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Speaker 1: Trigger warning. This podcast involves discussions of child sexual abuse

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Speaker 1: and pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of ways to see Dolores Hayes, and how you see

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Speaker 1: her really depends on not just where you're sitting in

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Speaker 1: the room, but all of the places you've been and

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Speaker 1: experiences you've had before you even enter the room in

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Speaker 1: the first place. And you're like, Okay, the metaphor is

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Speaker 1: getting a little heavy here, but go with me for

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Speaker 1: a second. There's a million ways to see and perceive

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Speaker 1: Dolores Hayes. Most are exposed first to the images laid

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Speaker 1: out that reference an image that her abuser constructed, whether

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Speaker 1: that's in movies or advertisement or pop music. Some of

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Speaker 1: us see her through the peaks that the Book of Humbert.

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Speaker 1: Humbert gives to her true authentic self in his book,

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Speaker 1: Dolores being a better tennis player than Humbert but always

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Speaker 1: letting him win anyways. Dolores crying herself to sleep at night,

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Speaker 1: Dolores dropping a knife onto her foot upon seeing her

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Speaker 1: friend's father genuinely expressing love to his daughter. But no

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Speaker 1: matter how you see her, we all see Dolores in

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Speaker 1: relation to ourselves just like we see really anything. There's

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Speaker 1: a four part series that you can watch for free

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Speaker 1: on YouTube called Ways of Seeing, which was originally aired

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Speaker 1: on BBC two in nine two, and it's hosted by

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Speaker 1: writer John Burger. Maybe you've been taught this in a

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Speaker 1: class you've taken before, or maybe you have like an

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Speaker 1: exhausting friend that brings it up at parties. But Ways

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Speaker 1: of Seeing is all about the ways that modern audiences

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Speaker 1: consume mass images and how different image consumption is from

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Speaker 1: the centuries of sacred imagery being more difficult to seek

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Speaker 1: out before mass production was possible. There's some parts of

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Speaker 1: this documentary that are really cool and others that are

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Speaker 1: really dated. How you can devote an entire episode on

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Speaker 1: how women view themselves by speaking to five white women

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Speaker 1: in Britain of the same financial classes like um come on.

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Speaker 1: But in the first episode, John Burger conducts a pretty

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Speaker 1: interesting experiment that I think uniquely suited to how we

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Speaker 1: see Dolores so okay for science picture. The most popular

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Speaker 1: image in our culture of Lolita Sue Lion gazing over

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Speaker 1: those heart shaped sunglasses in two. Here's what Burger says

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Speaker 1: in the first episode of Ways of Seeing as you

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Speaker 1: look at them now on your screen. Your wallpaper is

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Speaker 1: around them, your window is opposite them, your carpet is

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Speaker 1: below them. At the same moment, they are on many

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Speaker 1: other screens, surrounded by different objects, different colors, different sounds.

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Speaker 1: You are seeing them in the context of your own life.

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Speaker 1: They are surrounded not by guilt frames, but by the

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Speaker 1: familiarity of the room you are in and the people

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Speaker 1: around you. Okay, so let's think about the Sioux Lion

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Speaker 1: image in that context. This image has been reproduced countless times,

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Speaker 1: whether it's this exact image or later reimagined versions of it,

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Speaker 1: but the way that you see it is uniquely connected

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Speaker 1: to you, You goddamn snowflake. Whether you like it or not,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna see this heart shaped glasses image in the

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Speaker 1: context of your own life. So some people are going

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Speaker 1: to see a sexually appealing and consenting underage girl. Others

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Speaker 1: might see an aspirational image. Wow, I want to look

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Speaker 1: like that. Others might recoil from the image. How could

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Speaker 1: they make a girl pose like that? She's so young?

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Speaker 1: Another person might say, Hey, I've forgot I was going

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Speaker 1: to watch that movie. The image exists in a context

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Speaker 1: and not just the societal context we've been talking about

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Speaker 1: throughout this series, it's also the context of you, how

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Speaker 1: this image comes to you and how you interpret it.

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Speaker 1: John Burger also speaks to how the meaning of an

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Speaker 1: image changes when placed alongside other images. A picture of

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Speaker 1: Sue Lion and heart shaped Glasses on its own has

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Speaker 1: a different implied meaning than if the heart shaped glasses

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Speaker 1: picture is placed beside a photo of Sue Lion when

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Speaker 1: she was the years older, or if the heart shaped

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Speaker 1: glasses picture is placed next to an image of Stanley

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Speaker 1: Kubrick berating a female actor. When placed next to something else,

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Speaker 1: the meaning of the original image often changes. I've now

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Speaker 1: emphasized the ways in which reproduction makes the meaning of

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Speaker 1: works of art ambiguous. This is not as negative as

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Speaker 1: it necessarily sounds, if we realize what is happening. What

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Speaker 1: it means in theory is reproduction of works of art

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Speaker 1: can be used by anybody for their own purposes. Images

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Speaker 1: can be used like words, we can talk with them.

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Speaker 1: Reproduction should make it easier to connect our experience of

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Speaker 1: art directly with other experiences. So, as John Burger is

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Speaker 1: describing this, we see a series of very nineteen seventies

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Speaker 1: images juxtaposed next to each other for our purposes. Think

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Speaker 1: of a bulletin board in a teenager's room where there's

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Speaker 1: pictures of celebrities pinned up next to pictures of friends

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Speaker 1: and family. Think of vision boards that people made back

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Speaker 1: when New Year's resolutions and hope for the future was

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Speaker 1: still a thing that we had. And while we're at it,

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Speaker 1: let's take that same energy and apply it to the

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Speaker 1: wonderful world of online. Think of how images interact with

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Speaker 1: each other and change meaning based on what kind of

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Speaker 1: Pinterest board they're placed on, Or think of how images

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Speaker 1: interact with each other on a Tumblr page. It's a

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Speaker 1: full on death battle of esthetics. Each image on its

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Speaker 1: own has the original intended meaning from the artist, and

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Speaker 1: then that meaning probably changes when it arrives to you,

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Speaker 1: And then that meaning can change again when you see

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Speaker 1: it placed on a scrollable grid of hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of other images. To quote a late two thousands inscrutable

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Speaker 1: Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. In an essay she wrote

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Speaker 1: on her own experiences with Lolita in the upcoming collection

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Speaker 1: Lolita in the Afterlife, one of my favorite writers, Morgan Jerkins,

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Speaker 1: directs us to in a bulk of quote from a

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Speaker 1: January four interview with Playboy writer al And Toffler asks

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Speaker 1: Nabokov if he ever regretted writing Lolita nearly ten years

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Speaker 1: after its original publication. Nabokov replied, no, I shall never

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Speaker 1: regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle,

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Speaker 1: its composition and its solution at the same time, since

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Speaker 1: one is a mirror view of the other depending on

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Speaker 1: the way you look the way you look. Dolores exists

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Speaker 1: in relation to you, as we've discussed since the first episode,

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Speaker 1: and she exists in relation to advertising and commercial images. Today,

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how the image of Dolores

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Speaker 1: Hayes has functioned as a community builter, and how the

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Speaker 1: reproduction of her image and the discussion of her character

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Speaker 1: has been connecting people to each other since the dawn

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Speaker 1: of the Internet. Because there is in fact a little

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Speaker 1: bit of justice in this world. People who have more

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Speaker 1: in common with Doloras Hayes than Humbert. Humbert have found

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Speaker 1: and appreciated her over the years and formed communities around

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Speaker 1: her image as well learned today, these are pretty widely

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Speaker 1: diverse groups of people spanning many races, sexualities, genders, and

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Speaker 1: many are survivors of abuse. So that's ideal, right, do

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Speaker 1: we do it? Well? Hold on, because if we're building

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Speaker 1: a community around the icon and the image of Dolores Hayes,

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Speaker 1: we need to remember who has prepared and curated the

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Speaker 1: image of Dolores Hayes for us over the last sixty

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Speaker 1: five years. Well, mainly advertisers who are translating Humbert Humbert

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Speaker 1: the abuser's account of Dolores Hayes basically at face value.

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Speaker 1: And while these fan communities can certainly break through a

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Speaker 1: lot of this noise by bringing the perspective of their

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Speaker 1: own experiences, when an icon is shaped completely by the

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Speaker 1: male gaze, and this image of them is perpetuated by

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Speaker 1: every movie ad or pop music campaign it can ladge

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Speaker 1: onto for over half a century, aren't things bound to

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Speaker 1: get messy? Let's find out. Dolores logs in This is

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Speaker 1: lowly to Podcast. Hello and welcome back to Lolita Podcast.

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Speaker 1: I am your host, Jamie Loftus, and today we're taking

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Speaker 1: a look at the brief but fascinating history of Lolita

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Speaker 1: fan forums. Now, there's no doubt that there's ones that

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Speaker 1: I have missed here because, as with all things extremely online,

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Speaker 1: these histories are very specific, they're very intense, and they

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Speaker 1: can be very difficult to find. I'm going to present

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Speaker 1: Lolita forums to you from three points in internet history today,

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Speaker 1: one snapshot from the early two thousd s, one from

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Speaker 1: the mid two thousand tents, and a look at the

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Speaker 1: state of Lolita forums or the nymphet community as it

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Speaker 1: was called up until pretty recently today in the twenties.

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Speaker 1: And will also be touching on the associated esthetic movement

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Speaker 1: non sexual nymphete fashion. So before we get into the

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Speaker 1: history here, I wouldn't start this episode by saying that,

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Speaker 1: while I think it's important to understand the histories of

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Speaker 1: these forums and how they've evolved over the decades, it's

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Speaker 1: important to acknowledge that, as many of the members I'll

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Speaker 1: be quoting today will tell you, there's been a lot

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Speaker 1: of direct and indirect harm done by online communities that

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Speaker 1: have at any point glorified predatory relationships and child sex

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Speaker 1: abuse in any way, no matter who these communities are

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Speaker 1: run by. I've heard from so many listeners on our

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Speaker 1: discord and in emails who describe being genuinely fucked up

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Speaker 1: by Lolita Tumbler in particular, and I am no exception

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Speaker 1: to that rule, particularly when encountering unities that are splashy,

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Speaker 1: visually driven and not communicating very much in the way

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Speaker 1: of context or nuance. It's been a really commonly relayed

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Speaker 1: experience that finding these blogs while still a kid and

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Speaker 1: very much in the process of figuring out who you are,

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Speaker 1: often looking to online peers for guidance on how to

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Speaker 1: be this messaging could be really harmful. I want to

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Speaker 1: share two messages I've received on the subject, both anonymously.

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Speaker 1: Of course, Tumbler introduced me to the Lolita style, mainly

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Speaker 1: through Laana del Ray. I spent most of my time

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Speaker 1: after school on tumbler esthetic blogs, which created a very

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Speaker 1: rose colored idea of Lolita. I had no context for

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Speaker 1: the actual novel and felt uncomfortable and intrigued by a

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Speaker 1: lot of the media this was around, and me and

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Speaker 1: my best friend were some of the nerdiest girls at

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Speaker 1: our school, nonetheless, who would spend lunch hour singing to

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Speaker 1: Launa del Ray songs, specifically off to the races in

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Speaker 1: my friend's car. Nearly every day when we were home

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Speaker 1: from school. We would repost things about the music and

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Speaker 1: aesthetic on Tumblr. There's a strange thing for me, since

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Speaker 1: at school I was known as the smart girl. Listening

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Speaker 1: to the music and engaging with the culture surrounding Lolita

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Speaker 1: felt like a way to escape from how it is

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Speaker 1: perceived by others. Who says also pre related to my

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Speaker 1: transition to almost exclusively crop toss and a skirts for

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Speaker 1: a year or so. That ties into a couple other things.

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Speaker 1: Though I am now able to see a lot more

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Speaker 1: of the flaws within the culture. Let's I've gotten older

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Speaker 1: and had more experiences in my life. I was the

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Speaker 1: subject of a lot of attention from adult men when

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Speaker 1: I was young, and I really engaged with the book

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Speaker 1: in the movie, generally not in a healthy way. I

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Speaker 1: was on Tumbler when the Lolita aesthetic exploded, and I

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Speaker 1: feel like that aesthetic will always be rooted somewhere deep

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Speaker 1: in my brain. I truly can't overstate how many messages

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Speaker 1: like this I've received from listeners with a wide variety

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Speaker 1: of backgrounds, and how much of it is connected to

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Speaker 1: Laana del Rey. So to the several listeners who have

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Speaker 1: contacted me asking why I'm talking about her so much,

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Speaker 1: it's because current Lolita imagery is very connected to her

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Speaker 1: early career. From what I've noticed, there's a notable uptick

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Speaker 1: in activity in these online communities, first when movie became

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Speaker 1: more accessible at the same time the internet did in

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Speaker 1: the late nineties early two thousand's, then again in the

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Speaker 1: early two thousand tents, when Lana del Rey came into prominence. Okay,

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Speaker 1: one last meme, I promise this is from Instagram user

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Speaker 1: psyche Delicious three thirty three from just a couple of

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Speaker 1: days ago. Here are a few different panels of the memes.

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Speaker 1: Those red flags look pretty green when you idolize Laana

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Speaker 1: del Rey as a preteen. I would give anything to

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Speaker 1: be able to forget all the ship I learned from tumbler. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this is over some images of common Lolita tumbler posts.

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Speaker 1: Do not trust bitches who post shit like this, worst

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Speaker 1: mistake of my life. And then lastly, a picture of

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Speaker 1: Lana del Ray with the speech bubble saying this, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I romanticized the little lad to aesthetics so much that

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Speaker 1: I got hundreds of my underage fans dangerously obsessed with it.

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Speaker 1: So what. There is a big reckoning going on right

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Speaker 1: now about misinterpretations of the book stemming from Internet culture

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Speaker 1: of the two thousand tens, and it's been fascinating to

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Speaker 1: watch it unfold. And a lot of comments like this

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Speaker 1: cropped up when Lana del Ray's latest scandal involving her

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Speaker 1: using very racially charged language to explain how she is

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Speaker 1: not racist. But when she did this and every time

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Speaker 1: she does this, there is a wave of tweets from

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Speaker 1: people who were there for her big moment on Tumbler

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Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's and how that has affected

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Speaker 1: their image of themselves. There is a great recent Twitter

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Speaker 1: threat about this from Jezebel staff writer actually rees from

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Speaker 1: this last week on the subject. Here's two of the tweets. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but being on Tumbler when Lana was first coming out

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Speaker 1: was an experience. Let me tell you. She goes on

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Speaker 1: the gift sets, the cultural appropriation arguments, the SNL thing,

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Speaker 1: where are my veteran benefits? And she's right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this was a subculture on the Internet from almost ten

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Speaker 1: years ago, and it is haunting people. Many of Llama's

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Speaker 1: credics have characterized her framing of Lolita, which we discussed

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Speaker 1: at length a few episodes ago, as a form of

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Speaker 1: paras social grooming and if you're not familiar with the term.

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Speaker 1: It consists of two kind of interconnected terms. The first

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Speaker 1: is para social, so i'll go lemony snicket mode for

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Speaker 1: a second. Paras social is a word which here means

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Speaker 1: a psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated

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Speaker 1: encounters with performers in the mass media. So this is

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Speaker 1: the feeling a consumer gets when they feel like they

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Speaker 1: know someone who is a public figure, when of course

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Speaker 1: that public figure doesn't know them, Like when I talked

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Speaker 1: to like a framed photograph of Rachel Weiss. She cannot

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Speaker 1: hear me, she does not know me, but I love

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Speaker 1: her performances so much that I feel like she's my friend. Tumbler.

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Speaker 1: Users of the Two Thousand Tents didn't know Lana del Rey,

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Speaker 1: but they did know her image, and her image and

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Speaker 1: music made this young audience often feel like they did

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Speaker 1: actually know her and that she was someone to look

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Speaker 1: up to. So the second half of that phrase is

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Speaker 1: when we've discussed on the podcast before, and that's grooming,

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Speaker 1: which means quote when someone builds a relationship, trust and

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Speaker 1: emotional connection with a child or young person so they

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Speaker 1: can manipulate, exploit, and abuse them unquote The implication of

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Speaker 1: para social grooming is basically that a public figure that

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Speaker 1: many kids looked up to and felt like they knew,

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Speaker 1: made them feel like and made money off of convincing

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Speaker 1: underage fans that the dynamic between Humbert Humbert and Lolita

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Speaker 1: was romantic and something to aspire to. I mean, after all,

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Speaker 1: if it wasn't, why would your para social friend Laana

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Speaker 1: del Right be saying it? And why would all your

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Speaker 1: online friends be so encouraging and excited about it. This cycle,

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Speaker 1: as many have told me, created at times a vortex

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Speaker 1: of misinformation and mischaracterization that young users were spreading to

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Speaker 1: each other. All this to say, there is no doubt

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Speaker 1: that Nymphete and Lolita forums have over the years provided

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Speaker 1: both a space for teens to congregate around Dolores Hayes

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Speaker 1: and spread a lot of confusion well into the two

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Speaker 1: thousand tents that glorified the Humbert Lolita dynamic and perpetuated

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Speaker 1: information that really messed with people's heads. And yes, Lana's

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Speaker 1: approach to framing Lolita has a lot, a lot, a

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Speaker 1: lot to do with where those misconceptions were coming from.

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Speaker 1: That said, I think it's really valuable information to know

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Speaker 1: a little more about the history of these forums and

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Speaker 1: all the nuances that come with them. So let's get started.

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Speaker 1: But first, let's rewind the clock about twenty years back

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Speaker 1: to the early two thousands. George W. Bush has stolen

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Speaker 1: the election. Songs like Oops, I Did It Again and

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Speaker 1: Drops of Jupiter are topping that charts. Low Rise Jeans

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Speaker 1: are offensively on Trent and the Sex in the City

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Speaker 1: and Spice Girls driven girl power. Highly commercialized third wave

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Speaker 1: feminism is kind of the best we have to offer

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Speaker 1: in the mainstream. Adrian Lines movie was a hit overseas

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Speaker 1: in n but in the US was relegated to showtime

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Speaker 1: and home video. Not that that stopped teams with access

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Speaker 1: to a Blockbuster membership to getting their hands on a copy.

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Speaker 1: It's in this era that the first Lolita fan websites

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Speaker 1: begin to crop up. Around this time, there weren't many

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Speaker 1: centralized places to find conversation around Lolita. It was something

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Speaker 1: you had to really look for, predating all the big

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Speaker 1: social media giants, and something that's challenging but not impossible

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Speaker 1: to find traces of now these days you'll find almost

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Speaker 1: exclusively dead links and dead profiles, but here's a summary

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Speaker 1: of what remains or is remembered in old blogs and

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Speaker 1: reddit posts about these early Lolita message boards and forums,

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Speaker 1: a real graveyard of the Internet. So I'll summarize some

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Speaker 1: common themes. First, overwhelmingly users identify themselves as teenage girls

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Speaker 1: on these forums. The topics they focus on kind of

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Speaker 1: very There are conversations about the movie, definitely more so

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Speaker 1: than the Stanley kuberc nine sixties one. There are images

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Speaker 1: which are half dead links now of mostly young sis

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Speaker 1: white girls imitating images from the movie, and some discussion

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Speaker 1: of what they thought it meant to be a nymphete,

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Speaker 1: with a pretty wide array of responses. Some users think

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Speaker 1: that it is about presenting yourself as a cultural Elita,

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Speaker 1: as an underaged person who is interested in people who

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Speaker 1: are much older. Others are more willing to believe that

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Speaker 1: it is an aesthetic or an attitude. Next, there is

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Speaker 1: the occasional post or mentioned from dead linked users who

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Speaker 1: creeped into these forums who are identifying as hum arts.

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Speaker 1: So this is the Internet of the early two thousands, remember,

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Speaker 1: so Generally claims of being an older, attractive doctor or

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Speaker 1: lawyer are extremely difficult to verify, as they provide no

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Speaker 1: photos or last names. These older men are tentatively tolerated

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Speaker 1: in these communities, it appears, or at least are not

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Speaker 1: asked to leave right away if they gaze from a

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Speaker 1: respectful distance without harassing the teenage users. Then the occasional haters.

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Speaker 1: There are rogue posts from people who warn these teen

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Speaker 1: communities badly edited HTML, dizzying backgrounds and all, that these

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Speaker 1: teens don't get Lolita, that it was actually a book

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Speaker 1: about abuse, and that by discussing Dolores Hayes or admiring

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Speaker 1: images of her in any way, they were inherently misunderstanding

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Speaker 1: the texts. These posts are understandably not received very well

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Speaker 1: in these communities, but not without reason, because my final

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Speaker 1: observation is that even in the two thousands, there is

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Speaker 1: a lot of conversation about Dolores Hayes herself, and it's

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Speaker 1: clear that these teenagers have read the book. It would

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Speaker 1: be an oversimplification to say that teen girls were glorifying

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Speaker 1: the message of Lolita. I don't think that's necessarily true

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Speaker 1: during this era. At least, it would be more accurate

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Speaker 1: to say that they are glorifying the image of Dominique

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Speaker 1: Swain as Lolita in a pre Lana del Rey world.

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Speaker 1: This is the strongest image there was to pull from,

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Speaker 1: along with other nineties era teen seductresses, your Drew Barrymore's,

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Speaker 1: your Alicia Silverstones, and this era is generally a push

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Speaker 1: and pull between wanting to be the girl Dominique Swain

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Speaker 1: plays and genuinely discussing the Dolores Hayes of the book.

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Speaker 1: So it's a mix of emulating these very male gaze

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Speaker 1: images fed by nineties and early two thousands culture, and

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Speaker 1: some pushing back on them. It's not unknown in these

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Speaker 1: forums that Dolores was an abused child. The teen girls

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Speaker 1: on the forum were not necessarily there to glorify relationships

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Speaker 1: with older men. There are some talks about encounters they

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Speaker 1: had with older men, but just as much talk about

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Speaker 1: being interested in people at their age. For some users,

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Speaker 1: and I could relate with this, the desire for someone

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Speaker 1: older seemed a little more abstract and more of a

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Speaker 1: response to the questionable maturity of teenage boys on offer.

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Speaker 1: I mean personally, I definitely remember thinking how much better

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Speaker 1: dating an older person would be than the filthy fourteen

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Speaker 1: year old boys that I went to eighth grade with.

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Speaker 1: So at this time, it's really a mix of different

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Speaker 1: approaches to the material, grounded in a common interest in Dolores.

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Speaker 1: While the core imagery is very tied into and as

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Speaker 1: far as I was able to observe, motivated by interest

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Speaker 1: in Adrian Lines adaptation, the users have clearly read the book. Look,

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Speaker 1: the core difference I noticed with more contemporary teen users

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Speaker 1: is a willingness to tolerate the presence of older men

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Speaker 1: observing the forums and a less whole condemnation of the

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Speaker 1: power dynamics within the book. What I was surprised by

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Speaker 1: and kind of touched by, was that these were, however,

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Speaker 1: completely dead now communities. At the time, they were teenagers

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Speaker 1: talking to each other about their common experiences, saying that

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Speaker 1: you could be a nymphant at any age. It's an attitude,

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Speaker 1: it's an aesthetic, and the real commonality was processing their

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Speaker 1: experiences through Nabokov's text and often through Adrian Lines movie.

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Speaker 1: So the first wave of nymphet forums are clearly motivated

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Speaker 1: by the nineties movie and briefly thrive in a pop

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Speaker 1: culture landscape that was not shy. As we've discussed in

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Speaker 1: many past episodes about eroticizing images of underaged teens, even

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Speaker 1: making them at times active threats to older male characters

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Speaker 1: rather than the other way around. But these forums die

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Speaker 1: down and seem to stay dead as far as I

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Speaker 1: could tell, for a while. But in the late two

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Speaker 1: thousands and early two thousand tens that changes the work

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Speaker 1: of Laana del Rey provides a new generation with a

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Speaker 1: massive resurgence in these kinds of communities, with marked differences

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Speaker 1: that reflect the changing values of our culture. So what

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Speaker 1: I think is important to keep in mind, and something

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Speaker 1: I feel is often lost in the discussion of Lolita

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Speaker 1: at every point in these communities is this the online

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Speaker 1: culture surrounding the book, And as we're about to learn,

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Speaker 1: Lana del Rey's relation to it was a formative and

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Speaker 1: confusing phase for many of the teens who were active

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Speaker 1: within it at literally any point in time you can

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Speaker 1: direct to I see discussions about this all the time

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Speaker 1: on the Lolita podcast discord and an emails that I

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Speaker 1: received from listeners. These online spaces are flawed and leave

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Speaker 1: a lot to be wanting in terms of inclusive, civity

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Speaker 1: and nuance, and we'll get to that in a bit,

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Speaker 1: But they're curiated mainly by teenagers who are figuring ship

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Speaker 1: out under constrictive and complicated societal pressures, not unlike Dolorous

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Speaker 1: Hayes trying to figure herself out as a young teenager

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Speaker 1: under the most traumatic circumstances you could imagine. Back So

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Speaker 1: let's move forward. Enter Tumbler, the micro blogging what a

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Speaker 1: ridiculous word platform established in two thousand seven and exploded

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Speaker 1: in the early to mid two thousand tents. Going back

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Speaker 1: into Tumbler for this episode gave me just just flared

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Speaker 1: up a little bit of PTSD. Tumblers in the early

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Speaker 1: informed my life in a way that I can't even

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Speaker 1: fully describe. For for better and for worse, it still

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Speaker 1: haunts me. Tumbler is a very visually driven platform, and

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Speaker 1: essentially in the early what happens is that the forums

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Speaker 1: that keep Elizabeth Russell participated in during the two thousand's

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Speaker 1: evolve into nymphete tumb Lers. The main difference is that,

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Speaker 1: due to the nature of this platform, these blogs are

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Speaker 1: generally more driven by images than text, and the interface

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Speaker 1: doesn't really encourage commenting or ongoing conversation in the way

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Speaker 1: that Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or even TikTok does.

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Speaker 1: That's not to say it's not impossible to have a

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Speaker 1: conversation on Tumbler. It's very possible to build a community,

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Speaker 1: but it's a visually driven community, and the Wilita Nymphet

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Speaker 1: corner of Tumbler came into the analysis space in about fourteen.

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Speaker 1: In this section, I'm going to be citing both analysis

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Speaker 1: from outside writers looking into the community at the time,

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Speaker 1: as well as Nymphet Tumbler historian eighteen year old Nlijah Mesa,

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Speaker 1: who has made the most comprehensive history of this community

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Speaker 1: on the entire Internet in a YouTube video called the

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Speaker 1: Revisionist History of the Nymphet Community. She's our source on

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Speaker 1: the inside, and I'm using clips of her video here

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Speaker 1: with permission from her. Nalijah got involved on Nimphet Tumbler

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Speaker 1: at age twelve back in twenty four teen. I'll let

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Speaker 1: her describe how she first learned about it. So for

429
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 1: some backstory, I am currently eighteen years old um, and

430
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:14,720
Speaker 1: I've been in the ny fact community since I was twelve.

431
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 1: I want to say I was there since I joined

432
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:23,400
Speaker 1: because I had um listened to off to the racist

433
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: by Lando the first time I want to comments to

434
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: mention Lolita and I was like, oh, I wonder what

435
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: it's about because the song that gives me such this

436
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: weird nostalgic feelings that I don't understand. And I found

437
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: out about Lolita that way, and then honestly, I didn't

438
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: watch the movie until later, and then I just slowly

439
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:46,640
Speaker 1: found out about like the whole num faed thing through

440
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: Tumbler because I saw a picture lived Tyler and I

441
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: thought her ouse it was cute, it was a lot

442
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,200
Speaker 1: of fun. I'm not gonna lie like. I never really

443
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: saw it as myself pretending to be dolors or pretending

444
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: like I was in her situation. I watched the ninety

445
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: seven Lolada, I was like, damn, her outfits are cute,

446
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: and I decided to just like that. A lot of

447
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: people seem to think that the NYMPACT community was filled

448
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: with privileged white girls who had daddy kinks or um

449
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: were sexually abused. It's not necessarily the case. Were some

450
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 1: of them wealth your white girls, yes, but not a

451
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 1: majority of them. They're don't like three, no, after there's

452
00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 1: like two, did we all have daddy kings? To know

453
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of lesbians like something that

454
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 1: you don't know the NYMPHAC community was full of fucking

455
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: lesbian gays only event. Okay, it was a lot of

456
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: lesbians in the Pampat community, and also there was a

457
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:48,159
Speaker 1: lot of girls who had questions on people their age, Like,

458
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: it wasn't just people fetishize, like obviously in every community

459
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,199
Speaker 1: there's good and bad. Of course, it was obviously some

460
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: girls in the NYMPACT community who did fetishot as alidable.

461
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: I will tell you what, not the best majority of them.

462
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: It was not the beast jority of them. Because we

463
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 1: policed within ourselves. We helped each other. It wasn't a

464
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,119
Speaker 1: one person tells you to do this and you do it.

465
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:15,199
Speaker 1: It was everyone worked together. Like we literally had an

466
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: entire network. It was the NYM fed girl gang where

467
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: we sent in like pedophiles, creeps, everybody would like cop

468
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: in our d m s and we would send them

469
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: to the police. Then after a while they stopped dm

470
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: he goes or stopped controlling the track tag because they

471
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 1: know they were going to be put on that network

472
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:32,560
Speaker 1: and then they knew that we were gonna get a

473
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: fucking trouble. Ye, So the communities are very close knit

474
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: and protective of other users. Now, back writers taking a

475
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: look at this community saw it quite differently. Writer Sarah

476
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: Catherine Cleaver wrote a butt nam Feed Tumblers pretty critically

477
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:06,080
Speaker 1: for the publication Show Studio. She describes the main components

478
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: of the blogs at this time like this. Firstly, and obviously,

479
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: Lolita quotes from the book, stills, memes, and gifts from

480
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: either film. Kubrick two is better stylistically, but Adrian lens

481
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: version is the more popular, probably because it's closer to

482
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: the book, darker, more sexual, and far less perfect. Dominique

483
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: Swan's screen tests from the same film denotes a real

484
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: Lolita buff, as do the deleted scenes found in the DVD.

485
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: Other age gap films seen over and over again include

486
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: Pretty Baby, The Crush, Juna Julie. Then there are vintage signifiers,

487
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 1: pulp novel covers ranging levels of bad taste, my personal

488
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: favorite Daddy I'm Coming, photographs of vintage underwear, apparition, street photographs.

489
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: There's a personal post I dropped my pen leture today

490
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: and two guys in the lecture went to fetch it

491
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:58,360
Speaker 1: for me. And is this nymphat power or what hashtag

492
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: nymphat hashtag thoughts. This aligns with Elijah's descriptions of the

493
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: blogs at this time as well. But Cleaver's conclusions on

494
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: what these blogs mean, particularly given how young most of

495
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: the Tumbler creators in question are, comes off pretty harsh.

496
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: The type of femininity these young women and for that matter,

497
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: Lana del Ray have chosen to identify with, is one

498
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 1: that is doomed from the start. Either Oscar Wilde or

499
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 1: George Bernard Shaw said, youth is wasted on the young.

500
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: These particular girls are wasting their's fetishizing it, treating youth

501
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: as a theme to be curated, collected, and carefully documented.

502
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,959
Speaker 1: It's this juxtaposition of the Q and gru wish with

503
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: the violence that expresses the core theme of Lolita better

504
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: than any blond team sucking lollipop on numerous book jackets ever.

505
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: Can yeah you tell those twelve year olds? This perspective

506
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: was pushed back on by other writers of this time.

507
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: Writer Miska Housin wrote a piece for literary journal Plowshares

508
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, in response to Sarah Catherine

509
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: Cleaver that describes the Tumblers a little closer to how

510
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: Kate Elizabeth Russell describes her forum from the two thousands.

511
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 1: Here's what Husson has to say. I wrote an essay

512
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: about watching Adrian lan adaptation of Lolita, relating to my

513
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: experiences of sexual abuse as an adolescent and the experience

514
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: of reading the novel. A baragraph in the essay was

515
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: quoted on tumbler and found some attraction on the same

516
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: nymphant blogs. And this is where something darker, more complex,

517
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: and more powerful shows itself. The blogs this was shared

518
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 1: on had this standard nymphant blog fair steals from movies

519
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: with age gap relationships, American Beauty, Leon, The Professional Stealing Beauty,

520
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: and of course Lolita, lines from Lana del Ray songs,

521
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: quotes from the novel straight up d d l G porn,

522
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: but also that quote for clarity. D d l G

523
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: is with an area of kink and a subgenre of

524
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: porn that stands for daddy dom little girl, where generally

525
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: a male partner plays the part of father and the

526
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 1: woman plays the part of a young girl when done safely.

527
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: My understanding is that d d l G is an

528
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: extension of the b D s M community that involves

529
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: to consenting adults who are completely on board with the

530
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 1: power dynamic being established. And I'm not here to kink

531
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: shame if it's done safely then whatever. But as far

532
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: as the d d LG images on these communities go,

533
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: it's a little more complicated than that, because as it's

534
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: portrayed in static, cropped and edited tumbler posts, the potential

535
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: safety of the dynamic is not as easy to establish.

536
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: Elijah Maisa and the other prominent nFET culture YouTuber Skylar

537
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: Rain resist association with the kink community pretty strongly in

538
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: order to protect their own communities, both for the safety

539
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: of underage users and the fact that they don't want

540
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 1: the nymphete aesthetic to be sexualized. Here's Kyler Raine speaking

541
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: to this in a video from two thousand nineteen. Her

542
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: intro to this video says Skylo Raine promoting nymphet fashion

543
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:11,320
Speaker 1: without kink. There is not only one way to go

544
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 1: with a fashion. You don't have to be into like

545
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: dada LG. You don't have to like older men, you

546
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: don't have to have some daddy fetish or whatever. So

547
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 1: I guess my goal was the channel is to show

548
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: that yes, it is okay to like these clothes. That

549
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you have any sort of kink. You just

550
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: like a particular style that's inspired from a movie and

551
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: it's okay. She repeats a similar sentiment in a video

552
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: from late Another big point that I want to make

553
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: before we get into the fashion is that nymphet fashion

554
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 1: is a fashion. It is not a king. Please do

555
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: not try and make it a king. Nimput fashion has

556
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: zero relation with daddy kings or like old man king

557
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 1: And I don't understand why people try to make it

558
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: that way because like Dolores was never into older guys.

559
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: She was never into like any sort of daddy of fetish.

560
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 1: And this is essentially where the two thousand fourteen era

561
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: of nymphete tumbler stands. Fast forwarding to a student named

562
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: Rachel E. Davis at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

563
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: wrote an honors thesis called tell Me You Own Me,

564
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 1: Give Me Them Coins post feminist fascination with Lolita, Lana

565
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:18,239
Speaker 1: del Rey, and sugar culture. This paper examined tumblers from

566
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: into Seen. Davis's takeaways are also really interesting and connects

567
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 1: the curation of these blogs to the ideas and expectations

568
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: that both post feminism and neo liberalism. Took me six episodes,

569
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: but I said, I said neoliberalism. Sorry, As these words

570
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 1: are used in Davis's paper, neoliberalism is defined as stay

571
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 1: with me, We're headed somewhere quote, a form of governance

572
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: that argues that market forces, rather than state intervention, should

573
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: be allowed to drive the economy unquote. Post Feminism is

574
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: defined as quote a fusion between neoliberal subjectivity in a

575
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: feminist politics reimagined through the logic of consumer morism unquote.

576
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 1: Davis says in her abstract to this paper that in

577
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: the tumblers that she analyzed, there was a prevalence of

578
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:15,359
Speaker 1: posts expressing depressive, suicidal, and self destructive ideas. Indicates that

579
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: these individuals may experience the failures of neoliberalism and post

580
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: feminism as personal failures. This mention of depressive posts was

581
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 1: not mentioned in previous work written on nimphet tumblers, but

582
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 1: it's unfortunately not surprising that these and self harm posts

583
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,919
Speaker 1: would find their way into these communities. Tumbler had and

584
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: has a very complicated history with hosting blogs that promoted

585
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 1: romanticized and instructive methods of self harm and encouraging eating disorders.

586
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 1: Take my word for it, and this paper is the

587
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: first mention of these kinds of posts entering the community.

588
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,040
Speaker 1: Davis draws a clear line on how these concepts relate

589
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 1: to the trends commonly found in these blocks, which extend

590
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,760
Speaker 1: back to the comunities that Kate Elizabeth Russell described. Davis

591
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:05,839
Speaker 1: describes the work of Adrian Evans and Sarah Riley in

592
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: their teen book Technologies of Sexiness. As Evans and Riley

593
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:14,359
Speaker 1: pointed out, quote, the constant transformation required by this kind

594
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 1: of consumerism means that femininity is constituted as a site

595
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 1: of self surveillance and discipline end quote. The danger of

596
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,120
Speaker 1: this ideology lies in the fact that the cycle of

597
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: consumerism never ends, which quote sets people up to fail

598
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: while encouraging them to locate these failures as their own

599
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: individual failures rather than as failures of the social structure

600
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: or in the logic of neoliberalism itself. End quote. So translated,

601
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: she's presenting the idea that these blogs that primarily feature

602
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: Lolita content as well as sugar baby blogs, replaces of

603
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 1: self expression as well as an area for self surveillance.

604
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 1: I will add here quickly in case you don't know

605
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 1: that a sugar baby is defined mind as a quote.

606
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:06,280
Speaker 1: Transactional dating practice typically characterized by an older, wealthier person

607
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: and a younger person in need of financial assistant in

608
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: a mutually beneficial relationship unquote. Davis's paper goes on to

609
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:18,760
Speaker 1: discuss the intersection of the Lolita slash Nymphete and sugar

610
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 1: Baby tumbler communities, citing blogs with names like Nymphett's Life

611
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: or Dolly del Ray. Lolita blogs of this time skewed

612
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: more fatalistic and oppressive, consisting mostly of movie images and

613
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: deep sadness, whereas the sugar baby blogs were more aspirational,

614
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: featuring luxury goods type, crops of women's bodies, stacks of money,

615
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,439
Speaker 1: girlish lauderie. What these blogs had most in common were

616
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: a preoccupation with Lana del Rey, the problematic, unkillable queen

617
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 1: of the Internet. And then I Jamie Loftus, host of

618
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: the show Hello, went back into Tumbler in two thousand

619
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 1: and twenty to find out if nymphete tumblers still existed

620
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: and what they look like now. And so before I

621
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: share my extremely scholarly findings, there are a number of

622
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:09,240
Speaker 1: important changes that took place on Tumbler between and now.

623
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: First of all, it's just not as popular as it

624
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: used to be. But one of the big reasons people

625
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: fled from the platform was a site wide ban on

626
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: all quote unquote adult content in late This exploded a

627
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: number of communities and boiled down to the Nymphet Tumbler

628
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 1: community of this time entering a phase of transition and

629
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: a huge schism within the community. I'm going to kick

630
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: it back to Elijah here to explain what was going

631
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: on in the community at this time, which basically boils

632
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:45,439
Speaker 1: down to Tumbler disempowering the hashtag nymphete tag, as well

633
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: as a number of d d l G kink bloggers

634
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 1: infiltrating the space that Nymphet Tumbler used to inhabit. This

635
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,760
Speaker 1: drives a wedge into the community that ends up splitting

636
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: it into but well, some of us outgrew it perfectly fine,

637
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: every body else grows aesthetics. Some girls still liked it,

638
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:07,279
Speaker 1: but the problem was constant harassment by older men. We

639
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: can do ship and eventually the d D O G

640
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: and kingsters moved into the n infant tag and we

641
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: were like, funk it, we gotta go. We gotta go.

642
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: Because when the community ended, a lot of us were

643
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: already following each other on Instagram or we moved to

644
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: follow each other on Instagram because we didn't want to

645
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:26,359
Speaker 1: lose contact with each other. Because a lot of us

646
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: became friends. I have farmed lifelong friendships through nymphatic community.

647
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: I have three people who I cannot see my life

648
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: without because of that community life. So the community that

649
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 1: once thrived on the hashtag nymphat page split into two communities,

650
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:46,879
Speaker 1: one that is far more diverse and race, gender, and sexuality.

651
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,320
Speaker 1: Elijah explained where the split and interest as it pertained

652
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: to Lolita ended up falling between these two communities. New

653
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: Fan and Coquette felt very much like celebrating Dolores as

654
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: first as the fun bubb wee girl she was on

655
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: summer camp with her friends, swimming in the lake, when

656
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: she was with her mom, picnics with her neighbors before

657
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: Humbert even enters the picture. It was about celebrating her

658
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 1: as a person and as who she was before anything

659
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:25,320
Speaker 1: happened to her. Is immortalizing the happy child that she was.

660
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: To see that, Billette feels like celebrating crying traumatized Doors

661
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: on the road with Humbert. It feels very much like

662
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: immortalizing the traumatized Lolita instead of the happy Doors. And

663
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: I just cannot sunk with that. This is a fascinating

664
00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: split to me, two groups of majority teenagers who are

665
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 1: fixating on very different points of the same book. Now,

666
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: the spirit of Nymphet Tumbler, so like stills of Alicia

667
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: Silverstone in the Crush, fashion spreads and on and on,

668
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: definitely still exists, but they're evolving. Since Davis's paper was

669
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: published in early a lot has changed. And I think

670
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: it's also worth mentioning that the me too movement that

671
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,239
Speaker 1: began in late has had a clear effect on the community.

672
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: I took a look at a couple of tumblers that

673
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: are still semi regularly posting from July. Here's what a

674
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: post from her dash name dash is dash Dolores dot

675
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,280
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com says, as someone who has sexually assaulted

676
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: as a child, Dolores Hayes means so much to me

677
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: and I will defend her. Hell yeah, this is very

678
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,720
Speaker 1: different from what we hear earlier and lovelidus online history.

679
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 1: Now in the Nymphet tumblers are fewer in number, but

680
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: the tone is generally less likely to romanticize the relationship

681
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: between Dolores and Humbert and squarely condemn abusers of children,

682
00:41:56,200 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: specifically abusers of Dolores Hayes. This is done while celebrate

683
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: eating and analyzing Dolores carefully. Current leading blogs with names

684
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 1: like the Dolores Hayes Network dot tumbler dot com, Coquette

685
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 1: Dolly dot tumbler dot com, Lolita on the dotted Line

686
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com, starlet Low dot tumbler dot com,

687
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: and on and on. The posts I'm setting here are

688
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: from and the old aesthetics of previous Lolita blogs are

689
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: still present here, but there's now a larger focus on

690
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: discussing how Lolita relates to trauma and survival, about Dolores

691
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: Hayes herself, and a lot of anti child sex abuser memes. Now.

692
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 1: One of the main interesting new features to Nymphete Tumbler

693
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: are disclaimers that almost seem to anticipate some of the

694
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:46,280
Speaker 1: criticism the blogs are expecting to receive for existing at all.

695
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: But unlike the early two thousand's, the latest wave of

696
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: Lolita aesthetic blogs firmly distanced themselves from d d l

697
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:58,280
Speaker 1: G or anything that encourages the sexualization of underrage girls.

698
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:02,240
Speaker 1: The front page of the Coquett Dolly Tumbler says the following.

699
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:07,279
Speaker 1: This blog does not condone the relationship between Humfort and Low.

700
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,640
Speaker 1: My Lolita posts are purely for the sake of fashion

701
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: and the Venia aesthetic famine bodies. As I've stated many

702
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: times on this blog and others I run, Dolores Hayes

703
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: is a victim, a fact that tends to be forgotten

704
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,919
Speaker 1: amongst the dark beauty that is Lolita. The Dolorous Hayes

705
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: Networks header reads this, This network slash page is dedicated

706
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: to Dolores Hayes of the novel Lolita. This page does

707
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: not condone or romanticize the contents of said novel, and

708
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: was created as a space for those of us who

709
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: see Low as exactly what she is, a twelve year

710
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: old child. Some of the images presented here may seem

711
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 1: to be of questionable content, though that is unavoidable because

712
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 1: of the content of the novel itself. No edits gift

713
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: sets or text posts are meant to show the relationship

714
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:04,240
Speaker 1: between del Worst and Humbert as loving or romantic, and again,

715
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: these blogs do still have the nymphet Tumbler esthetic going.

716
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: We've got images from Lolita, Pretty Baby, Lana del Rey

717
00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: Romeo plus Juliette with Claire Danes, pictures of an underage

718
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 1: Mula Kunis as Jackie in that seventy show, wearing a

719
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,239
Speaker 1: T shirt that says I am so a virgin, as

720
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 1: well as gifts of old school nineteen sixties beach blonds.

721
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: So the old aesthetics that have marked these blogs from

722
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:32,240
Speaker 1: the start are still present, but now they are marked

723
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: with the reminder that the person posting the image understands

724
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:40,319
Speaker 1: that Lolita is a story of abuse. This is new.

725
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: There's a post from a user called cubitum EMUs I

726
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: butchered that I feel so old. There's a post from

727
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: this user that many nymphet blogs reposted that describes the

728
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 1: difference between the Lolita aesthetic and the Lolita lifestyle. Lolita

729
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 1: esthetic pink plaid skirts, cherry cola, dewey grass picnics under

730
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:07,920
Speaker 1: the bright blue sky, Lolita lifestyle taking an advantage of

731
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:13,320
Speaker 1: buying an old man being manipulated, pedophiles, daddy issues, lifelong

732
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:17,919
Speaker 1: trust issues. Other posts comb the text of Nabokov's book

733
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:21,880
Speaker 1: more carefully than scholars. There's an excited post finding a

734
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: mention of Dolores having freckles that says, quote further descriptions

735
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:30,359
Speaker 1: of Dolores she has freckles unquote. Other posts site particularly

736
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: manipulative sections of text from Humbert with this commentary. This

737
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: shows that despite having convinced himself of this whole devious

738
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:42,759
Speaker 1: nym fete sing, he is aware deep down that Dolores

739
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 1: is just a regular kid. Hell. These tumblers are posting

740
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: excerpts from Ways of Seeing by John Burger, one of

741
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:54,320
Speaker 1: the most seminal text on aesthetics. These users are pretty

742
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: aware of what they are engaging with, so while the

743
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: fashion and aesthetics of past adaptations are include did the

744
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: main focus is Dolores Hayes herself. Users remember that it's

745
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: mentioned that she's conversational in French, that she was a tomboy,

746
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: that she was bisexual. This was written in all caps

747
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: in a post I saw, and I think it references

748
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:18,400
Speaker 1: Dolores mentioning that her earliest sexual experience was with kissing

749
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 1: a girl. Dolores is always the main event in these tumblers.

750
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 1: There is no mention that Lolita could conceivably be a

751
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: love story. There is no suggestion that Dolores was ever

752
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 1: interested or welcoming Humbrid's abuse in its place. There is

753
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: just as much, if not more, content like this, and

754
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:40,879
Speaker 1: just a warning because this is audio only. I do

755
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 1: now have to do that boomer thing where I like

756
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: to describe a meme to you, so I'm sorry. All

757
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 1: of these memes are extremely anti child sex abuser. One

758
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 1: features a repeated image of a girl with brown pigtails

759
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 1: saying this, my name is not Lolita. Lolita is not

760
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 1: a love story. I hate Ubert Humbert. I'm literally twelve

761
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:06,839
Speaker 1: U six fox kill petals protect kids. My trauma isn't

762
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: cute or sexy. I'm a child. I'm not at fault.

763
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: I'm the victim. This has four hundred and forty seven

764
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: notes or tumbler likes, basically. Another post shows an illustration

765
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: of a girl in overalls holding a knife. The text

766
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:26,799
Speaker 1: says the following, there is no excuse for pedophilia. It's

767
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,760
Speaker 1: not a sexuality, it's not free love. The only rights

768
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: you need is the rights to fucking die. One hundred

769
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: and sixteen thousand, five hundred forty nine notes and that

770
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: is Lolita. Aesthetics and nymphet tumbler in. These users are

771
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: determined to protect Dolores Hayes. It may not be the

772
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: most nuanced discussion on the Internet, but I get a

773
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,280
Speaker 1: hand it to him. These types of spaces didn't exist

774
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:56,240
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and looking at them now,

775
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: I know they would have resonated with me at that age.

776
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: The blow that we were discussing earlier, with the heavy

777
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: sexualized imagery back in still very much exist now, but

778
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: there are these new features to them, the fact that

779
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 1: Lolita has been culturally warped to fit a very particular oversexualized,

780
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: rigid aesthetic. As we've been discussing for this entire series,

781
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: younger fans of the book are actively trying to unlearn

782
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: and resist what the monoculture is serving them, and that's

783
00:48:29,040 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: really cool. So I think we can see in all

784
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,279
Speaker 1: of the online spaces we've looked at so far, the

785
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: very fact that they are curated and controlled by those

786
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: that have far more in common with Dolora's Hayes than

787
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 1: Humbert Humbert gives these spaces a uniqueness and a power

788
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 1: that all of the older male driven adaptations lack. But

789
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: at the same time, these blogs are very informed and

790
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: driven by the visuals of these adaptations. It makes my

791
00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 1: head hurt, but it gives me the smallest bit of

792
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 1: hope because the way that teenagers are curating their own

793
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:06,440
Speaker 1: online spaces now is happening around and within cultural conversations

794
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:09,680
Speaker 1: that just we're not being had twenty years ago, and

795
00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: we can see with this example alone that that is

796
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: making a difference. It's tricky because, based on many listeners

797
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 1: who have contacted me, and pulling from my own experiences

798
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:22,359
Speaker 1: with lowly to online, I do think that a lot

799
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: of the tumbler culture I experienced as a team funked

800
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:27,360
Speaker 1: with my head a lot and maybe did not produce

801
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: a net good effect for myself image or for my

802
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: perspective on sexual abuse. But I'm hopeful that that seems

803
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: to be changing, however imperfectly, And what discussion on internet

804
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:45,320
Speaker 1: culture being released in wouldn't include the tick and the talk.

805
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: TikTok is probably the most relevant social media app for

806
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:51,799
Speaker 1: young people at the time of this recording. It is

807
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: more focused on comments and algorithm driven engagement, and it

808
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,919
Speaker 1: features short videos for all my boomers out there. It's

809
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:03,919
Speaker 1: also where Madison Beer, the TikTok star briefly canceled over

810
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:08,840
Speaker 1: romanticizing Lolita in became famous. So naturally there is a

811
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: pretty healthy discussion about the book Lolita happening over on

812
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: TikTok as well. Like many spaces we've discussed, TikTok is

813
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,760
Speaker 1: about a fifty fifty split of users demanding that people

814
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: stop romanticizing Glalita and the other half is people romanticizing Lolalita.

815
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:31,240
Speaker 1: The latter type of video is mostly inspired by the movie,

816
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: as was the case on tumbler as well. Examples are

817
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: fan edits of Dominique Swain as Lolita eating a banana

818
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: while Lana del Rey plays lip syncs of girls mouthing

819
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: the line I was a daisy fresh girl and look

820
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,480
Speaker 1: what You've done to me while looking seductively into the

821
00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: camera on their phone. On the other end of this

822
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: discussion are mainly young users who have read the book

823
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,439
Speaker 1: and resent romanticizing its legacy. So let's take a listen

824
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,280
Speaker 1: to a couple of those. The first is from a

825
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: user Mr dot White. I'm definitely saying that wrong. Mpakov

826
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,960
Speaker 1: shows you in every way how a predator's brain works.

827
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: He beats you over the head with how bad Humbert

828
00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: really is as a human. How do people miss this?

829
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: And that people use the loris and their songs. I'm

830
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: looking at you on the del rey as this sexually

831
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:29,320
Speaker 1: permiscuous teenager blah blah, she was twelve number was institutionalized

832
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: multiple times. He abused his wife. I don't understand how

833
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 1: people second is from user of hen good morning. It's

834
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: message is for you stop fromantasizing. Located in nineteen nine seven.

835
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 1: It's not a good fucking movie. It was made by

836
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: converted white men in Hollywood. It's not a good fucking movie.

837
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: And finally, it's nerdy mixed pan. We'll talk about a

838
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,040
Speaker 1: book that I never thought I'd like this one right

839
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: here before you asked, no, it has enough want to

840
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:02,279
Speaker 1: do with the Japanese fashion might be saying, Todd, doesn't

841
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 1: that book glorified pedophiles? And it honestly depends on how

842
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: you read. Now, if you take Humbert, who is the

843
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: titular character, you have to remember this book is written

844
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:14,359
Speaker 1: as a memoir for his word, then yeah, it does

845
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 1: glorify predators. Or if you have the nuance of knowing

846
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:21,239
Speaker 1: that this is written from the monster's perspective, you'll be

847
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 1: able to see the cracks of reality come through in

848
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: the writing. There are times where Humbert admits that Dolores

849
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:30,479
Speaker 1: is scared of him, that she cries herself to sleep

850
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: at night, and that he is a terrible human being

851
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:35,919
Speaker 1: for what he is doing to her. Am I suggesting

852
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:39,360
Speaker 1: that some of the most pertinent and transformative criticism surrounding

853
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: Lolita is taking place on TikTok and tumbler and not

854
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 1: in academic journals. Yes, I am, I absolutely am. And

855
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: a lot of this analysis, as you just heard, relates

856
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:55,320
Speaker 1: directly to Lana del Rey's romanticizing Lolita. And we haven't

857
00:52:55,320 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: even made it to YouTube yet, m hyah. Lolita content

858
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: on YouTube is all over the place. Most famously, the

859
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 1: entire movie has been up in its entirety for free

860
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 1: for nearly a decade, and there's also a lot of

861
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:27,799
Speaker 1: fan cuts of the movie and the press material surrounding it.

862
00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: There's also a fair amount of content analyzing Lolita. The

863
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:35,280
Speaker 1: best of it, in my opinion, comes from Miss Lola

864
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:37,879
Speaker 1: or Dolores, who we spoke with a couple of weeks ago.

865
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:42,440
Speaker 1: Her content about Lolita not only performs well, it's very nuanced.

866
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:44,800
Speaker 1: In the hour long we need to talk about Lolita,

867
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: she talks about movie and stage adaptations. Reading Lolita in Tehran.

868
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 1: R Kelly to the grooming and mistreatment of underaged people

869
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: by a famous YouTuber. She's also done a video reviewing

870
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:59,480
Speaker 1: Lowe's diary and attempt at rewriting the Nabokoff book from

871
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,440
Speaker 1: Dolora This Perspective, and another video about Launa del Rey

872
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 1: as a problematic faith. I want to share a little

873
00:54:06,200 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: more of our interview here because nuanced discussion and YouTube

874
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: do not always mesh and I found her approach and

875
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 1: experiences to be very relevant to the current state of

876
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: Lolita discourse. So here's a little more of our conversation.

877
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:22,880
Speaker 1: YouTube is a unique platform and that it has like

878
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 1: exceptionally intense paras social relationships. So I knew if I

879
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: was going to do a video about such a serious topic,

880
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 1: I wanted to try to use that to my advantage. UM,

881
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 1: and I think that's the reason why many people felt

882
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:41,800
Speaker 1: comfortable reaching out to me and opening up. I got

883
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 1: like a flood of responses. Was it before before the

884
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,440
Speaker 1: Lolita video? After? During what was the what was the

885
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 1: kind of the process there of reaching out? Well, at

886
00:54:53,480 --> 00:54:55,360
Speaker 1: the end of the video, I had a cult action

887
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: UM where I said, you know, if you're going through

888
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 1: a situation and you need someone to talk to you

889
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: can reach out to me. UM, And I got like

890
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 1: dozens at this point, I've received hundreds of letters, a

891
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:14,640
Speaker 1: whole flurry of conspiracy theories about um, who I knew

892
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:17,000
Speaker 1: or if I was. You know, it got so it

893
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 1: got so wild because the first video blew up so

894
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:21,360
Speaker 1: much that people thought I was like a plant or something,

895
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 1: as if that's how YouTube works, which it's not. I

896
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: I got so much hate and love and you know,

897
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 1: but this is the thing is I wouldn't say that

898
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:33,040
Speaker 1: it's equally taxing. But even though it makes me happy

899
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 1: that all of these young girls are reaching out, and

900
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,439
Speaker 1: although I'm so glad, and I still keep in touch

901
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: with some of them, you know, or they'll send me

902
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 1: updates six months later saying, hey, like my mom left

903
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:47,839
Speaker 1: my stepdad and we're moving to a new state and

904
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: like or um he's getting charged or all of this,

905
00:55:51,200 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: or like thank you so much. UM, that's wonderful. But

906
00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:57,440
Speaker 1: it is a lot of emotional labor for Like, again,

907
00:55:57,480 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: I wasn't trained. I did child psychology in school, but um,

908
00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:04,880
Speaker 1: that's not enough. UM. I used to go to bed

909
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: at a reasonable hour. Um, but sometimes at night I

910
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: just lay back and I think about the horrible things

911
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 1: people have felt safe confessing to me. Um. And again,

912
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:21,479
Speaker 1: I it's wonderful for the teenage girls, and it's but

913
00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:24,880
Speaker 1: you know the problem with these Paris Thilos relationships is

914
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:27,279
Speaker 1: when they're not really listening to you, when they just

915
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:31,680
Speaker 1: like hear someone talking about a thing that they like. Um.

916
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 1: They these these men who think you understand me, and

917
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 1: it's like, no, I don't understand you. I understand my

918
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: abuser because I've gone to therapy. Uh. It's it's the

919
00:56:44,160 --> 00:56:46,719
Speaker 1: kind of project that I honestly thought I would I

920
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 1: would want to like, I would want to undertake. But

921
00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 1: after that initial video, UM, it took me almost a

922
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:55,440
Speaker 1: year to release another video on Lolita because I was

923
00:56:55,520 --> 00:56:59,239
Speaker 1: just so overwhelm and and it's you know, it's every

924
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: time I released a video on Lolita, I get another

925
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: slew of emails. Thank you so much again to Dolores

926
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:10,040
Speaker 1: and remember to check out her channel linked below. Finally,

927
00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:13,560
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch on the fashion subculture called non

928
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: sexual nymphete fashion that I referenced at the beginning discussion

929
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:22,320
Speaker 1: of this community primarily exists on YouTube. I learned about

930
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: it pretty early into my research process, and like Lolita

931
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: tumbler in the twenties. It may not be what you expect,

932
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 1: so we touched on this at the beginning of the

933
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 1: episode as well, But to reiterate what is the difference

934
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:40,440
Speaker 1: between Japanese Lolita fashion and nymphete fashion. Lolita fashion is

935
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,120
Speaker 1: a fashion subculture that again in Japan in the seventies ish.

936
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: The history of this community is kind of hard to

937
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:51,120
Speaker 1: trace and revolves around cute aesthetics. It's defined by voluminous

938
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: crinoline skirts, puffy sleeves. You know, not imagery really associated

939
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: with Lolita, the book or the movies at all. It's

940
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 1: an extremely popular fashion movement and was created as a

941
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 1: reaction to the rigid gender expectations and aesthetics in Japan,

942
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:10,480
Speaker 1: and it's now become a prominent movement worldwide. Designer Naoto

943
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: Haruka explains Lolita fashion like this back in two thousand

944
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:18,040
Speaker 1: and eight in The Japan Times. One of the salient

945
00:58:18,120 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: points about Lolita is that it is really a fashion

946
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: that is not intended to attract men. The women are

947
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: creating their own world into which they can get away

948
00:58:26,520 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: from the pressures of the larger society. Lolita fashion also

949
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:34,720
Speaker 1: pulls inspiration from French Rococo Aesthetics and Alice in Wonderland.

950
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 1: Remember Lewis Carroll from episode one. You can go back

951
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,800
Speaker 1: if you like. So it's not related to Lolita or

952
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:44,480
Speaker 1: Nymphete fashion. So I'm just gonna stop talking about it now. So,

953
00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 1: Dolores Hayes has spawned a hyper feminine fashion movement that

954
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 1: exists alongside and in direct conversation with Nymphete, Tumbler and

955
00:58:53,560 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: current nymphet online communities, which is why it's generally just

956
00:58:56,960 --> 00:58:59,959
Speaker 1: called nymphet fashion. You're about to hear Skyler rain Again,

957
00:59:00,160 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 1: a twenty something prominent American member of the nympet fashion

958
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 1: community on YouTube, Instagram, Tumbler, other places I probably haven't

959
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 1: heard of, who ironically first got interested by dabbling in

960
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: Japanese lovely to fashion years ago. Here's a bit from

961
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,320
Speaker 1: Skyler's video. Watch this before you get into nymphet fashion

962
00:59:18,560 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 1: from you understand that Dolores Hayes was twelve years old

963
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:24,960
Speaker 1: and Humbard Humbard was like thirty seven. Don't try and

964
00:59:25,040 --> 00:59:27,680
Speaker 1: make that golos. That's not aesthetic. The nimfet aesthetic is

965
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:30,600
Speaker 1: like it's Cherry's, it's getting them, it's picnics. It's like

966
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:34,080
Speaker 1: lots of greenery and butterflies, flowers, daisys, all of that

967
00:59:34,160 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that's like the perfect nymphetiessthetic kind of

968
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: isn't aesthetic. Don't try to make it for my Skyler

969
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: started making these videos in her early twenties after getting

970
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:47,000
Speaker 1: interested in the fashion of the Seven movie, and started

971
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: getting actively engaged in Nymphat Fashion her freshman year of college.

972
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: Her channel has now been active for over four years

973
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 1: and has a small but mighty subscriber base of around

974
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:00,720
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand subscribers, with even more on Instagram, um and Tumblr.

975
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:05,080
Speaker 1: Skyler's main objective is to legitimize ninfant fashion as something

976
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:09,040
Speaker 1: that can exist independent of kink or sex and instead

977
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:12,959
Speaker 1: exist on its own merits as nineties Lolita the book

978
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: inspired fashion, and for her younger audience, Skylar is pretty

979
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 1: clear where she stands on the fetishizing of the low

980
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,760
Speaker 1: vida Humbard relationship, speaking to that here in a video

981
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:28,120
Speaker 1: called criticism for Ninfant Fashion and the Community in May.

982
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: One thing I want to bring up is to all

983
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:33,440
Speaker 1: of my younger audience, because I know that there are

984
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 1: some younger people who watch me don't try to go

985
01:00:35,800 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 1: after old guys. That's not what nimfant fashion is. That's

986
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:41,320
Speaker 1: what the fetishizers do, which is something I don't support.

987
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: It's extremely dangerous. I can guarantee you, guys, if you

988
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:47,600
Speaker 1: read the book Lolita a k a. The actual story

989
01:00:47,600 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 1: of Lolita, not the movie adaptations that had to be

990
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 1: censored in order to not be banned everywhere because it

991
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:54,960
Speaker 1: would be too controversial. If you would actually read the

992
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: book and see all of this suffering, that will lead

993
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: a went through how horrible and mean, how Umbert was.

994
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:05,080
Speaker 1: Because what you guys are seeing in the movie was

995
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 1: just a movie adaptation of Lolita. You're not getting the

996
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 1: actual Elita because lots of things are different in the book.

997
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:13,040
Speaker 1: The idea of an old guy treating you like a

998
01:01:13,080 --> 01:01:15,480
Speaker 1: princess or something, get that out of your head. Get

999
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: that out of your head because that's not what Humberd did.

1000
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: What humber did was groom her. And that's what these

1001
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:26,120
Speaker 1: old predator guys would do to you. So don't contact them.

1002
01:01:26,160 --> 01:01:28,960
Speaker 1: If they come to you, block them, don't interact with

1003
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:31,040
Speaker 1: them more. All the stories. Stay away from old guys,

1004
01:01:31,040 --> 01:01:33,240
Speaker 1: because I promise you it's not going to be our

1005
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:37,520
Speaker 1: romantic ending. So the majority of her videos are fashion focused,

1006
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 1: but Skyler is also using her platform to meaningfully engage

1007
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: with the text that the fashion movement is pulling from,

1008
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,520
Speaker 1: and this goes for the entire community. In her video

1009
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:50,480
Speaker 1: are You a Nymphete? The original meaning of nymphete, Skyler

1010
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,440
Speaker 1: goes in deep on the origin of the term nymphet

1011
01:01:53,640 --> 01:01:56,440
Speaker 1: from Humbered Humbered buying a buck off and how that

1012
01:01:56,520 --> 01:02:00,760
Speaker 1: relates to her community. I'm going to explain in why

1013
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:05,080
Speaker 1: the Google definition slash what's it called Merriam Webster definition

1014
01:02:05,240 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: of nymphete is wrong if we're talking about it in

1015
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:12,320
Speaker 1: the original sense. So Google said that a nymphete is

1016
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: an attractive and sexually mature young girl. Then Miriam Webster

1017
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:21,160
Speaker 1: said a sexually pre precocious girl barely in our teens.

1018
01:02:21,200 --> 01:02:25,000
Speaker 1: Also a sexually attractive young woman. Personal news of namphitt

1019
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:28,160
Speaker 1: n they're saying that in the novel, this is the

1020
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:32,600
Speaker 1: way nymphete was used. So like, that's that's weird. And

1021
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:36,640
Speaker 1: Nabokov had his own words to say about exactly these definitions.

1022
01:02:37,120 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 1: The interviewer asked Nabokov, like, what connection does his interest

1023
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:46,520
Speaker 1: in butterflies have and this is what Nabokov said. I

1024
01:02:46,560 --> 01:02:50,120
Speaker 1: have reworked the classification of various groups of butterflies, have

1025
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:53,920
Speaker 1: described and figured several species on subspecies. My name's for

1026
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: the microsoftic organs that I have been the first to

1027
01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: second portray have safely found their ways into biological dictionary.

1028
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:03,480
Speaker 1: Compare this to the wretched entry under nymphete and Webster's

1029
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: latest addition. From this we can see that Nabokov wasn't

1030
01:03:06,880 --> 01:03:10,720
Speaker 1: exactly happy from the Webster edition and Nabokov trash talking

1031
01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: Webster doesn't even stuff there. And another interview, he goes on,

1032
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 1: I think that the harmful judges who defined to day

1033
01:03:17,560 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: in popular dictionaries the word nymphete as a very young

1034
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: but sexually attractive girl without any additional comment or reference

1035
01:03:23,800 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: should have their knuckles wrapped. So um, can we agree

1036
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:30,520
Speaker 1: that the Google definition is uh not correct? I think

1037
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 1: everyone should be going to Nabokov when we're trying to say,

1038
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:38,400
Speaker 1: like what the original definition of nimphete is. And now

1039
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 1: for my last interview I have with Naboka fair out

1040
01:03:42,600 --> 01:03:46,320
Speaker 1: of Mr Humbert's manic gaze, there's no nympheta. The Nymphet

1041
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 1: only exists through the obsession that destroys Humbert. This is

1042
01:03:49,400 --> 01:03:51,880
Speaker 1: an essential aspect of a singular book that has been

1043
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: falsified by an artificial popularity. This is probably the most

1044
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: important of the interviews that I mentioned throughout this whole thing,

1045
01:03:59,640 --> 01:04:03,680
Speaker 1: so the pull from the Altar Tumbler Lolita community. Skylar

1046
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:07,280
Speaker 1: Rain dedicates a lot of time to the aesthetics, but

1047
01:04:07,440 --> 01:04:11,440
Speaker 1: she's also releasing twenty minute videos doing deep dives on

1048
01:04:11,560 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 1: the book, the authorship of the book, and story specifics.

1049
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,520
Speaker 1: I literally sent this video to the book of his biographer,

1050
01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: Brian Boyd, who I spoke with back in episode two,

1051
01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:23,920
Speaker 1: and he was really impressed by it. Skylar suggests the

1052
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:26,640
Speaker 1: following for people hoping to get into an infant fashion

1053
01:04:26,880 --> 01:04:29,520
Speaker 1: who want to engage with the community and be a

1054
01:04:29,640 --> 01:04:33,640
Speaker 1: quote unquote good representative of this community. In her most

1055
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:38,440
Speaker 1: recent video, she encourages the nymphet community to educate newcomers

1056
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 1: on the anti child sex abuse stance of the community,

1057
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:44,680
Speaker 1: as well as providing context for the abuse that takes

1058
01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:47,200
Speaker 1: place in the book. She encourages people to use the

1059
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 1: hashtag no King nymphette here she is speaking to that

1060
01:04:50,600 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 1: in watch this before you get into nymphet fashion. I

1061
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 1: started a tag that you can use on Instagram or

1062
01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:59,600
Speaker 1: Tumbler or whatever. The tag is just no King Nimpette.

1063
01:04:59,600 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: But with this tag, I wanted to be able to

1064
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:04,840
Speaker 1: bring together all the people within the nifut fashion community

1065
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 1: who are very much so against the sexualization of nimfut

1066
01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:11,360
Speaker 1: fashion or the Lada. They just simply like the fashion.

1067
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:14,760
Speaker 1: The theme that runs through all these communities is present

1068
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:19,160
Speaker 1: in Skylar's ninfant fashion videos as well advice and support

1069
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:22,360
Speaker 1: for other people looking to join the community. She warns

1070
01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: newcomers of likely bad faith retaliation from others in comment sections.

1071
01:05:27,320 --> 01:05:31,240
Speaker 1: In the same video, Skylar pushes against the body normativity

1072
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 1: of n infant fashion. While she is a thin, white

1073
01:05:34,560 --> 01:05:37,400
Speaker 1: passing woman herself, I don't know what her exact background is.

1074
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:41,120
Speaker 1: She tells her viewers that it's fashion, it's close, it's

1075
01:05:41,160 --> 01:05:44,760
Speaker 1: an aesthetic, and therefore it for everybody. I don't need

1076
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:47,720
Speaker 1: to tell you this, but teenagers are a source of

1077
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:52,000
Speaker 1: infinite ridicule. When I was one, I actively tried to

1078
01:05:52,080 --> 01:05:56,320
Speaker 1: distance myself from things that were popular, and then enjoyed

1079
01:05:56,400 --> 01:05:59,680
Speaker 1: most of those same things. In secret in an effort

1080
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,720
Speaker 1: to display that I wasn't like other girls, when in

1081
01:06:02,800 --> 01:06:05,880
Speaker 1: fact I was exactly like other girls when I was

1082
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:08,240
Speaker 1: in high school and then a little bit older on Tumbler.

1083
01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:12,240
Speaker 1: Reading Lolita at all was a botched attempt at assuring

1084
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: the people around me, and more importantly, reassuring myself that

1085
01:06:16,520 --> 01:06:20,600
Speaker 1: I was not like other girls. Other girls were reading

1086
01:06:20,640 --> 01:06:24,760
Speaker 1: Twilight and Sarah Desson, which I also read, but only

1087
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 1: in the privacy of my own home, with the intimacy

1088
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:29,400
Speaker 1: of a library book that had already been page through

1089
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:33,880
Speaker 1: by fifty other teenagers before me, in varying shrounds of secrecy,

1090
01:06:34,040 --> 01:06:38,040
Speaker 1: which is why I approached the online culture surrounding Lolita

1091
01:06:38,120 --> 01:06:42,240
Speaker 1: misguided as some of it is, with some overprotectiveness. While

1092
01:06:42,280 --> 01:06:45,360
Speaker 1: these communities have overcome a lot of the male yeahs

1093
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:49,440
Speaker 1: abuser centric narratives that adaptations and references to Lolita have

1094
01:06:49,560 --> 01:06:53,480
Speaker 1: had over the years, looking at these blogs also compounded

1095
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:57,120
Speaker 1: my frustration with the Adrian Line adaptation of Nabokov's book,

1096
01:06:57,320 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 1: as well as Lana del Rey's musical messaging, because these

1097
01:07:01,040 --> 01:07:06,120
Speaker 1: two are unquestionably the visual backbones of these communities, and

1098
01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:09,920
Speaker 1: both are narratives designed about child sex abuse by grown

1099
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:14,120
Speaker 1: adults who are pushing that marketable, consenting narrative and doing

1100
01:07:14,120 --> 01:07:17,840
Speaker 1: it in a very visually appealing way. Scrolling through these

1101
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 1: images now, it just strikes me how it's very possible

1102
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: to make an image of Dolores Hayes that is beautiful

1103
01:07:24,480 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: and meaningful without selling her story out. But no one's

1104
01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 1: really done that on a large scale. And this community

1105
01:07:31,640 --> 01:07:34,480
Speaker 1: loves Dolores Hayes, and so they work with what they have,

1106
01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:37,280
Speaker 1: even though most of what they're given by pop culture

1107
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:40,960
Speaker 1: is deeply flawed, as in those Tumbler disclaimers that we

1108
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:44,400
Speaker 1: read earlier. These communities have to constantly be working through

1109
01:07:44,440 --> 01:07:47,600
Speaker 1: this cognitive dissonance. I know she's being abused. I know

1110
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:50,400
Speaker 1: Humbert can't be trusted. It's just that the only image

1111
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:54,240
Speaker 1: is available serve Humbert's narrative. What else are you supposed

1112
01:07:54,280 --> 01:07:57,800
Speaker 1: to do? There need to be better options for this community.

1113
01:07:57,960 --> 01:08:00,800
Speaker 1: There needs to be a better adaptation of this story.

1114
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:04,880
Speaker 1: So I hope this episode was helpful in contextualizing how

1115
01:08:04,920 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 1: we see Dolores, whether that means how we see her

1116
01:08:08,120 --> 01:08:10,960
Speaker 1: from across a bookstore while we're being marketed to how

1117
01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:14,200
Speaker 1: we see her scrolling through a timeline online and for

1118
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:17,400
Speaker 1: young people who strongly connect to her, how people see

1119
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:21,720
Speaker 1: themselves within her. It's aesthetically driven, absolutely, but based on

1120
01:08:21,800 --> 01:08:24,600
Speaker 1: what I know of the internet communities, it has a

1121
01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:26,920
Speaker 1: whole lot to do with the content of the story

1122
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:30,960
Speaker 1: as well. And as usual, the culture at large underestimates

1123
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:35,200
Speaker 1: teenagers constantly. They are reading the book, and while the

1124
01:08:35,200 --> 01:08:38,240
Speaker 1: way that it's interpreted certainly ranges quite a bit, it's

1125
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:41,360
Speaker 1: disingenuous to say that the people in these communities are

1126
01:08:41,479 --> 01:08:44,760
Speaker 1: incapable of doing a new one's to read of the book,

1127
01:08:44,920 --> 01:08:47,680
Speaker 1: particularly right now, they seem to be reading it in

1128
01:08:47,680 --> 01:08:50,400
Speaker 1: a pretty radical way. So I'm not saying that nymphet

1129
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:54,439
Speaker 1: online culture is above criticism. It isn't. It has at

1130
01:08:54,479 --> 01:08:58,720
Speaker 1: different times included wild misreads and includes a lot of

1131
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:03,240
Speaker 1: romanticizing prepared situated by popular movie adaptations, and how pop

1132
01:09:03,280 --> 01:09:07,000
Speaker 1: culture has swallowed dolorous Hayes whole and includes a lot

1133
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:12,360
Speaker 1: of romanticizing perpetuated by popular movie adaptations. Elijah Maisa explains

1134
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:15,559
Speaker 1: in her recent video why black girlhood is not valued

1135
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:18,280
Speaker 1: in the Dolet community. There is a need to stop

1136
01:09:18,360 --> 01:09:23,080
Speaker 1: centering whiteness and rigid femininity with appreciating Dolorous Hayes. She

1137
01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:25,640
Speaker 1: speaks about it here, so I want to include a

1138
01:09:25,680 --> 01:09:28,040
Speaker 1: little bit of that video as well, and I did

1139
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:31,719
Speaker 1: some editing for clarity. I just wanted to talk about

1140
01:09:32,040 --> 01:09:35,800
Speaker 1: black girl home and why I feel like within the

1141
01:09:36,320 --> 01:09:41,679
Speaker 1: community specifically, black girlhood is not viewed with the same

1142
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:48,920
Speaker 1: grace that white girlhood is. I think it's unfair that

1143
01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:53,120
Speaker 1: black girls are hyper sexualized already. And if a black

1144
01:09:53,160 --> 01:09:56,439
Speaker 1: girl wants to do something that is normal to her,

1145
01:09:56,520 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: she wearing a denomni script with the baby fat too

1146
01:10:00,120 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 1: top and bamboo ear rings, why is she not viewed

1147
01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:10,759
Speaker 1: under the same numphat aesthetic lens as say a white girl,

1148
01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:15,800
Speaker 1: and you know, listening a typical nymphat clothing with the

1149
01:10:15,840 --> 01:10:19,360
Speaker 1: bardo top and the sailor shorts speaks Fundamentally, they're the

1150
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:23,160
Speaker 1: same outfit a tube slash crop top and a mini

1151
01:10:23,200 --> 01:10:27,760
Speaker 1: skirt or short shorts, but one is viewed under the

1152
01:10:27,840 --> 01:10:30,000
Speaker 1: num fat lens, but the others are viewed as more

1153
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:33,920
Speaker 1: adult or she is over bisexual, even though she's just

1154
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:36,880
Speaker 1: wearing clothes and fundamentally fit the same pattern as a

1155
01:10:36,920 --> 01:10:39,840
Speaker 1: white girl does. Where we can be in the most

1156
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:45,439
Speaker 1: frelly pink baby ish outfits and still be coded as

1157
01:10:45,520 --> 01:10:49,800
Speaker 1: hyper aggressive and hyper sexual and white room that's never

1158
01:10:49,840 --> 01:10:52,280
Speaker 1: really seemed to understand the fact that they did not

1159
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:56,479
Speaker 1: see us as well the numbers of communities subliminally. And

1160
01:10:56,720 --> 01:10:59,799
Speaker 1: the thing is nymphat aesthetic at his heart is about

1161
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:04,000
Speaker 1: for claiming girlhood and not necessarily innocence ex something you

1162
01:11:04,000 --> 01:11:07,320
Speaker 1: have to be an innocent person to reclaiming girl and

1163
01:11:07,360 --> 01:11:10,760
Speaker 1: I think purity like complexes and purity politics are just

1164
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:15,360
Speaker 1: not helpful. But it's just abouid claiming your own girlhood

1165
01:11:15,680 --> 01:11:21,880
Speaker 1: and your self in a way that feels comfortable with you.

1166
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:23,960
Speaker 1: And I don't want to say femininity either, because I

1167
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:26,920
Speaker 1: think feminity is very different for everyone, and I think

1168
01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:29,679
Speaker 1: that is an unfair box to put people in, especially

1169
01:11:29,680 --> 01:11:32,840
Speaker 1: when you consider like the amount of non binary no

1170
01:11:33,080 --> 01:11:36,280
Speaker 1: as there were, or like trans and beds and fall less.

1171
01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: So I think like femininities and the gild were either.

1172
01:11:39,200 --> 01:11:41,960
Speaker 1: It's not really about the reclaiming femininity is more about

1173
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:45,560
Speaker 1: claiming the way you grew up. So that's why I

1174
01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:47,680
Speaker 1: said girlhood for shorthands, but I guess you could say

1175
01:11:47,680 --> 01:11:52,000
Speaker 1: a childhood too. Reclaiming girlhood as Malaijah describes it is

1176
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:55,599
Speaker 1: a better description of the goals of deliveracities online than

1177
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:59,479
Speaker 1: I've read in any scholars paper and requires that the

1178
01:11:59,479 --> 01:12:03,519
Speaker 1: community to be inclusive of what that means for everybody.

1179
01:12:03,680 --> 01:12:07,519
Speaker 1: Dolores Hayes as a character whose experiences have spoken to

1180
01:12:07,760 --> 01:12:12,120
Speaker 1: a wide array of people, to nymphettes who present more

1181
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:16,320
Speaker 1: feminine and fun let's who present more masculine, to young

1182
01:12:16,360 --> 01:12:19,840
Speaker 1: people of all genders and races, and that is absolutely

1183
01:12:19,880 --> 01:12:22,680
Speaker 1: a fact that needs to be taken into consideration in

1184
01:12:22,760 --> 01:12:26,960
Speaker 1: future adaptations. Do Laura's is seen, like we've been talking

1185
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:30,960
Speaker 1: about in relation to you, and the power that sort

1186
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:35,960
Speaker 1: of icon has shouldn't be underestimated or squandered. Do Laura's

1187
01:12:36,080 --> 01:12:39,439
Speaker 1: feels more present in these communities than she does on

1188
01:12:39,520 --> 01:12:42,160
Speaker 1: most of the covers of Lolita, or, for that matter,

1189
01:12:42,240 --> 01:12:45,800
Speaker 1: in most of the movies, because it's mostly kids her

1190
01:12:45,840 --> 01:12:49,519
Speaker 1: age processing her experiences. And I'm just going to throw

1191
01:12:49,560 --> 01:12:54,760
Speaker 1: in one final God damn it, Lana del Rey. Next week,

1192
01:12:54,960 --> 01:12:58,280
Speaker 1: in our penultimate episode of Lolita Podcast, we speak to

1193
01:12:58,320 --> 01:13:01,519
Speaker 1: some of the women behind these images, the young actors

1194
01:13:01,520 --> 01:13:04,800
Speaker 1: who have played Lolita over the years, through interviews and

1195
01:13:04,960 --> 01:13:07,280
Speaker 1: archival looks. At their lives. We'll take a look at

1196
01:13:07,280 --> 01:13:11,400
Speaker 1: the challenges, emotional stressors and lack of protection afforded to

1197
01:13:11,479 --> 01:13:16,360
Speaker 1: these actors, all while their respective Humbert's continued onto happy careers.

1198
01:13:17,439 --> 01:13:22,360
Speaker 1: Why is that talented actors treated as images for consumption?

1199
01:13:22,560 --> 01:13:27,080
Speaker 1: Next week on Lolita Podcast. Lolita Podcast is an I

1200
01:13:27,160 --> 01:13:30,200
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. It is written and hosted by me

1201
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:34,240
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichtman, Beth and Marco Luso,

1202
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:37,519
Speaker 1: Miles Gray and Jack O'Brien. It is edited by the

1203
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:41,679
Speaker 1: wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music is from Zoe Blade. Theme music

1204
01:13:41,800 --> 01:13:44,800
Speaker 1: is from Brad Diggert and My guest voices this week

1205
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:50,320
Speaker 1: are Robert Evans, Caitlin Derante, Melissa Lozada, Oliva, Maggie Mayfish

1206
01:13:50,360 --> 01:14:03,760
Speaker 1: and Daniel Goodman. See you next week when I Well