Teenage girls are the worst. Sometimes they stare with open mouths and giggle really loudly. Then there's the older men. With the catcalling, their glares and creepy comments. Some try to touch me and get really close. I does bother me, but I can’t expect people not to stare. It’s human nature. When I put on my make-up and the blond, curly wig, slip into one of my handmade pink dresses and wear those cute little shoes and knee length socks, I am no longer Grace Howe, a teenage girl from Grimsby.
I am Lolita.
I've always been an outrageous dresser. I discovered Lolita when I was about 12. I was into goth and steampunk, but when I found Sweet Lolita, it spoke right into my soul. When I first saw those big, frilly dresses online, something clicked with my brain. It was a chance to be a princess! Sweet Lolita is all about ponies and carousels and sugar and sweets. It’s so over-the-top and just so wonderful and so me.
My room is my little Lolita world. The canapé under the window is stuffed with hundreds of plush animals of all colours and sizes. Countless Sweet Lolita accessories - purses, head bows, wrist cuffs, scarves and shoes are neatly displayed on top of my hand drawer. My colour coordinated Lolita dresses hang perfectly from a stand by the wall. There’s a big pink petticoat on my white carpeted floor that I made for my 18th birthday. I call it my marshmallow monster. Now it’s losing its volume, but when I first wore it, it literally turned me into a flying saucer. I created a monster with this petticoat.
"My colour coordinated dresses hang perfectly from a stand by the wall."
When I turned 18 my mom threw me a big Lolita themed party. She transformed the sitting room in Marie Antoinette's boudoir and decorated the breakfast room as an 'Alice in Wonderland’ tea party. Everyone dressed up in Lolita. Mom wore one of my dresses and to this day she claims she looked hideous. But the highlight of the evening was gran’s birthday present.
She got me a £350 Sweet Lolita dress that I really treasure. I save it for special occasions like really nice tea parties, because I would probably faint if anyone spilled something on it.
My other dresses are also quite expensive, but I buy them because they fit my style so well and they're what I fell in love with. Being Lolita is a not a cheap hobby. The whole outfit - dress, blouse, socks, shoes, accessories and purse would usually cost around £500. So I started my own clothing company Grace Ruby Designs in other to afford it. Now I make my own Lolita clothes. I have a Facebook page too, but it’s not very popular. I think it's got around hundred likes.
A lot of people think Lolitas belong to an exclusive little rich girls club. There will always be girls that are elitist, but almost everyone is really nice. I've gotten to know most Lolitas through different Facebook pages and online communities. The 'Sheffield Lolitas’ group has almost 140 members. Everyone gets along really well and we meet for coffee or tea parties, go to vintage fairs and do other fun stuff. I still prefer to go out in bigger groups, because there is safety in numbers.
It’s a lot easier to wear Lolita with a group of friends than walking down the street in Grimsby.
My friend Billie says wearing Lolita feels empowering. I met her last September when we started our Art and Design course at the Grimsby Institute. She's one year older than me and she’s a Gothic Lolita. She’s quiet, has brown hair and wears black wigs and dark clothes. Gothic Lolitas tend to be more demure and elegant, unlike Sweet Lolitas that are quite bubbly and energetic. She only has one Gothic Lolita dress that she got from her ex-boyfriend. He loved seeing her in the dress, but she says he bought it for a different reason. She thinks it may have been more of a sexual thing for him.
My boyfriend Ryan has never seen it in a sexual way. I don't think he's into women that look younger. He didn’t know about Lolita before he met me, so I educated him on the fashion. I’m quite a strong and independent personality, so I said 'this is what I do, you either love me or you don’t want anything to do with me!’. He takes me for who I am and he's never embarrassed when I wear Lolita to our dates.
I would be uncomfortable if someone sexualised me while I was in the Lolita costume. It does look childlike and has youthful connotations, but I don’t do it to attract older guys. I do it for fun and friendship. The name Lolita obviously relates to the book (i.e. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955), but I'm not trying to be the 12-year-old Lolita from the book, I'm just wearing a pink, frilly dress because it's cute and elegant. Even when I’m falling over or my petticoat is blowing up in the wind it's so pretty that you can't look bad even when you're making an idiot out of yourself.
I'm so passionate about Lolita that nothing could stop me wearing it. To me it's much more that just a fashion. Lolita represents a woman who's taken absolute control over her own gender and her own femininity. I feel proud to be this gender. I feel strong. I feel that no patriarchy can tell me what I should or shouldn't be, what I can or can’t wear. I can wear a pink, puffy, frilly dress covered in lace and bows and have a massive blond, curly wig that comes down to my knees and be so feminine it terrifies people. And I quite like that.
