photography along with her connotative baggage.
Oh, Lola!
‘She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.’ H.H. (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 9) Advertisement for Marc Jacobs' Oh, Lola! (2011).
The following rationale was offered for the prohibition: We noted that the model was wearing a thigh length soft pink, polka dot dress and that part of her right thigh was visible. We noted that the model was holding up the perfume bottle which rested in her lap between her legs and we considered that its position was sexually provocative. We understood the model was 17 years old but we considered she looked under the age of 16. We considered that the length of her dress, her leg and position of the perfume bottle drew attention to her sexuality. Because of that, along with her appearance, we considered the ad could be seen to sexualise a child. We therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible and was likely to cause serious offence. The ad breached CAP code (Edition 12) rules 1.3 (Social Responsibility) and 4.1 (Harm and offence).
Amber
5
: I am surprised that was banned. Yeah, Lola's a bit of a girly name as well though, isn't it? Like, Lo-la. Emily: It's kind of, like, Lolita.
Jean: I suppose, too, it's, it's ‘Oh, Lola!’ that shade of Lolita, isn't that the book? Morna: Yeah Jean: So it's not Lolita, but that's what it reminds you of. So the man in that was much older. Smithy: Yes
Yet, while ‘Lolita’ was mentioned in focus groups, participants did not view the model as a child, in terms of her actual age. Instead, they tended to consider her as having passed the cultural threshold of adulthood, the age of consent, which is 16 years in the UK.
6
The elements of the image that led participants to read her as adult were her slightly shapely upper arm, her developed breasts, her smoky eye make-up, the positioning of the bottle, as well as their knowledge of Dakota Fanning in the acting world. Linking Fanning to Lolita yet positioning her as an adult woman might seem contradictory but this can be explained, in part, by the way Lolita has been visualised, from Kubrick's film onwards. Commenting on the many cover illustrations in circulation, Duncan White (2013) writes: Perhaps the illustrators of the more gaudy covers were unaware that they were adding a few years to make Lolita a more palatable age, or that they were dyeing her hair [blonde] to match Hollywood's tastes, but there is no question that these covers ignore the essentially elegiac quality of the novel. (White, 2013: 157) Double-page spread from ‘Sunny and Sexy’ (2011). Double-page spread from ‘Sunny and Sexy’ (2011).
Fashion's fixation with the cusp between girlhood and womanhood
Dakota Fanning is not a child but rather a girl hovering close to the cusp that separates childhood from adulthood (codified by the age of consent). Yet, the meanings and tensions associated with this cusp are not gender-neutral, as Holland observes: As boys reach manhood they tend to be represented in ways which are sometimes comic, and often … threatening. But the image of the girl child reaching puberty is all about sex. At this transitional point, the image of the young girl becomes a taboo image, surrounded by signals, fears and warnings. (Holland, 2004: 191)
The ‘transitional point’ mentioned by Holland also ties in with Dakota Fanning and the way she has passed from child to adult actress in the public eye. Designer Marc Jacobs makes reference to this in an interview with Women's Wear Daily where he explains the decision to present Fanning as the face of Oh, Lola!: I’ve been a big fan of Dakota since the first time I saw her in a movie, and we made her a wardrobe in her size when she was 12, which was pretty incredible. When we were speaking about who to use in the Oh, Lola fragrance ads – I had recently seen ‘The Runaways’. Dakota was in it, and I knew she could be this contemporary Lolita, seductive yet sweet. (Jacobs quoted in Naughton, 2011)
Jacobs’ positioning of Fanning as ‘Lolita’ finds precedent in a number of cases in the fashion industry. In the 1980s Brooke Shields was described as ‘the Lolita of her generation’ (Gross quoted in Higonnet, 1998: 151). Kate Moss has been similarly positioned, with a key example consisting in ‘Charming Lolita’ – a photo spread shot by Ellen von Unwerth that appeared in Vogue Italia (April 1992). In this spread Moss embodies Lolita (red sunglasses, lollipop) and other versions of the ‘woman-child’: from Jodi Foster's role as child prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) to Carroll Baker's role as a married woman who sleeps in a cot in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956). All of these visual allusions are anchored by the title of the spread, ‘Charming Lolita’. One might theorise these references through the lens of irony and playful intertextuality. However, the problem with a wholly ‘postmodern’ interpretation of Lolita in fashion photography is its failure to account for why certain references are chosen time and time again (Jobling, 1999). Thus, whilst recognising the playfulness of such media representations, they nevertheless remain embedded in relations of power, which shape the possible ways of being female as well as marking out the ‘acceptable’ sexualities from the ‘unacceptable’ (Foucault, 1998 [1976]).
The following excerpt introduces the theme of naughtiness alongside the aforementioned themes of sexual ambiguity and Fanning as child-to-adult actress:
SLK: What's with the ‘Oh, Lola!’? ‘Naughty Lola’ - that's what it looks like. [laughter] SLK: ‘Stop that, Lola!’ Gill: It's her dress as well. Morna: What about it? SLK: But Dakota Fanning is a child, is she not? Gill: Oh, is it Dakota Fanning? I'm surprised because I quite like her. SLK: Well she was, em, she is a child actress. Gill: Yeah, she's not a child anymore, she was. Morna: Well she was 17 in the picture. Pasha: mmm, it is like Lolita though. Morna: In what way? Pasha: Just the … she's very young and very sexualised.
The sense of Fanning as ‘naughty’ ties in with other representations of childlike femininity in the fashion media. For instance, the video for the Prada fragrance Candy (2011) features actress Léa Seydoux throwing a tantrum during a piano lesson with a soberly dressed male teacher. Upon completion of a rudimentary scale on the piano, the music picks up and Candy grabs her unwitting male tutor by the scruff of his neck, singing ‘running wild, lost control, running wild …’, whilst flashes of her gapped-teeth remind us of her childish persona. Seydoux then dances with the man, in the rough and unbridled manner that typifies Apache street dance. This provides a pretext for her enactment of childlike femininity. Rolling on the floor, she comedically flashes her oversized pink cotton knickers, in the way that very small children do, before taking a running jump, shouting ‘I don't care’ and leaping onto her piano teacher for a piggyback. The scene closes with her back at the piano, seemingly sated, completing a sophisticated morceau with panache.
The clashing colours of the bottle, pink, red and orange suggest something sickly sweet or simply too much. This resonates with comments made by one of my participants, Zoe, who characterised the actual scent of Oh, Lola! as ‘too much’, ‘too sweet’, to the point where she stated ‘I really hate this perfume, to be honest!’ The sweetness of the scent was then wedded to naughtiness by Zoe in the following statement: ‘it's kind of like a bad sweet … it's not like a Chanel, where you know, it's just like really calm and really elegant, this is, like, naughty.’ As if testament to its sickly scent, the behind-the-scenes video for Oh, Lola! features the track ‘You Want the Candy’ (2008) by the Raveonettes. Linking this back to Lolita, Humbert describes Dolores as having ‘lips as red as licked candy’ (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 44). ‘Candy’ is a term more often used in American English (‘sweets’ would be the British equivalent), tying in with the post-war consumerism that serves as a backdrop to Nabokov's Lolita.
Yet, sweet treats are not the only retreat to childhood; there is also the tantrum thrown by Candy as well as participants’ reading of Fanning as ‘naughty’. Naughtiness and tantrums involve defiance that takes a childlike rather than an adult guise; neither involves constructive confrontation. This ties in with the tendency, observed by Radway, whereby ‘female defiance is finally rendered ineffectual and childlike as well as unnecessary’ (1991: 80). 9 Or, as de Beauvoir puts it, ‘woman, like a child, indulges in symbolic outbursts: she can throw herself on a man, beating and scratching, but it is only a gesture’ (1970 [1949]: 340). Ultimately, Candy's tantrum and Lola's naughtiness – not to mention Lolita's defiance in the novel – are rendered ineffectual because they are positioned as childlike in a culture where adults hold the balance of power. Tantrums marry rather well with fashion in that the latter seeks to bracket off the rational self in order to ‘blunt the buyer's calculating consciousness’ (Barthes, 1990 [1967]: xi). This ‘[substitutes] for the slow time of wear a sovereign time free to destroy itself by an act of annual potlatch’ (1990 [1967]: xii). The impulsive, spoilt brat is the ideal consumer in a free market capitalist economy.
Flowers, ‘precocity’ and Peter Pan
‘I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you’ve done to me.’ Dolores Haze (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 141)
Amber: It's quite seductive, isn't it? Emily: mmm Emily: She's holding a flower. Between her legs. Morna: What does that mean? [laughter] Amber: Oh my gosh, yeah! Emily: That's seductive. Morna: Why? Emily: Because, emm… it's the whole idea about like… pure, female, innocent, taking female's flower. [laughter] Morna: deflowering! Emily: deflowering!
Yet the OED defines ‘Lolita’ as ‘precocious’, suggesting that her sexuality has bloomed earlier than is usual. The first definition of ‘precocious’ relates to a plant that is flowering or fruiting ‘unusually early’. But when the word pertains to a person, especially a child, it means ‘prematurely developed or showing an unusual degree of advancement in some faculty, ability, or proclivity’.
10
Both senses of the word apply to Oh, Lola!. In the following excerpt, Zoe and Yves make sense of Oh, Lola! through a Chinese proverb about women being ‘ripe’ for a limited time only:
Yves: It, remember me of, uh, funny saying in China, that, uh, a girl says, ‘oh, I’m no longer fruit’. Morna: mmm Yves: It means you are no longer as fresh as something that's maybe zesty Morna: mmm Yves: And if you are sweet, but becoming vegetable. You become… vegetable just means that, uh, you are growing old, you are not sophisticated. […] no longer taste good. Zoe: Fresh Yves: Getting a bit stale … Morna: Ah, that's interesting. Do you think she's a fruit, then? Or a vegetable? Yves: Ehh, fruit of course. She's holding a flower and it's like ‘oh, I’m age and blooming and …’
Excerpt V also ties in with the phrase ‘to pop her cherry’; that is, to ‘take’ a girl's virginity. 11 The symbol of the cherry was used to publicise The Runaways (2010), in which Fanning starred. The publicity image features a scarlet cherry, glistening with dewdrops, and fashioned as an ignited bomb. Accompanying the cherry is the caption ‘It's 1975 and they're about to explode’ – a double entendre referring both to the rising success of the girl band and the burgeoning sexuality of the teen-girl characters. 12 This sense of a woman being ‘ripe’ or ‘in bloom’ for a short time only is reminiscent of remarks made by Wollstonecraft over 200 years ago, who lamented the way women were ‘made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty [was] over’ (2004 [1792]: 15). Wollstonecraft's remark remains particularly salient in the fashion industry today, where models must approximate a very narrow window of perfection or else risk being marked out as ‘Other’.
The way in which fashion models seem never to grow up is reminiscent of Peter Pan (Barrie, 1993 [1911]). Peter Pan was mentioned by several of my participants, with one participant, Smithy, describing Fanning's dress as ‘Wendy’: a reference to the girl-child protagonist in the book. 13 Oh, Lola! can therefore be read in tandem with the styling of Wendy Darling in Disney's 1953 adaptation of Peter Pan. While Fanning's dress is pink and Wendy's dress is blue, both colours can be described using the prefix ‘baby’ (with ‘baby pink’ being a phrase used by one participant, Emily). More specifically, a shadow looms behind Fanning in a way similar to Wendy in the scene where she kneels on the floor ‘sewing on’ Peter's shadow after he failed to re-attach it using soap – ‘How exactly like a boy!’ (Barrie, 1993 [1911]: 27). The girls’ dresses share a certain silhouette: straight bodice; short, slightly puffed out sleeves; and full skirt, fanned out onto the floor. 14
This silhouette has an eerie resonance with Humbert's predilection for certain styles for ‘his Lolita’: Goodness, what crazy purchases were prompted by the poignant predilection Humbert had in those days for check weaves, bright cottons, frills, puffed-out short sleeves, soft pleats, snug-fitting bodices and generously full skirts! Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? Did I have something special in mind? coaxing voices asked me. Swimming suits? We have them in all shades. Dream pink, frosted aqua, glans mauve, tulip red, oolala black. (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 107)
As for Wendy, she is a girl on the cusp of adolescence: we are told that her father keeps suggesting she have a room of her own, separate from her younger brothers. The opening passage of the book encapsulates Wendy's awareness that she will one day grow up: One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can't you remain like this forever!’ (Barrie, 1993 [1911]: 7)
The book closes with a grown-up Wendy, married with a daughter of her own. In the final, heart-breaking scene Peter returns to visit Wendy after an absence of many years. He does not notice, at first, that Wendy has grown up. ‘“Hallo, Peter,” [Wendy] replied faintly, squeezing herself as small as possible. Something inside her was crying, “Woman, woman, let go of me”’ (1993 [1911]: 156). When confronted with Peter, Wendy is ashamed of her womanly body; she is ‘helpless and guilty, a big woman’ (156). This sense of shame is compounded by a ‘cry of pain’ coming from Peter when he finally sees her in the light (157). The story ends with Peter taking Wendy's daughter, Jane, to Neverland since Wendy, being a grown woman, can no longer fly. She is left behind, no longer ethereal. And when Jane grows up Peter takes her daughter, Margaret. Only girls are permitted; women cannot fly.
Nymphets, daughters and the photographic medium
This revolving door of daughters, and the notion that only girls can fly, is reminiscent of both Lolita and the way femininities are represented in the fashion media. In terms of the fashion industry, the imperative to remain young is scarcely masked, with a fast-fashion chain going by the name ‘Forever 21’. Even where models surpass the age of 21, one could be forgiven for thinking they never grow up – never age – thanks to post-production airbrushing: I am thinking here of the 38-year-old Vanessa Paradis being described in Vogue as ‘forever [belonging] to an exotic group of Gauls beloved for their knowing sexuality – a tribe of French Lolitas, if you will’ (Ellison, 2011: 79). Thus, while Peter Pan's solution was to take daughters only, the solution in the fashion industry is found in the photographic medium. It was, after all, photography that allowed Lewis Carroll ‘to believe in the myth of everlasting flowers’ and the idea that Alice Liddell would remain ‘forever little’ (Mavor, 1994: 174). Common misconceptions about photographic ‘truth’ gloss over techniques of digital manipulation that are ‘both ubiquitous and imperceptible’ (De Perthuis, 2008: 170). Fashion photography ‘catches’ models in their supposed apogee, their window of perfection, whilst also presenting them as ‘beyond human in their flawless beauty. Their hair falls in the carefully sculpted waves of a child's doll in its plastic packaging’ (De Perthuis, 2008: 171). Thus, the mannequin represents ‘an eternally renewable body’ (2008: 172), which is to say, a ‘no-one's body’ (Barthes as cited in De Perthuis, 2008: 173).
This desire to never grow up resonates with Humbert's mythologisation of Dolores Haze, whom he renders an ‘eternal Lolita’ (Bronfen, 1992). His ‘Lolita’ never grows up because she is the textual product of his imagination. She is a ‘nymphet’, and they die at the age of 14: Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as ‘nymphets’. (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 16)
Besides the inevitability of Lolita's death (being a nymphet), the girl dies in a second sense: in childbirth, at just 17 years old (Bronfen, 1992). Thus, what further binds Lolita, Peter Pan and the mannequin of fashion photography is antipathy towards the maternal body, and the womanly body more generally. Discourse on Romantic childhood (Higonnet, 1998) posits the adult body as somehow more fleshly than that of the child – the latter being mythologised as asexual, ethereal and transcendental (able to fly). In Lolita, Humbert scorns his wife's ‘overtly feminine’ and mature body, preferring that of the immature, pubescent Dolores Haze. This is evident in the way Humbert talks about Dolores and her mother Charlotte. He describes the two as ‘big Haze’ and ‘little Haze’: the former being one pejorative term amongst many used by Humbert (including ‘fat Haze’ and ‘[Lolita's] cow-like mother’). Because Dolores dies in childbirth, she never lives to be a mother herself. Thus, the figure of Lolita absolutely and resolutely excludes the maternal: both literally, in terms of the plot, and figuratively, through Humbert's mythologisation of the child as ‘nymphet’, who dies at 14 (Bronfen, 1992).
In the fashion context, antipathy to the maternal goes beyond mere emphasis on youth: In modern myth and stereotype the maternal body is dissociated from the qualities of glamour and sexiness which fashion endorses. […] In cultural stereotypes maternity and glamour, or the feminine will to power, are incompatible. In so far as fashion does sanction a feminine will to power it excludes the maternal. (Evans and Thornton, 1989: 94–95)
Consumption, petulance and death
Elsewhere (Laing, 2012, 2014) I have theorised childlike femininity in fashion photography as nostalgia for an idealised window of perfection: a state of being on the cusp between girlhood and womanhood; a no-place; 16 a liminal utopia that does not exist outside of representation. Yet, in images such as ‘Sunny and Sexy’ (Figures 2 and 3) by Miles Aldridge, the connotations of childhood are not utopian or nostalgic; instead, the freezing of time seems to violently disturb the woman pictured. The women in Aldridge's imagery tend to have a frozen, plasticky, doll-like quality, often presented in exaggeratedly stereotypical roles, such as 1950s housewife or sex object – perhaps to demonstrate how deadening such stereotypes can be, not to mention the violence they do to the parts of women, and men, that are not permitted to show through at the behest of prevailing gender norms.
‘Sunny and Sexy’ makes clear reference to Lolita. Model Ashley Smith wears red sunglasses and bright pink bikini (Figure 2). Her long blonde hair is coiffed in a way that mimics Sue Lyon's in Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation. Alongside these sartorial elements is the Diet Coke bottle Smith holds in her hand: homage to American post-war consumer culture that serves as a backdrop to Lolita. Alice Twemlow (2013: 36) notes the ubiquity, in the novel, of ‘tawdry accessories, candies, sodas, and comics … Humbert doles out as rewards and bribes for [Lolita's] sexual services’. Furthermore, a distinction is made between Humbert's European clothing and the ‘new world’ clothing of Lolita – with the word ‘gaudy’ reminding us of ‘[Humbert's] censure of Lolita's taste’ (Twemlow, 2013: 38). The brashness of Lolita's colours lends itself well to fashion photography, which uses brightly coloured props for visual impact. In ‘Sunny and Sexy’, Smith's body language, folded arms and petulant pout appear against a backdrop of palm trees, brightly-coloured inflatables and a bluer than blue make-believe sky. The reference to Lolita is cemented by the accompanying images, which feature a lollipop, a hula hoop and a cropped top: all of which appear in the book and/or films.
Yet unlike fashion spreads that reference Romantic childhood (Laing, 2012, 2014), there is nothing nostalgic about Aldridge's imagery. Ashley Smith is not play-acting a child having fun; her expression is petulant, glazed-over or, at worst, disassociated: a mood completely at odds with the title, ‘Sunny and Sexy’. The cracked concrete flagstones, ominous shadows, and smoke exhaled from the model's mouth all point to the tragic destruction that characterises Nabokov's Lolita. Unlike Oh, Lola!, which playfully elides the ‘elegiac’ tone of Nabokov's Lolita, Aldridge succeeds in visually conveying this nuance. Smith is a girl showered with over-the-top consumables – brightly coloured clothing, beach toys, sugary cola, candy – but not a girl that is happy. Like Prada's Candy, there is a sense of Smith being a ‘spoilt brat’– the clichéd character who has everything but remains petulant and insatiable (not unlike the consumer of fast-fashion).
Yet, in spite of the consumables lavished on her, Lolita remains powerless. Humbert might mythologise her as femme-fatale – and himself as ‘helpless’ poet, rapt in her thralls – but what he chooses to downplay is Lolita's position in the hierarchy of age. She lacks legal majority and the capacity to forcefully or intellectually resist Humbert's abuse. If she leaves Humbert she will end up in a foster home, something Humbert very well knows. Instead Dolores resorts to sulking, strops and bribes. Such petulance is one of the few ways she can exercise her limited power in the face of her abuser: Increasingly aware of being Humbert's virtual prisoner, of having never consented to be his sexual partner, let alone his ‘lover’, the teenager grows sullen and defiant. […] Arming herself with the only defense at her disposal, she masks her ‘vulnerability’ as Humbert ultimately admits, ‘in trite brashness and boredom’. (Pifer, 2013: 148, citing Nabokov)
Conclusion
In this article I have traced the citation of ‘Lolita’, as text and image, in fashion magazines from 2011. The prevalence of this figure can be explained, in part, by the visual shorthand, which has evolved since the release of Kubrick's 1962 adaptation – particularly the red lollipop and heart-shaped sunglasses that appeared in Stern's publicity image. This reductive visual vocabulary ties in with popular usage of the word ‘Lolita’, defined as ‘a sexually precocious young girl’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. In my reception studies, the word ‘Lolita’ was used in a way that mirrored the dictionary definition, with Fanning being described as ‘young and sexualised’, ‘in bloom’ and ‘naughty’. Such readings of Fanning as ‘Lolita’ tie in with practices of naming adult women ‘Lolitas’ in the fashion media.
The second aim of this article was to consider why the figure of ‘Lolita’ fits so seamlessly into the discourse of fashion. This can be explained, in part, by fashion's fixation with the ‘woman-child’ and the cusp separating girl-childhood from adult womanhood. Fanning's body in Oh, Lola! represents the blurring of discursive categories: she is innocent yet sexy; pretty yet seductive. She fits perfectly, then, with the ideal ‘girl’ of fashion, defined by Jobling as ‘a woman who is also a child … someone who is sexually both knowing and innocent’ (Jobling, 1999: 111). Lolita's mythic body lends itself well to fashion's feminine ideal in that it resolutely excludes the womanly body. But unlike Lolita, techniques of digital manipulation allow the fashion model to transcend her predicament of being ‘hopelessly worn at seventeen’ (Nabokov, 2000 [1955] 277). Repetitive references to Lolita in the fashion media therefore involve a suppression of the fully developed, womanly body – in all its life-giving potential – in favour of a revolving door of daughters, à la Wendy, Jane and Margaret in Peter Pan.
Alongside sexuality, Nabokov's novel explores themes of post-war American consumerism, excess and saturated colours: all of which lend themselves well to the fashion media and its penchant for visual impact. Clothing plays a key role in Humbert's construction of the sign ‘Lolita’, as visualised so memorably by Bert Stern. Fashion images such as Juergen Teller's Oh, Lola! (2011) and Ellen von Unwerth's ‘Charming Lolita’ (1992), discussed earlier, draw upon this visual shorthand in a playful, ironic, irreverent manner, eliding the tragic tone of Nabokov's novel. Instead, the childlike defiance and consumables wedded to the trope of Lolita serve the irrational logic of the fashion system and its hope for a never-satiated consumer. However, a counterpoint can be found in the work of Miles Aldridge where he combines bright pop consumables with an ‘elegiac’ tone: a quality all too often lost in visual translation (White, 2013). The model might have brightly-coloured clothing and a brattish persona yet this is the price she pays for her loss of liberty; she has no recourse; ‘oh my poor, bruised child’ (Nabokov, 2000 [1955]: 284). And it is this rendition of Lolita in fashion photography that most closely approximates Lolita as presented in Nabokov's novel.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr Agnès Rocamora and Professor Caroline Evans for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Thank you to Miles Aldridge and Juergen Teller for the permission to reproduce their photography here. Finally, kind thanks to the 20 women who gave up their time to participate in reception studies.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The doctoral research that underpins this article was funded by a University of the Arts London studentship award.