Lolita Interview transcription
Key: H: Holly Olson, A: Ashlee Foster, T: Tamara Fleck, R: Renee Middleton, J: Jennifer Larkin
H: Group interview by Holly Olson with Ashlee Foster, Tamara Fleck… on October 26th, 2008 in Pioneer Square Mall in Portland Oregon.
H: Kay, so I’m going to start out with just kind of going around the circle I guess and um, just, how did you find out about Lolita fashion and how did you get involved with that? [pause] I don’t know, who wants to start? Umm…
A: I’ll do it. Um, I was looking on the internet for a present for my friend’s--for her birthday, and a random website, website in Japanese popped up and it was a website for a brand store called Baby The Stars Shine Bright, and it was a Lolita brand company, and I remember when I first looked at it I really wanted something from it. But after a little Google-translating the prices for how much stuff cost I was like, “Holy shit! 350 dollars for a dress, no fuckin’ way, dude.” And I was in high school then, so I didn’t really have the money, but… that’s when I first found out about it. Later I ended up buying stuff obviously. [laughs]
T: Umm… I discovered Lolita through anime. I was looking at the different mangas, and there’s, I don’t remember her name, but she’s a very, she draws a lot of Lolita, she’s one of the most acclaimed Lolita drawers, uh… artists actually.
A: [laughs] “Drawers.”
T: Yeah, “drawers.”
[giggling]
T: Umm… I just like cute things. And it matches with tea parties. So, it just kind of seems… really easy to me, why I like it.
J: Ok, so this is really embarrassing, but I thought that Lolita was ugly! [laughing] Horrible, horrible, because I’d seen what, you know, now I know is not really Lolita stuff you know. Really awful looking things, nasty stuff, and I thought it was terrible! But after I kind of came out, I saw it pop up online here and there, and I saw actual cute things. And I was like, “This is really adorable. So, I love to sew, so I started making my own kind of stuff. My sister used to make fun of me for it, she thought that I was crazy for putting all these ruffles and frills on dresses and what not. But she started to get into it too! And, uh, then we started going to meets and that’s how I met up with everybody. That’s why I’m a Lolita.
R: Mine’s actually--[noise]--Mine’s actually a little bit longer of a story, I think. Uh, I’ve been into manga and anime for a really long time, like when I was in middle school, so it’s been over like, 10 years now, so, um. And I used to think that Lolita was just awful looking! Cuz there was all the black and white you’d see in like, cosplay magazines, and stuff…
A: Oh God… [mumble]
[giggling]
R: Just so bad! And my friend just, she kept talking about it and next, all of my friends were talking about it. I’m like, “Oh, okay, I suppose I could do cosplay of this.” I’m really into cosplay. I’m like, okay, let’s do some con-concept cosplay, in Lolita, of Alice in Wonderland, and that’s when I started Lolita stuff and I wanted to do more classic theme, which is when I discovered the Mary Magdalene website, and Victorian Maiden, and I absolutely fell in love with classic Lolita. [pause] I’m a sweet Lolita now, but that’s just because it’s easier to get sweet Lolita than it is to get classic things like… hmm… [noise] That’s just kinda my story, just fell in love with classic.
H: Okay, so define like what… [nervous laughter] [pause] [laughing] So just define like, what a “meet” is…? Like, would you call this like, a “meet”? Like, go and do something or do you have like, a specific thing you do?
J: I feel this is a mini-meet.
A: There’s not too many of us, so it’s like… like, to me I think that like, uh, like a real like, meet-meet would be like, when we go to like an amusement park or something like that. Like when we went to, what was it called? Uh… not Oak’s Park, but in Salem…
J: Enchanted Forest?
A: Yeah, Enchanted Forest.
R: Yeah, Enchanted Forest was a big meet.
A: Like, there was probably like, I don’t know, almost ten of us? Or something there?
R: Yeah.
A: I’d call that a meet. Like when we go like, specifically go out to see a movie or go to an amusement part, or go over to OMSI. That would be a meet, but it really doesn’t… I dunno. I wouldn’t call two or three of us getting together a meet, that’s just like, friends hanging out.
J: A mini-meet!
[giggling]
A: But, I think that if you didn’t know the people, two people meeting would be a meet if you didn’t know them, it sort of changes. Status quo.
R: Then it’s just friends getting together, dressing up.
A: Yeah. [laughs]
H: Do you dress up all the time? Like, I know that Ashlee doesn’t all the time… No, but like, like every time you go out, or just for special occasions, or…
J: For me, Lolitas more of a weekend deal. Uh, it’s really not practical to ride all the way to school--I’ve got to deal with a lot of public transportation, and it’s just not practical enough to go to the University, dressed up… I do dress pretty feminine. I wear a lot of skirts when the weather permits, but I don’t go all out with petticoats, ruffles, accessories, I keep it pretty simple…
A: Good answer girl!
J: Woohoo!
[laughter]
T: For me, when I go out, I wanna go to do tea parties.
A: Like, your own Lolita tea parties.
T: Yeah, pretty much. I’m a tea party person. I would love to go, dressing up, and having an extravagant tea, where you have the tea, then you have the course, where its uh… container…
A: Those, those little…
T: Like that’s got the…
A: …things with the trays.
T: Yeah, it’s got trays of like, little sandwiches and cookies. And for the tea, you have all these different types of tea, like a classic Victorian tea party. That’s really what I like to do, dress up for.
R: I-I-I agree with Jen, more of a weekend deal for me. I do like dressing up whenever I can, I mean, I paid a lot for these things, so I might as well use them. Uh, I work full-time, and I, I’m an art student, so it’s not like I can wear these expensive dresses to go paint. That… that would just be terrible. Um, I have worn it to school before, usually on the days where I can… But I like to dress semi-normally, usually, and then I just wear my Lolita accessories with it.
A: Mmhmm.
R: Cuz, that’s just…
H: Do you… do you guys all own jeans?
R: Oh yes.
J: Oh yeah.
T: Yeah.
A: Yeaaaahhhh, like this pair… lots.
R: I wear my Lolita shoes with my jeans all the time.
A: Same.
J: You can tell when I’m having a bad day, cuz that’s the jean day. That’s when I roll out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and roll out the door.
R: Yeah.
A: Yeah.
H: What do you guys all do like, for, for a living? So you, you work and you’re a student [Renee], and…
R: Uh, yeah, I’m taking a little bit of a break from school right now to reevaluate what I want to do, um, with my degree when I graduate. Um, right now I’m working at this certain chocolate store. [giggling] I can’t really say which one according to my contract, but, I sell chocolate 40 hours a week.
[giggling] [inaudible joking about liking chocolate and the “script” pitched to customers]
J: I’m the exact opposite. I quit my full-time job to go back to school. [laughing] And I’m doing temp-jobs here and there, um. But I’m a full-time student now.
H: What’s your major?
J: Biology. [someone repeats: “Biology?”]
T: Um, I go to school full-time and I have a part-time job… And I work with children. Which means that I really can’t dress out of common like…
A: [inaudible]-like people. [giggles]
T: Everyone like, assumes that you’re just gonna dress pretty normal, cuz you don’t wanna dress too out of um, I don’t know…
A: The parents might think it’s weird… [inaudible]
T: Well, it’s just like, it’s out of the norm and since you’re waning to have children grow up pretty normally, dressing in Lolita to work would not be a good idea. Um, and I’m an artist, I’m gonna be a fashion major, but… I’m not going to art school yet.
[pause]
A: OH, uh… Well, I used to go to school full-time, and have a full-time job, but then, I’m not going to school right now because life did not get along, so essentially right now I have no job, and I’m not going to school, so I’m just doing a few modeling jobs and selling handmade jewelry and stuff, but… I forgot what the question was.
H: What’s your occupation?
A: Oh, right. Yeah so, I’m just essentially hand-making jewelry and selling it right now. It’s pretty bank though, actually. [laughs]
T: Are you actually able to like, make a decent amount of money doing that?
A: Yeah, I mean, I haven’t made anything for a couple, like um, about a month, because it’s really--the stuff I’m making right now is sort of--I can only really sell it to each market, and people are kind of sick of it cuz it’s really really popular. But um… I’ll be making more later, but when I was making it, for like 3 or 4 months, I was getting like, at least like three hundred dollars a month by making it. [pause] Which, I mean, it’s not that much, but it’s more than I ever made at Forever 21. And I don’t have stupid men as a boss…
T: And you’re your own boss… [say “boss” together]
A: Yeah, so…
H: So, I, I dunno like, I guess in a fraction, how much of your wardrobe is made, or have you made, and how much have you bought? Like, that includes like, accessories and stuff like that. Like, if you make accessories [Ashlee] and you make clothes [Tamara] and you make clothes [Jen]. [pause, a couple “yeah”s] I dunno.
A: Renee, you wanna start?
R: Sadly, most of my sewing energy goes into cosplay. Uh, I think I’ve only done one or two skirts, I’m planning a full-on jumper soon but… I think I bought most of my wardrobe. Like 20% of my wardrobe is handmade. I wanna improve that number, but …
J: Right now, um, I make pretty much all… a good 80% of my stuff.
A: You’re a damn good seamstress. [Jen laughs] It always looks like brand. Like when I first saw you it’s like, “Where did she buy that, I’ve never seen that before.”
T: Did you make that? [points to Jen’s top]
J: This one I didn’t, no. this one I’ve actually, this is just something I’ve had lying around. [pause] But um, I, I buy more blouses than I make, because blouses are really time-intensive. But um. I think I have yeah, I have one brand jumper skirt, that’s it, the rest I’ve just made. And um, accessories I’ll always buy. I don’t have what it takes to be crafty, in that sense. I, I, the fine detail work that goes into beading and anything like that… no. [giggling] I’ll make what I can sew, but that’s it.
T: I guess you’d call me a beginner in Lolita cuz I actually don’t have many, or I don’t spend my money on Lolita. I have not purchased anything. I have nothing brand. I’ve made all of my dresses. Or, I’ve been donated like, some bloomers, and some socks, and all, but… I make everything I wear. I like it like that. I’m not really for brand.
[pause]
H: Um… I had another question to change around…
R: And, in response to her [Tamara], my--brand’s kind of my motivation, like, working as much, the thing keeping me going is that fact that I have a dress on the way. It’s really hard for me to find any kind of motivation since I found it. It, it feels really good.
A: Yeah. I’m like, of the opposite of Jen. Like, everything--I don’t sew anything, but like, almost all of my accessories are like, handmade.
[pause]
T: Well, see, what I like is that, I like putting my paycheck, when I can buy fabric, buying fabric that I really want to make my dress, and then I make the dress with the fabric that I want. I also do silk-screening, so I can silkscreen individual items onto my dresses to make then even more like, different from what ever-everyone else is doing. So that’s kind of my motivation, to buy art supplies with my money to make more Lolita, or to make more clothing in general.
A: I live for the brands.
R: I like brand…
J: Me too.
R: I only, I don’t buy anything that doesn’t have a print on it. Right now…
J: And that’s really the smart way to go, I think, personally…
A: Cuz it’s like the, it’s like, you can make something pretty like that without a print on it, but I’m not going to buy something like that from a brand because… I dunno.
R: I have screen printing supplies, I just haven’t really gotten around to using it yet. But…
T: Give me… [funny voice]
[laughing]
R: No way!
A: Aww, come on! [laughs]
R: No, but yeah, sorry, it’s all in… Buying brand is usually for the print. Like, oh, a print came out that I really really like, like this one I ordered, immediately when I saw it. I just loved it.
J: And the quality is really good too.
R: Yes.
A: Yeah, a lot of the… like, a lot of the brands like, they’ll sell something like, a plain color, but like, a really really interesting cut, or just something that’s really nice. But every so often like, interspersed between uh, something that’s fairly normal, they come out with--actually… all, all, all at once like, this actually uh, like really popular print, print, so this, but, like, you know, they’ll come out with something that’s like, a “coveted” print, then everyone wants it and it sells out in like, a day.” [giggles]
T: For me, prints are a big deal, but I… don’t like… prints and stuff--the print that you’re wearing is… very, very… it’s not simple enough for me. I really like simple, simpler Lolita dresses as opposed to like…
A: You’d probably be a classic Lolita.
T: Yeah, well no… I lo-I really like sweet Lolita, I like all the different types of Lolita. I don’t like larger prints or prints that aren’t like, really the same. Like that’s just… there’s just too much going on. I prefer just to have like, bunnies all over it, or the same print all over it. And like, not larger prints. I don’t look good with them.
H: On the topic of like, “looking good,” like, how do you decide like, what looks best, like the length of the skirt, or short sleeve versus long sleeve, or just… Or do you find that everything just kind of works well, or…
J: You put it on, and you look in the mirror…
R: Yeah.
[laughing]
J: And you try to , you try to be objective about it you know? You try to say, “Okay, well, if I got other people lookin’ at me, you know, how’s it gonna look?” And… [pause] I dunno, it depends on like, how you are on yourself. If you’re really hard on yourself, you might throw out a good outfit. But then again, if you think you look cute in everything, you might put together something that looks terrible… [laughing] So, I mean, you gotta be really careful about that. To be honest, like, [pause] I’m not very good at planning… And I often, I’ll plan to wear something, and throw it out completely and put something different on, because I just… I think it looks okay, in the mirror, and I’ll wear it out. But as far as coordinating and stuff goes, uh…
H: But like, how do you decide to buy something, like cut-wise, when if like, you can’t just put it on and figure out if you want to ever wear it?
J: If it looks good on a model, you hope that it looks good on you.
[laughing]
T: Well, in general, like, if you… Most Lolita dresses are based off of normal patterns, so if you know what type of dress looks good on you, then you know which types to… blah… to buy. Like, I don’t buy empire waists, I would never buy an empire waist, because it does not look good on me. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to buy a dress that’s too long, because… I, I’m very short. So if I buy a longer dress, it’s not going to look good on me, than a shorter dress.
J: That’s the exact opposite of me cuz…
T: You’re tall…
J: …they’re really short on me, because I’m tall, which is why a lot of the times that I just, yeah, I will make my stuff, because I can make it to the length that I want. It’s unfortunate when I really want something that is just, you know, way too short on me.
R: I buy according to gut feeling.
A: [laughs] Gut feeling…
R: Um, when I see it , and my heart starts pounding, I know that I want that.
T: Even if it doesn’t look the best on you, you still want it?
R: Oh, yeah. Um, it’s just…
A: [inaudible]
R: Usually they do look good, and if they don’t look good, I’ll eventually fall out of love with it, and sell it. And I can usually make my money back off of it because I do go on auction sites. Um… Two of my dresses are empire waists, I love empire waists. I actually wanted to buy a Mary Magdalene dress, it was so pretty…
T: Well, I love the way they look, it’s just I don’t think I…
R: …with strawberries… and it was red, oh it was beautiful, but I couldn’t… [laughing] Um… [pause] Yeah, look in the mirror, and really make that gut feeling appear, whether or not it looks good. If you look in the mirror and go, “Eh… Maybe not.”
A: That’s what I do every time I look at my face in the mirror… [laughing]… “Maybe not…” [giggling]
R: Yeah, like this morning, I seriously spent like, 10 minutes deliberating between one head bow and another… and then I had to change shoes, and I went back to the other one that I hadn’t wanted to wear.
A: That looks like a skeleton in that picture, not a model… sorry… [giggling]
R: But yeah, it really comes down to gut feeling for me.
H: Um, back to like, lifestyle, I guess. Do… I know that you two [Ashlee and Tamara] have boyfriends. Are you guys [Jen and Renee] like, involved with anyone or…?
J: I’m engaged.
H: Oh, you’re engaged?
A: Awww…!
T: See the big big ring sitting on her finger?
A: Bling-a-bling.
R: I feel so alone in this, cuz I’m asexual.
H: Uh huh.
A: She’s like Kim.
H: She’s like Kim?
T: Oh.
A: Uh, except, well, not quite. Kim’s like, sorry, like, raging--My best friend Kim is like, against sex… but like, you’re just like… meh…
R: It’s sex… I just…
T: Well see, the thing that’s interesting’s that…
R: …don’t see myself having it…
T: …you still want to look good, but Kim doesn’t care about that…
A: Oh yeah, that’s probably why--like…
T: Kim’s like…
A: See, Kim’s almost like a dyke, without the lesbian-ness… [giggling] She is! She’s just like…
R: I-I wanna look good for my own sake, not that I don’t--I don’t really care what other people think most of the time, but… When I stand in front of the mirror, I wanna look good to myself.
A: That’s kind of interesting that--it’s sort of like, if everyone in this mall disappeared except for us, I’d still wanna look cute.
J: Me too.
A: It’s like, I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks…
T: I don’t dress for anyone else but…
A: I know, except I want, I wanna look cute in front of me, and my friends that dress the same way, but nobody else… It’s like, I actually don’t… It’s, it’s like, I hear a lot of people saying like, even people in line, they probably said the same things to you guys too. Like, “If you don’t want so much attention in public, why do you dress up like that?” I personally think it’s for me, I actually don’t want anyone else looking at me. Like, if they just like, walked around like this [covers her eyes], I’d be happy.
T: Oh see like, I, I don’t mind if people look at me, but I don’t really want them commenting because… I’m just honestly dressing because I want to dress up, I’m not dressing up because I want people to comment on me, I’m just dressing up because I really like to dress this, dress this way. I don’t want to dress this way all the time because, in all honestly, I do feel a little awkward sometimes… If I’m the only one wearing a poofy dress. But, I really like to dress like this.
R: It feels awkward when you are alone in that… But you do feel good about it. If you… if you think you look good and…
A: Yeah, like, it’s just more of a…
R: It’s within your own interests. Like, if someone has a mohawk, they don’t really care if another person has a mohawk.
T: “Hey, it’s a mohawk.”
A: It’s sort of like… I mean, it’s not to be like… I don’t, I don’t personally care if anyone else wants to dr--like if people I see walking down the street, if they obviously don’t care about fashion… like, I don’t… think that’s my business, just like what I wear isn’t their business. But it’s sort of like, if someone were to like, sneer at you or like, make a comment, like, “Oh, what’s up, like, Little Bo Peep?” Or something, or like, when you can obviously tell they don’t like it, but they won’t make a comment on it. You know, they’re just standing there in like, ratty jeans and a ratty T-shirt, it’s like, why should you take what they say seriously? Obviously don’t have any type of like, fashion sense, like you do, so… E-e-even if they don’t like your specific style, it takes effort to coordinate something, and if it’s… balanced, and well color matched, and they just look like, shit, obviously their opinion doesn’t matter.
J: True…
H: Um… Changing the subject again, do you guys have any, like, inside jokes amongst your group?
[laughing]
R: Yeah…
A: Carl’s… Farts…
R: Carl’s Farts… Are you the real Ashlee Foster?
A: Do we explain them? Like…
H: Yeah.
A: We already explained Carl’s Farts earlier, but…
H: Explain it again.
A: …like, I had a…When I was, when I was moving like, me and my boyfriend used to live in the downtown area and we moved, and the day we, or the day before we moved, we had a moving party. And a bunch of friends--
Man: Are you guys chilling or just… are you tape-recording?
A: Yeah.
H: Yeah.
Man: At 6:05, there’s a fashion show, you’d be welcome, no charge.
A: Okay… [nervous laughter] Thanks… um… What was I saying? Okay! Um…
[giggling]
R: Carl’s Farts…
A: Carl’s Farts! Right! Okay, so I was having a party, just a, you know, moving party. Last day I was going to be in my apartment, and friends brought us a bunch of like, Japanese snacks over, and one of them was called like, was like, “Carl’s” brand”? Or something?
J: Yeah, the criteria to buying was… [laughing] I couldn’t figure out what it was, that was why I bought it, like… [laughing] I bought a whole bunch of just random stuff that had either Japanese writing, or English that didn’t make sense on it, and that was the criteria I had for buying…
A: And like, they-did they-they’re-I think they were like, supposed to be like, cheese flavored or something, I don’t know…
R: No, they were lightly-salted puffs or something like..
A: Oh yeah, lightly-salted like, puffed corn or something, some weird shit like that. But like… They tasted like… You know what I mean, like you don’t… it, they tasted like something smelled. What it sm-tasted like was a fart! And so… [laughing] We, we called them “Carl’s Farts” and now we… I just mention it at random, like any plain inside joke in all of existence, but uh…
[laughing]
R: And we kept passing it around, it’s like we couldn’t… it’s like, “Oh, I don’t like this, but I’m gonna have another one…”
[laughing]
A: Mm… Carl’s Farts… um… Another one I can think of off the top of my head is… There’s a website called Gaia Online… And you know…
T: [laughs]
A: You’ve got your profile, where people can look at your account, or say hi, or whatever, and someone posted a comment, because I’ve been in a couple issues of the Gothic and Lolita Bible [US version], and someone goes, “Oh my God! Are you the real Ashlee Foster?” And I replied like, “Noooo…” Just like, to see what they would do… [giggling] And they got all sad and uh… Jen’s sister Ashley, she , she’s not here right now, but she [pause] posted on, like again, like on the same page, like you know, making fun of that person, like, “Oh my God! Are you the real Ashlee Foster? Can I stick it in your pooper?” [giggling] And ever, ever since then, it’s “Are you the real…” add anything on, tack anything on the end of that and…
J: There’s also the Bible issue too. “Are you the real Ashlee Foster from the Gothic Lolita Bible?”
A: Oh yeah…
J: As opposed to what? The God Bible?
[laughing]
H: That’s kind of funny. [laughs]
A: I like that Ruby posted on my MySpace like, “Are you the real Ashlee Foster from like, the God Bible? Are you, like, are you Moses?” [laughing] And I posted back, “No, actually I’m God, sorry I didn’t tell you…
[laughing]
T: I still find it hilarious that, I was talking with some of my friends, and they mentioned to me that they saw you on Forchan and that they were asking if you were a boy instead of a girl… And the whole controversy whether Ashlee was a boy or whether she was a girl…
A: Noo…Tamara, not in public…
T: Sorry…
[giggling]
A: It’s probably… like, did I ever tell you guys [Jen and Renee], or like… I don’t, I don’t know if you guys are even, did I even know you during my like, “I am a boy” phase, or… whatever?
R: I don’t think so…
A: It was on For chan like, you--you met Kim like, she had like, gone to my account and like, didn’t know my uh…like that my computer was broken, and like, the day after she posted something, it like, she edited my signature, and put a really retarded picture of me in there going, “Urrgghh…” [giggling] I like, this weird dress, and it said like, “Hurhur… I’m a boy,” in the signature or whatever? And uh… the day after that, her computer broke, so neither of us had internet for like, a week.
J: Oh no.
R: Oh my God.
A: So we were hanging out like, the whole week, and then I get back on and I see that and there’s like 500 comments on my profile… [laughing, wheezing] “Really??? Oh my God, you’re a boy…!” And then, just for the heck of it, we left it as my signature for like…
[laughing][
T: A long time…
A: Forever… I never-And I never actually ever said I was a boy, like in the… like if I conversed on the forums I never said I was a boy. People would ask, “Are you a boy?” I’d say, “No, that’s a joke…” But still, just because of the one sentence in my signature, apparently everyone on the face of the planet and their mom is a gullible fuck. So… [giggling] I dunno… [giggling]
T: Hey, that’s actually a question… [pause] when you are--when we dress like Lolitas, does that also mean that we act different?
A: Like…
R/J/A: …Lifestyle?
T: Yeah, lifestyle.
R: Yeah…
T: Like, I don’t…
A: Some people choose to…
T: I don’t change the way I talk because I’m dressed in frilly stuff. I don’t… I still spit. I still hock a loogey and all that crap. I still act like myself. Even though I’m wearing Lolita, because I, I find it highly entertaining to spit in from to someone and then see--see them stare at me in like, my girly clothes, and just like, “Why’re you doin’ that? Aren’t you supposed to be really girly?” It’s like, [pause] I’m myself, wearing girls clothing.
A: It’s kinda weird like the… I guess… [snaps fingers] Not--it’s--I don’t think stigma’s the word… is it? …Or it’s just weird what people… expect from a, a set of clothing. It’s sort of like, if you saw someone running down the street really fast, and they were wearing this, what the fuck would you think? It’s like, take it off, put a jogging outfit on, suddenly it means something else. It’s like, we have uniforms for everything that we do… But, I don’t’ think that… like, cuz especially…
J: It’s more of a human issue than anything…
A: Yeah, but I-I think that like, your fashion choice doesn’t have to denote how you act… But, but I would actually feel nervous, like, jogging if I wasn’t wearing a “jogging uniform.” Cuz it’s like, people’d be like, “Holy shit! What they running from? Is it a fire or something?” I like, sometimes I think that like, I’ll see somebody running, and they’re not wearing a “jogging uniform” and I wonder what’s wrong, and then I realize that they’re jogging… [laughing]
H: Any other jokes or stories?
J: I’m trying to think of any…
A: There’ve got to be more…
R: There’s gotta be more, I’m sure that we just don’t realize what they are…
A: I think it’s only because “Are you the real Ashlee Foster” and Carl’s Farts are like, from the last month… and we remember it. We’ll forget in like, another month probably.
R: Do you remember this?! No, what are you talking about, weirdo…
A: Guh, who’s Carl? Ugh…
R: Why’s he farting?
[laughing]
J: Yeah…
H: Um…
A: Carl’s Farts…
[pause]
H: I lost it… [giggles]
A: Okay, I’m getting really creeped out by like, that person, who’s looking at us…
T: Do you mean the…
R: She thinks you’re beautiful…
A: She loves me… I like doing the creepy voice… [mumbling]
H: Does your group have any like, customs that you do, like, every time you get together or you do something…
A: Shoe shot!
R: Shoe shot and butt shot!
[laughing]
A: It’s like, where you…
R: But that’s more of a joke really…
A: The butt shot at least…
R: But some people do it seriously. We do it just like, “Let’s do a shoe shot!! Just for kicks!”
A: And a shoe shot, a shoe shot’s just like, speaking for the recorder…
R: Guys, we haven’t even done one yet…
J: God, yeah, we have to do a shoe shot!
A: …where we stick our like, put one foot in, and then in a circle, so like, all of our feet are in the camera frame, we just take a picture…
J: There’s also fringe…
A: That’s butt shot.
J: Butt shot with fringe shot…
A: The only reason “butt shot” exists is cuz, I think was originally a California group of lolitas that came up with shoe shot, and so then it was like, the Chicago lolitas that were like, “Yeah, well we’re gonna do butt shots…” And then… created a butt shot, and now people do butt shots too.
R: You do finger shots now too…
A: Yeah, I do finger shots. I don’t know if that really caught on though, cuz people don’t seem to wear, I’m not even wearing that much… Oh, and your recorder needs to know that a lot of this spreads via the internet. Cuz there’s hundreds of Lolitas that we probably all know, have accumulated that we all…
J: Yeah.
H: Yeah, like I was just going to ask… Like, do you know other groups like elsewhere?
T: Like, the LiveJournal stuff…
A: I don’t know what you wanted, like…
R: Hell yeah.
J: Yeah.
A: …Lolita communities or…
T: Yeah, I just wanna know like, where, like, the Portland community of Lolitas or maybe…
A: There’s no--there’s not a Portland, there’s like, an Oregon one.
T: Okay, or an Or-Oregon… and…
J: Orlolipops…
A: Orloli--lollipops…
R: Orlollipops…
A: Why did they name them that?
T: Okay, that just looks… Lol-if I were to look at “lollipops”…
A: It’s, it’s like… Wait, is it spelled like lollipops?
R: It’s like “Or-lollipops”… but I-I say it “Or-loli-pops,” cuz we’re lolis not lollies.
T: But lolis are…
[pause]
A: What?
T: [giggles]
A: Well, yes, there’s another meaning for it, but it’s like, in Japan the…
R: They’re called “Rori.” [in Japanese, R’s and L’s are basically the same]
A: Rori… and I guess Americans, since most of us can’t roll our R’s, it’s loli, but…
T: Yeah, cuz loli is little girls… I mean, not girls dressing up in little girls dresses, but little girls…
R: You know, it’s interesting because the reason why we are called “lolis” is because in Japan they had to mis--they had to change the spelling of “Rorita,” so that “Rori” and “Rorita” aren’t confused with each other… Cuz people would look it up online and be like, “Oh, I’m looking for Lolita…”
A: Didn’t it used to just be called Loli? Or… I have no idea…
R: “Gossu Rori” [Goth Loli] is the… Japanese word for it…
A: Well, also another abbreviation is…
J: …and abbreviated considerably… It’s a borrowed word…
A: I know a lot of people say like, “It’s not connected to the Nabokov novel.” But like, where else would Japan get… Like, I’ve always wondered, like no one, there’s no definite explanation for where that term came from, other than that book.
J: Yeah.
T: Yeah, that’s the thing is also, is that I’ve never read the book…
A: I, I think they just--the name, cuz it’s, it’s uh, it’s a Spanish name…
R: Yeah.
A: Maybe they just liked it, or maybe someone thought it was cute in school and they… I mean, it’s not supposed to be sexualized, but I’m pretty sure they stole that name from that book.
T: Um… I com--I completely and utterly disagree. For me, the Lolita fashion… Cannot be anything but a fetish…Not like a dirty fetish, but…
A: Well, I think some people, see it as a fetish…
T: I consider it… uh in…I mean, for young women, I would say… I know I’m 21, almost 22, and I’ve been dressing like this since I was about 19/20, that was the age group that I started. I think you don’t really do it much younger than maybe… 16 or something…
A: I’ve seen some 14 year olds doing it…
T: Well, I mean, the way I see it is that… Most Lolitas that I’ve known of are between late-teens, early-20s, up to maybe 24 or 25 or something like that. But if you’re wearing that type of clothing, and you’re making yourself look younger… Cuz that’s what it, that’s what it is to me, I feel as, as it’s a fetish… But not like a fetish, like a sexual fetish… Cuz fetishes don’t only have to be sexual…
A: Is like, is your definition of a fetish just like, [mumble]…I have no idea…
J: A fetish is something that’s required for you to orgasm.
R: Yeah.
A: No.
J: People misuse the word “fetish” all the time.
T: Um…
J: The clinical, psychological definition of the word fetish, like a shoe fetish…
A: Do you think it’s sort of like…
J: …it’s you absolutely need a shoe to bring on an orgasm.
A: Is, I mean like, the word, sort of like… Is it sort of like how people misuse it, like it’s changed, like the word “gay” has changed over time? Like…
T: “Gay” used to mean “happy” and “energetic” and all that kind of stiff, and now it means that you’re…
A: Yeah. Do you mean fetish…
J: [mumble] word…
R: Yeah, the English language is constantly evolving…
T: Well… my defin-definition is it’s… going outside of normal, the society’s uh, “normal”…
A: Like someone with a mohawk or something…? Like that would be… a fetish for somebody?
T: Mmnnaahh…
A: Like, do you just mean like…
T: Kind of a clothing fetish, like a style fetish itself, but either way, like… I-I don’t find it as like, something that you just wear… well, I don’t--I’m making no sense right now…never mind.
A: [giggle] [pause] Wait, what was the question?
[pause]
T: There wasn’t really a question…
A: Oh. [giggle]
R: So there’s the “normal” then there’s “deviants.” That’s kind of what we are…
A: Yeah.
R: Not to say “sexual deviants,” or anything. Just, deviants.
A: We don’t want to do normal…
T: But at the same time, I do like wearing some Lolita clothing, that’s more Ero-Lolita as opposed to like, sweet Lolita, I do appreciate both aspects of that. Using it as more… sexual terminology as opposed to, just dress style. I use it both ways, so. I’m not sure, really, I don’t think you do it, that way or… I’m not really sure or…
R: I don’t see it as a fetish. I see it as a style…
A: I’m actually scared to death of like, looking, like, I wish I could look like everyone else, like if everyone else started suddenly wearing Lolita, like even the men… male-version… If everyone walked around like this I’d probably be happier. Like, I wanna fit in, I just really like this… [giggle] Don’t know if anyone else is with me on that, but… Like, do you guys get like, scared being different sometimes? Like…
R: You know…
A: Ever since I was like, a little kid like, I really…
R: No, I get scared…
A: …don’t like being like, around people that I don’t know like, I think I just explored this but, if I’m like, by myself, even if I’m not dressed weird, like, and I walk down a like, aisle at the grocery story and someone comes down like, the other end, I’ll just walk away and go in a different, like, I cannot handle people in, in public, like, I don’t--I can’t handle… [nervous giggle]
T: I don’t like, as I said before, I don’t dressing up Lolita all by myself. I feel very, very uncomfortable because, it does attract a lot of attention. And I really don’t care for that type of attention. It’s not that I don’t want attention, it’s I don’t want that type of attention. Like, I don’t want people honking when I’m walking… I-I-I absolutely despise that type of attention, I hate it.
R: I get, I get honked at even if I’m dressed normally.
T: Well that, so do I , and I …
A: I think I’d run into a tree if people were staring…
T: …I don’t like it at all. It creeps the hell out of me. It’s like, “Why are you honking at me? I’m not trying…” I mean, I understand if I do dress up, that people are gonna honk at me, but I still don’t like it. I really don’t.
H: Just changing the subject again, um, compared to like, just like area, um, like, area-groups, like this, like the Oregon community, or whatever. Like, how different do the communities like, vary?
A: Go West coast!
R: West coast yeah!
[laughing]
J: Really big area differences, or do you mean like, smaller group differences, or like…
A: Like the United States… bigger groups…
H: Um, like, yeah, is there, is there a change between like…
A: There actually is a stark difference I think…
H: How much, yeah, like, the style, like, sweet Lolita seems more popular around here, but is like, gothic Lolita more popular like, on the East coast, or…?
A: In America it seems like sweet Lolita…
H: You know…
J: Sweet’s kind of dominating.
R: Yeah.
A: It used to be gothic. Like when I first started, I was so scared to do sweet cuz everyone was like, “Whoa! Gothic!”
T: Because of Malice Mizer and all like, all of that…
R: Mana-sama, wai-wai! [high voice]
[laughing]
R: Don’t hit me, I… sorry…
A: You’re like, “I had to do it.”
T: Well I guess, it’s also, so like, there seems like in Japan per say, there’s a lot more men that dress up Lolita, like in more… like…
A: That’s just people’s boyfriends like, that they drag along… Like, if I forced Jason to dress up for something, and just give him like, a dress shirt and tie, and be like, “There, you’re stylish.”
R: Oh God, that reminds me, I’ve gotta post those pictures of Spork… I took pictures of her with this skirt…with a [inaudible]…
A: Oh Lord.
R: She, she looks like a cross dresser.
T: That looks like Kim…
A: Probably… I have a picture of my best friend going, “Jeepers!” It looks ridiculous. But like, I guess back to the question, there is am I mean I know that people will always be biased towards what they like, they’re always gonna be biased towards liking themselves, and their friends, better than somebody else, but…
J: But we’re the best…
[giggling]
A: Yeah, uh for… To be perfectly honest, there are several really large Lolita groups across the United States. There’s New York, there’re several groups in California, I think there’s New Jersey, there’s a couple interspersed in the middle. And no, I’m not good at geography, so they get to be in the middle… Um, there’s Chicago, Chicago’s the only one I can think of but… To be actually perfectly honest, coordination wise… [Renee shows her a picture on her phone] Oh good lords, Spork looks crazy… [giggling] She looks like a paper doll! Um… but coord-coordination wise, like if you actually break down people’s outfits, like, we meet all these people. These gr-different groups post pictures on the internet, and if you actually break them down and have an objective eye, I think girls from Oregon and parts of California actually do have the best like, sense of style. And not even saying myself necessarily, just… a l-like a lot of people on the West coast and the middle, they don’t really seem to think of fashion. Just more as, “I’m not gonna do my make-up, I’m not gonna do my hair, I’m just gonna put on a, a dress and be really serious about it.”
R: And wear black shoes with everything.
A: It’s not that they don’t look good… It’s just, I think… [mumbling] Yeah, just, it’s people all, anywhere, but the West coast, I think it’s honestly… The internet gives a lot of like, internet spreads information quite well, but there’s still a language barrier, so I think we’re actually getting people coming over onto our coast, directly first. So we have… a better look at the style, just because we’re closer to Japan than they are… I mean, it’s just geographical…
R: I mean, we have a lot more Japanese influence over here…
A: I mean, you know what I’m talking about…
T: Yeah.
A: Like, you guys are U of O town, there’s tones of Asian people there…
T: Well, when I got to New York, I went to a convention there when I was 16, and there was a lot of Lolitas there.
A: I don’t know if any of the Lolitas that you would’ve seen then are active now…
T: No, I don’t think they probably would be. Cuz most of them were a little bit older than me, but it seemed more gothic, but that is also like…
A: It was different back then…
T: …6 years ago.
[pause]
H: What about, what about from America and Japan? Like, like as, as with style, like, I know that a lot more… um…
A: They’re free-er.
H: Yeah, like, more free or like, is there a lot of like, strictness over here and like…
R: The Japanese are definitely more into their brands, I think…
A: It’s like, they almost seem more serious about buying brand, but like, they’ll break Lolita rules all the time…
T: You know, they’ll also alter their stuff…
R: Yeah.
J: But they’re…
T: I mean, Americans, Americans don’t seem to alter their clothing as much, and make it more individual. They just kind of, wear it straight off the shelf…
A: I wish like, walking down the street here, you don’t see very many interesting people, but in Japan you would…
T: Not now…
A: I think they just… They’re so subjugated, in their… I guess Monday through Friday life, that they have to supplimate something else to make them happy on the weekends. At least, that always reminds me that they have to be absolutely crazy.
T: But even so, I’ve heard that it’s also been going down like, it’s not thi-as popular as it used to be. This is also second-hand information but…
A: I heard that too, and I don’t know why…
T: I might have heard if it from you… I this was at Kumoricon when I heard it…
A: Hmmm…
[pause]
T: I wish that… there weren’t so may elitists…
H: Do you…
A: Yeah…
H: Do you, do you like to mix different like, Lolita styles, like, I dunno, like, a classic top with a like, a sweet bottom?
R: Oh yeah!
[inaudible talking over each other]
R: I wore these shoes with my sweet skirt…
H: Yeah…
J: I totally casualled up my outfit. I didn’t even really, you know, dress to the nines or anything, but like…
A: And you still look cute!
J: Well thank you! [giggling] But e-even if I’m not doing Lolita, I can stiff incorporate a skirt into my outfit, you know, not wearing petticoats, and you know, it would work, big pleats, or something, but you know, isn’t exactly by the book Lolita, but I can still incorporate it into my everyday outfit. In that case, yeah, I’ll wear that on a daily basis. But, you know, dressing up to the nines, I don’t, you know, do that everyday, but I can, you know, mix and match different things into my normal wardrobe.
T: 4:20!
H: Pshh… I don’t know you… [giggle] um…
T: What I do?
A: [giggle]
H: Do you like, do you guys get together for like, group, group birthdays and stuff or like…
R: We did…[mumble]
A: Oh yeah.
H: Or special stuff for like, birthdays or holidays or whatever…?
A: Sometimes we do…
R: I think we should have a Christmas meet-up this year…
A: Oh, that would be really, really fun…
J: I’m going to be gone for Christmas…
A: No!
R: Nooo!
A: Why?
J: Sorry!
R: How could you?
J: We’re going out of state…
A: Oh, your, your mister?
J: Yeah…
A: Like, wait, wait, when are you leaving? We could always do it before…
J: We’re leaving… I’m leaving December 19th?
A: Oh we could have it like two weeks before…
R: What we could do is we could do uh, the lighting of the tree…
A: Oh!
R: We could get together that day…
A: That’d be nice… Sorry, we’re like, making our plan… [laughing]
H: Well, well it’s nice to see how, how you like, figure out these things, you know like, do you plan things on the spot, or do you like to have like, at least a month in advance before you like…?
A: We usually like a bit in advance.
R: We, we need it in advance, because there’s so many of us and we work, we go to school, we have lives outside of Lolita…
A: And a lot of us don’t live in like, Portland…
J: Yeah.
A: Or if we do it’s like you guys [Renee and Jen]. It’s like, an outlying area… and now me too, but…
H: Yeah.
A: But even if…
H: Do you always get together in Portland? Or do you get together elsewhere too?
A: Sometimes we get together here and drive. Like when we were, we like, our friend Ruby, she is the one that is violently ill and vomiting her guts out, so she couldn’t come today but… She just invited everyone to stay at one of her parent’s beach houses, because they like to resell houses, so they’re really rich and have like, super, super fancy houses. And we just spent the night… [gasps] I just thought of another inside joke! I just thought of another inside joke, sorry…
R: Oh my gosh! [laughing]
H: Okay, try to remember it.
A: Okay, we watched, we were watching a couple movies there, at her beach house, the night that we spent. And we watched the movie Cube. Well one of the people…
R: Who died first?!
J: [whines]
A: Who died first?! There’s who died first, that, Renee, like, texted me after she’d left and asked who got killed first, so… I kind of hurt her…
R: You totally ignored… [mumble]
A: I hurt her with that joke forever. But there’s a mentally challenged guy in the uh, film, and the film is just like, all these, the whole movie takes place in like the same room as this cube, and uh, there’s essentially traps set that’re, picking off all the expendable characters ‘til the end of the movie. And the retarded guy, oh excuse me, mentally challenged, to be politically correct, uh, he sees like, he acts kind of dumb but, he almost like, he kind of helps them with some of the trapped rooms. And one of the rooms was like, voice activated, and he got--if you made a sound, you would like, get cut in half or something. And they open the room and he goes, “Traaaap!” in a really retarded voice, and then it like, it launches the uh, trap or whatever, and they’re like, “Oh gee, like, thanks dude!” But like, the whole time they’re like, fuckin’ afraid that while they’re going through that room he’s going to be like, “Traaaap!” and they’re all gonna die. So Jen’s sister Ashley came up with that one, now suddenly she’ll just walk in and go, “Traaaap!” [laughing] Okay, anyway…
R: Wow.
A: But yea, I remember. It would go…
J: That cabin’s at Canon Beach…
A: Yeah we went to visit Canon Beach, where her beach house was, and, I think that was actually our first… Other than when you [Jen] and Ashley spent the night at my house, I think that was the first uh, overnight trip we’ve had? But I don’t know, I feel comfortable with all of you guys, like…
R: Yeah.
A: You guys [Renee and Jen], I know you about as well as I know you guys [Holly and Tamara]. So it’s like, yeah…
R: I think so too!
[giggling]
J: To answer like, that question, most of our meet-ups, yeah, we’ve had in Portland, but we have had some destination meets, like that Canon Beach trip, or when we went to Enchanted Forest, we’ll bail in there and…
R: We’ll drive there.
A: No, we walked. [giggling] All the way there.
R: Took a while, but we got there…
A: Ten years later…
T: And a couple of outfits later…
A: Um…
[pause]
H: Do you, do you like to wear your clothes so that you can see like, every single layer that you’re wearing? Like, just to show it? Or…
A: I do that outside of Lolita. [laughs]
H: Like, you know, you know what I mean. or do you just wear like, some like, underneath, just, just to like, make it poof out, or… do you like to see the petticoat underneath or…?
A: It’s okay if it’s a necklace… [mumbling]
J: I don’t like to see the petticoat. And I try to keep everything covered.
A: That’s like the one thing I don’t want people to se is my, my under, under, whatever’s under the skirt.
T: For me, I like to have my petticoat shown. If it’s a good quality like, the petti--I-I make my own petticoats, and like, I’d like, gone through the effort of dyeing my petticoats to match my dress. And so for me like, I don’t mind my petticoat showing like, just a little bit of lace underneath the dress, cuz I think that looks really cute. And maybe having some of the bloomer, a little bit of the lace show, but not anything else. Like, I don’t wanna have like, the wind blow up and my petticoat, my skirt to be so short that you see everything.
R: Oh yeah.
J: I’ll make underskirts for layers, but I don’t like petticoats showing, and I don’t’ like my bloomers showing, or anything like that…
A: I think if it was like, a stylistic outfit, and the point was like, do you have really cute bloomers or something that were pink and polka dot, like maybe that was the point of the picture or something. But I dunno. Mine are gross, so I wouldn’t want to show that. If they were cute and you… [mumble, inaudible]
R: I like having really cute bloomers, and I would never want to show them… like normally. Like if the wind blew up, I want to be cute, just, you know, “Look, they’re not disgusting.” But I don’t like having then shown underneath skirts. I think the focus is the skirt, and the next focus down should be socks and shoes. I don’t like that in between bloomer-showing-out-under-the-skirt thing. I don’t like it.
T: I really don’t share your guy’s troubles at all. [giggling] I’m a show off. I, I will flash people when I’m wearing Lolita, just so that they’ll see my bloomers…
A: I thought you said you don’t like being flashed?
T: I-I mean I have no problems with doing that, I think it’s just utterly cute. At Kumoricon I flipped up my skirts and had other Lolitas uh, spanking me, so I mean… [giggling]
A: How disturbing, oh wait, I remember that…
T: Yeah. [giggling] I had her stepping on my back with her shoes…
A: Oh [mumble]…
T: So, I’m a little bit different in that aspect I guess.
A: Yeah.
H: I dunno, any closing, closing shots…
A: [mumble]…that ugly lady in the background…
H: Dude! Heh, Ashlee.
[laughing]
A: What did you say? Any outfit…?
T: Totally ugly…
H: Any closing shots, or closing statements? Or anything you wanna say or…?
[pause] [we all kind of looked at Jen, who made a panicked expression]
[laughing]
R: You [Jen] looked like you were going to say something so we all looked at you.
J: I know!
T: Even more so than wearing it I love designing Lolita.
H: Yeah.
T: That’s my main passion besides just wearing, is designing it and having people wear it. Like Ashlee for instance, I want Ashlee to wear my Lolita clothes. So I make ‘em.
J: I, I kind of agree with that, in that, in the creative outlet sense, because it is something…
T: It’s time to make a dress. [whisper]
J: Exactly! It’s, it’s something fun to pass the time. But, only when I’m in the right mood for it. Cuz if I sew too much, I get sick of it and then it’s no fun, it’s more of a chore to finish something. And I hate that.
T: Do you sew by hand or by machine?
J: Oh by machine. No way in hell would I do it my hand.
[laughing]
R: I’d cry.
T: I did two of my dresses by hand…
J: I’d cry too.
A: I’d probably put myself out of my misery and cram the needle into my temple and die.
[laughing]
R: I think um, Lolita has definitely been a changing force in my life. To start caring about how I looked, myself… uh, I’ve had issues with self-esteem in the past, and this has really boost my self-esteem, and I really appreciate that. I love designing them, I don’t, I can’t just, sew as much as I probably should, but I just love making these plans. And trying to incorporate it into everyday life, you know, it’s really been great for me.
J: I’m kind of in agreement with that, as well, in terms of, it’s really made me, think more about coordination and about, you know, presenting yourself well. Because, you know, prior to my getting into Lolita, yea, I had a feminine style. Um, but I didn’t really care a lot about how I presented myself. I would be like, “Alright, I wanna put of a sweater and a skirt; a sweater and jeans, whatever.” And now, I’m a lot more focused on, you know, proper coordination of colors, making an interesting outfit.
A: Yeah.
J: Something that’s nice to look at, maybe not over the top, maybe not really attention getting, but something nice to look at. Instead of just being in random jeans and T-shirt walking around. It has healthy effects to have a fashion sense, I’d never had that before.
A: I think I actually like, got into Lolita like, because like, I think I didn’t care about the way I dressed until like, I mean, you know, like this was like, the last part of like senior year of high school I suddenly…
T: No…
A: …started--or was it junior year?
T: No, it was junior year.
A: Okay, junior year. But like, partway through high school I just randomly started…
T: It was when the Japanese uh, exchange uh, students came over, you started layering…
A: A girl had a furry coat and I was like, “That is the coolest shit I’ve ever seen.” It was actually like, the Japanese kids that made me wanna dress…
T: Cuz pretty much Ashlee went from being a complete and utter “I don’t care about my appearance, I don’t do anything to actually like…”
A: Like, “look at me look at me look at me,” but like…
T: Yeah.
A: Ever since then like, I’ve been really into coordinating outfits, and then I saw Lolita as something that was like, had distinctive rules for coordination or whatever. I was like, “Oh yay, something that’s like, the same as what I’m doing now.” So…
H: Well, all of these like, “distinctive rules” for like, coordination and stuff. Like, you say they’re like, rules, but are there…
A: Well it’s sort of like…
H: Like, they’re not like, written down… or anything you know?
A: You, you can break--you can still be a Lolita, even if you break them. It’s just like, like a general sweet Lolita would be like, pastel colors, probably a dress with a print, you want it to stop about 2 inches above the knee…
T: You wanna wear a blouse underneath… You don’t wanna be showing off your skin…
A: Yeah, like with a jumper skirt, you wanna cover your--I don’t know why they want, want you to cover your shoulders up, but, maybe it just looks better… you probably want to wear… like there’s not like, that much of a stigma against ankle socks, but like…
R: I think they look trashy…
A: Well, most people just like, they wear socks that like, end right at the bottom of your knee, so like, the only part of your skin that is showing is generally part of your arms… And then like, around 2 or 3 inches around your knees. And then, oh, always wear bloomers, that’s apparently a rule too.
T: I’m breaking it…
A: As I’ve learned before, I didn’t used to like bloo-actually I hate them. But these skirts tend to fly up in the wind really easy, and then people go, “Ahuh… I saw your junk…” [giggles] And you’re like, “Okay, ehehe…”
R: Guess I’m wearin’ bloomers!
A: Yup.
R: I started wearing bloomers under all of my skirts now. It just--I feel more comfortable with then there.
A: Nice.
T: Going back to the clothing, I guess one thing is that… I had a problem dressing girly. Because, forever I was a tomboy. I would not wear pink, I hated pink, I loathed pink, I loathed wearing anything girly… And then suddenly, it was really awesome that, just for like, a day or two out of like, the month, I would dress so utterly girly if would want to make me vomit. And that makes me really happy.
A: Urrrgh [barfing noises]
[giggling]
R: Yeah, I, I was one of those people who used to wear like, a Nike T-shirt and those uh, pants that are made out of the same material that tents are, and I would always feel gross, maybe like, “I feel so terrible about myself… Why?!”
A: Whyyyy?!
R: Oh, maybe that’s the reason. Cuz I don’t like the way I look.
T: I wore jeans and a black sweatshirt all throughout high school, cuz people made fun of how I looked, and I was told I was too small, underdeveloped, and that I looked like I was 12. That’s another reason why I like to wear Lolita, because I can look young, and I don’t care. I finally look my age with the Lolita clothing on. Or I look the age that people think I am…
[pause]
H: Anything else?
J: Mmm, no.
R: No.
H: Think we’re good? Okay. Thank you guys!
A: Uh huh!
J: Thank you!
R: You too!
H: Group interview by Holly Olson with Ashlee Foster, Tamara Fleck… on October 26th, 2008 in Pioneer Square Mall in Portland Oregon.
H: Kay, so I’m going to start out with just kind of going around the circle I guess and um, just, how did you find out about Lolita fashion and how did you get involved with that? [pause] I don’t know, who wants to start? Umm…
A: I’ll do it. Um, I was looking on the internet for a present for my friend’s--for her birthday, and a random website, website in Japanese popped up and it was a website for a brand store called Baby The Stars Shine Bright, and it was a Lolita brand company, and I remember when I first looked at it I really wanted something from it. But after a little Google-translating the prices for how much stuff cost I was like, “Holy shit! 350 dollars for a dress, no fuckin’ way, dude.” And I was in high school then, so I didn’t really have the money, but… that’s when I first found out about it. Later I ended up buying stuff obviously. [laughs]
T: Umm… I discovered Lolita through anime. I was looking at the different mangas, and there’s, I don’t remember her name, but she’s a very, she draws a lot of Lolita, she’s one of the most acclaimed Lolita drawers, uh… artists actually.
A: [laughs] “Drawers.”
T: Yeah, “drawers.”
[giggling]
T: Umm… I just like cute things. And it matches with tea parties. So, it just kind of seems… really easy to me, why I like it.
J: Ok, so this is really embarrassing, but I thought that Lolita was ugly! [laughing] Horrible, horrible, because I’d seen what, you know, now I know is not really Lolita stuff you know. Really awful looking things, nasty stuff, and I thought it was terrible! But after I kind of came out, I saw it pop up online here and there, and I saw actual cute things. And I was like, “This is really adorable. So, I love to sew, so I started making my own kind of stuff. My sister used to make fun of me for it, she thought that I was crazy for putting all these ruffles and frills on dresses and what not. But she started to get into it too! And, uh, then we started going to meets and that’s how I met up with everybody. That’s why I’m a Lolita.
R: Mine’s actually--[noise]--Mine’s actually a little bit longer of a story, I think. Uh, I’ve been into manga and anime for a really long time, like when I was in middle school, so it’s been over like, 10 years now, so, um. And I used to think that Lolita was just awful looking! Cuz there was all the black and white you’d see in like, cosplay magazines, and stuff…
A: Oh God… [mumble]
[giggling]
R: Just so bad! And my friend just, she kept talking about it and next, all of my friends were talking about it. I’m like, “Oh, okay, I suppose I could do cosplay of this.” I’m really into cosplay. I’m like, okay, let’s do some con-concept cosplay, in Lolita, of Alice in Wonderland, and that’s when I started Lolita stuff and I wanted to do more classic theme, which is when I discovered the Mary Magdalene website, and Victorian Maiden, and I absolutely fell in love with classic Lolita. [pause] I’m a sweet Lolita now, but that’s just because it’s easier to get sweet Lolita than it is to get classic things like… hmm… [noise] That’s just kinda my story, just fell in love with classic.
H: Okay, so define like what… [nervous laughter] [pause] [laughing] So just define like, what a “meet” is…? Like, would you call this like, a “meet”? Like, go and do something or do you have like, a specific thing you do?
J: I feel this is a mini-meet.
A: There’s not too many of us, so it’s like… like, to me I think that like, uh, like a real like, meet-meet would be like, when we go to like an amusement park or something like that. Like when we went to, what was it called? Uh… not Oak’s Park, but in Salem…
J: Enchanted Forest?
A: Yeah, Enchanted Forest.
R: Yeah, Enchanted Forest was a big meet.
A: Like, there was probably like, I don’t know, almost ten of us? Or something there?
R: Yeah.
A: I’d call that a meet. Like when we go like, specifically go out to see a movie or go to an amusement part, or go over to OMSI. That would be a meet, but it really doesn’t… I dunno. I wouldn’t call two or three of us getting together a meet, that’s just like, friends hanging out.
J: A mini-meet!
[giggling]
A: But, I think that if you didn’t know the people, two people meeting would be a meet if you didn’t know them, it sort of changes. Status quo.
R: Then it’s just friends getting together, dressing up.
A: Yeah. [laughs]
H: Do you dress up all the time? Like, I know that Ashlee doesn’t all the time… No, but like, like every time you go out, or just for special occasions, or…
J: For me, Lolitas more of a weekend deal. Uh, it’s really not practical to ride all the way to school--I’ve got to deal with a lot of public transportation, and it’s just not practical enough to go to the University, dressed up… I do dress pretty feminine. I wear a lot of skirts when the weather permits, but I don’t go all out with petticoats, ruffles, accessories, I keep it pretty simple…
A: Good answer girl!
J: Woohoo!
[laughter]
T: For me, when I go out, I wanna go to do tea parties.
A: Like, your own Lolita tea parties.
T: Yeah, pretty much. I’m a tea party person. I would love to go, dressing up, and having an extravagant tea, where you have the tea, then you have the course, where its uh… container…
A: Those, those little…
T: Like that’s got the…
A: …things with the trays.
T: Yeah, it’s got trays of like, little sandwiches and cookies. And for the tea, you have all these different types of tea, like a classic Victorian tea party. That’s really what I like to do, dress up for.
R: I-I-I agree with Jen, more of a weekend deal for me. I do like dressing up whenever I can, I mean, I paid a lot for these things, so I might as well use them. Uh, I work full-time, and I, I’m an art student, so it’s not like I can wear these expensive dresses to go paint. That… that would just be terrible. Um, I have worn it to school before, usually on the days where I can… But I like to dress semi-normally, usually, and then I just wear my Lolita accessories with it.
A: Mmhmm.
R: Cuz, that’s just…
H: Do you… do you guys all own jeans?
R: Oh yes.
J: Oh yeah.
T: Yeah.
A: Yeaaaahhhh, like this pair… lots.
R: I wear my Lolita shoes with my jeans all the time.
A: Same.
J: You can tell when I’m having a bad day, cuz that’s the jean day. That’s when I roll out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and roll out the door.
R: Yeah.
A: Yeah.
H: What do you guys all do like, for, for a living? So you, you work and you’re a student [Renee], and…
R: Uh, yeah, I’m taking a little bit of a break from school right now to reevaluate what I want to do, um, with my degree when I graduate. Um, right now I’m working at this certain chocolate store. [giggling] I can’t really say which one according to my contract, but, I sell chocolate 40 hours a week.
[giggling] [inaudible joking about liking chocolate and the “script” pitched to customers]
J: I’m the exact opposite. I quit my full-time job to go back to school. [laughing] And I’m doing temp-jobs here and there, um. But I’m a full-time student now.
H: What’s your major?
J: Biology. [someone repeats: “Biology?”]
T: Um, I go to school full-time and I have a part-time job… And I work with children. Which means that I really can’t dress out of common like…
A: [inaudible]-like people. [giggles]
T: Everyone like, assumes that you’re just gonna dress pretty normal, cuz you don’t wanna dress too out of um, I don’t know…
A: The parents might think it’s weird… [inaudible]
T: Well, it’s just like, it’s out of the norm and since you’re waning to have children grow up pretty normally, dressing in Lolita to work would not be a good idea. Um, and I’m an artist, I’m gonna be a fashion major, but… I’m not going to art school yet.
[pause]
A: OH, uh… Well, I used to go to school full-time, and have a full-time job, but then, I’m not going to school right now because life did not get along, so essentially right now I have no job, and I’m not going to school, so I’m just doing a few modeling jobs and selling handmade jewelry and stuff, but… I forgot what the question was.
H: What’s your occupation?
A: Oh, right. Yeah so, I’m just essentially hand-making jewelry and selling it right now. It’s pretty bank though, actually. [laughs]
T: Are you actually able to like, make a decent amount of money doing that?
A: Yeah, I mean, I haven’t made anything for a couple, like um, about a month, because it’s really--the stuff I’m making right now is sort of--I can only really sell it to each market, and people are kind of sick of it cuz it’s really really popular. But um… I’ll be making more later, but when I was making it, for like 3 or 4 months, I was getting like, at least like three hundred dollars a month by making it. [pause] Which, I mean, it’s not that much, but it’s more than I ever made at Forever 21. And I don’t have stupid men as a boss…
T: And you’re your own boss… [say “boss” together]
A: Yeah, so…
H: So, I, I dunno like, I guess in a fraction, how much of your wardrobe is made, or have you made, and how much have you bought? Like, that includes like, accessories and stuff like that. Like, if you make accessories [Ashlee] and you make clothes [Tamara] and you make clothes [Jen]. [pause, a couple “yeah”s] I dunno.
A: Renee, you wanna start?
R: Sadly, most of my sewing energy goes into cosplay. Uh, I think I’ve only done one or two skirts, I’m planning a full-on jumper soon but… I think I bought most of my wardrobe. Like 20% of my wardrobe is handmade. I wanna improve that number, but …
J: Right now, um, I make pretty much all… a good 80% of my stuff.
A: You’re a damn good seamstress. [Jen laughs] It always looks like brand. Like when I first saw you it’s like, “Where did she buy that, I’ve never seen that before.”
T: Did you make that? [points to Jen’s top]
J: This one I didn’t, no. this one I’ve actually, this is just something I’ve had lying around. [pause] But um, I, I buy more blouses than I make, because blouses are really time-intensive. But um. I think I have yeah, I have one brand jumper skirt, that’s it, the rest I’ve just made. And um, accessories I’ll always buy. I don’t have what it takes to be crafty, in that sense. I, I, the fine detail work that goes into beading and anything like that… no. [giggling] I’ll make what I can sew, but that’s it.
T: I guess you’d call me a beginner in Lolita cuz I actually don’t have many, or I don’t spend my money on Lolita. I have not purchased anything. I have nothing brand. I’ve made all of my dresses. Or, I’ve been donated like, some bloomers, and some socks, and all, but… I make everything I wear. I like it like that. I’m not really for brand.
[pause]
H: Um… I had another question to change around…
R: And, in response to her [Tamara], my--brand’s kind of my motivation, like, working as much, the thing keeping me going is that fact that I have a dress on the way. It’s really hard for me to find any kind of motivation since I found it. It, it feels really good.
A: Yeah. I’m like, of the opposite of Jen. Like, everything--I don’t sew anything, but like, almost all of my accessories are like, handmade.
[pause]
T: Well, see, what I like is that, I like putting my paycheck, when I can buy fabric, buying fabric that I really want to make my dress, and then I make the dress with the fabric that I want. I also do silk-screening, so I can silkscreen individual items onto my dresses to make then even more like, different from what ever-everyone else is doing. So that’s kind of my motivation, to buy art supplies with my money to make more Lolita, or to make more clothing in general.
A: I live for the brands.
R: I like brand…
J: Me too.
R: I only, I don’t buy anything that doesn’t have a print on it. Right now…
J: And that’s really the smart way to go, I think, personally…
A: Cuz it’s like the, it’s like, you can make something pretty like that without a print on it, but I’m not going to buy something like that from a brand because… I dunno.
R: I have screen printing supplies, I just haven’t really gotten around to using it yet. But…
T: Give me… [funny voice]
[laughing]
R: No way!
A: Aww, come on! [laughs]
R: No, but yeah, sorry, it’s all in… Buying brand is usually for the print. Like, oh, a print came out that I really really like, like this one I ordered, immediately when I saw it. I just loved it.
J: And the quality is really good too.
R: Yes.
A: Yeah, a lot of the… like, a lot of the brands like, they’ll sell something like, a plain color, but like, a really really interesting cut, or just something that’s really nice. But every so often like, interspersed between uh, something that’s fairly normal, they come out with--actually… all, all, all at once like, this actually uh, like really popular print, print, so this, but, like, you know, they’ll come out with something that’s like, a “coveted” print, then everyone wants it and it sells out in like, a day.” [giggles]
T: For me, prints are a big deal, but I… don’t like… prints and stuff--the print that you’re wearing is… very, very… it’s not simple enough for me. I really like simple, simpler Lolita dresses as opposed to like…
A: You’d probably be a classic Lolita.
T: Yeah, well no… I lo-I really like sweet Lolita, I like all the different types of Lolita. I don’t like larger prints or prints that aren’t like, really the same. Like that’s just… there’s just too much going on. I prefer just to have like, bunnies all over it, or the same print all over it. And like, not larger prints. I don’t look good with them.
H: On the topic of like, “looking good,” like, how do you decide like, what looks best, like the length of the skirt, or short sleeve versus long sleeve, or just… Or do you find that everything just kind of works well, or…
J: You put it on, and you look in the mirror…
R: Yeah.
[laughing]
J: And you try to , you try to be objective about it you know? You try to say, “Okay, well, if I got other people lookin’ at me, you know, how’s it gonna look?” And… [pause] I dunno, it depends on like, how you are on yourself. If you’re really hard on yourself, you might throw out a good outfit. But then again, if you think you look cute in everything, you might put together something that looks terrible… [laughing] So, I mean, you gotta be really careful about that. To be honest, like, [pause] I’m not very good at planning… And I often, I’ll plan to wear something, and throw it out completely and put something different on, because I just… I think it looks okay, in the mirror, and I’ll wear it out. But as far as coordinating and stuff goes, uh…
H: But like, how do you decide to buy something, like cut-wise, when if like, you can’t just put it on and figure out if you want to ever wear it?
J: If it looks good on a model, you hope that it looks good on you.
[laughing]
T: Well, in general, like, if you… Most Lolita dresses are based off of normal patterns, so if you know what type of dress looks good on you, then you know which types to… blah… to buy. Like, I don’t buy empire waists, I would never buy an empire waist, because it does not look good on me. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to buy a dress that’s too long, because… I, I’m very short. So if I buy a longer dress, it’s not going to look good on me, than a shorter dress.
J: That’s the exact opposite of me cuz…
T: You’re tall…
J: …they’re really short on me, because I’m tall, which is why a lot of the times that I just, yeah, I will make my stuff, because I can make it to the length that I want. It’s unfortunate when I really want something that is just, you know, way too short on me.
R: I buy according to gut feeling.
A: [laughs] Gut feeling…
R: Um, when I see it , and my heart starts pounding, I know that I want that.
T: Even if it doesn’t look the best on you, you still want it?
R: Oh, yeah. Um, it’s just…
A: [inaudible]
R: Usually they do look good, and if they don’t look good, I’ll eventually fall out of love with it, and sell it. And I can usually make my money back off of it because I do go on auction sites. Um… Two of my dresses are empire waists, I love empire waists. I actually wanted to buy a Mary Magdalene dress, it was so pretty…
T: Well, I love the way they look, it’s just I don’t think I…
R: …with strawberries… and it was red, oh it was beautiful, but I couldn’t… [laughing] Um… [pause] Yeah, look in the mirror, and really make that gut feeling appear, whether or not it looks good. If you look in the mirror and go, “Eh… Maybe not.”
A: That’s what I do every time I look at my face in the mirror… [laughing]… “Maybe not…” [giggling]
R: Yeah, like this morning, I seriously spent like, 10 minutes deliberating between one head bow and another… and then I had to change shoes, and I went back to the other one that I hadn’t wanted to wear.
A: That looks like a skeleton in that picture, not a model… sorry… [giggling]
R: But yeah, it really comes down to gut feeling for me.
H: Um, back to like, lifestyle, I guess. Do… I know that you two [Ashlee and Tamara] have boyfriends. Are you guys [Jen and Renee] like, involved with anyone or…?
J: I’m engaged.
H: Oh, you’re engaged?
A: Awww…!
T: See the big big ring sitting on her finger?
A: Bling-a-bling.
R: I feel so alone in this, cuz I’m asexual.
H: Uh huh.
A: She’s like Kim.
H: She’s like Kim?
T: Oh.
A: Uh, except, well, not quite. Kim’s like, sorry, like, raging--My best friend Kim is like, against sex… but like, you’re just like… meh…
R: It’s sex… I just…
T: Well see, the thing that’s interesting’s that…
R: …don’t see myself having it…
T: …you still want to look good, but Kim doesn’t care about that…
A: Oh yeah, that’s probably why--like…
T: Kim’s like…
A: See, Kim’s almost like a dyke, without the lesbian-ness… [giggling] She is! She’s just like…
R: I-I wanna look good for my own sake, not that I don’t--I don’t really care what other people think most of the time, but… When I stand in front of the mirror, I wanna look good to myself.
A: That’s kind of interesting that--it’s sort of like, if everyone in this mall disappeared except for us, I’d still wanna look cute.
J: Me too.
A: It’s like, I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks…
T: I don’t dress for anyone else but…
A: I know, except I want, I wanna look cute in front of me, and my friends that dress the same way, but nobody else… It’s like, I actually don’t… It’s, it’s like, I hear a lot of people saying like, even people in line, they probably said the same things to you guys too. Like, “If you don’t want so much attention in public, why do you dress up like that?” I personally think it’s for me, I actually don’t want anyone else looking at me. Like, if they just like, walked around like this [covers her eyes], I’d be happy.
T: Oh see like, I, I don’t mind if people look at me, but I don’t really want them commenting because… I’m just honestly dressing because I want to dress up, I’m not dressing up because I want people to comment on me, I’m just dressing up because I really like to dress this, dress this way. I don’t want to dress this way all the time because, in all honestly, I do feel a little awkward sometimes… If I’m the only one wearing a poofy dress. But, I really like to dress like this.
R: It feels awkward when you are alone in that… But you do feel good about it. If you… if you think you look good and…
A: Yeah, like, it’s just more of a…
R: It’s within your own interests. Like, if someone has a mohawk, they don’t really care if another person has a mohawk.
T: “Hey, it’s a mohawk.”
A: It’s sort of like… I mean, it’s not to be like… I don’t, I don’t personally care if anyone else wants to dr--like if people I see walking down the street, if they obviously don’t care about fashion… like, I don’t… think that’s my business, just like what I wear isn’t their business. But it’s sort of like, if someone were to like, sneer at you or like, make a comment, like, “Oh, what’s up, like, Little Bo Peep?” Or something, or like, when you can obviously tell they don’t like it, but they won’t make a comment on it. You know, they’re just standing there in like, ratty jeans and a ratty T-shirt, it’s like, why should you take what they say seriously? Obviously don’t have any type of like, fashion sense, like you do, so… E-e-even if they don’t like your specific style, it takes effort to coordinate something, and if it’s… balanced, and well color matched, and they just look like, shit, obviously their opinion doesn’t matter.
J: True…
H: Um… Changing the subject again, do you guys have any, like, inside jokes amongst your group?
[laughing]
R: Yeah…
A: Carl’s… Farts…
R: Carl’s Farts… Are you the real Ashlee Foster?
A: Do we explain them? Like…
H: Yeah.
A: We already explained Carl’s Farts earlier, but…
H: Explain it again.
A: …like, I had a…When I was, when I was moving like, me and my boyfriend used to live in the downtown area and we moved, and the day we, or the day before we moved, we had a moving party. And a bunch of friends--
Man: Are you guys chilling or just… are you tape-recording?
A: Yeah.
H: Yeah.
Man: At 6:05, there’s a fashion show, you’d be welcome, no charge.
A: Okay… [nervous laughter] Thanks… um… What was I saying? Okay! Um…
[giggling]
R: Carl’s Farts…
A: Carl’s Farts! Right! Okay, so I was having a party, just a, you know, moving party. Last day I was going to be in my apartment, and friends brought us a bunch of like, Japanese snacks over, and one of them was called like, was like, “Carl’s” brand”? Or something?
J: Yeah, the criteria to buying was… [laughing] I couldn’t figure out what it was, that was why I bought it, like… [laughing] I bought a whole bunch of just random stuff that had either Japanese writing, or English that didn’t make sense on it, and that was the criteria I had for buying…
A: And like, they-did they-they’re-I think they were like, supposed to be like, cheese flavored or something, I don’t know…
R: No, they were lightly-salted puffs or something like..
A: Oh yeah, lightly-salted like, puffed corn or something, some weird shit like that. But like… They tasted like… You know what I mean, like you don’t… it, they tasted like something smelled. What it sm-tasted like was a fart! And so… [laughing] We, we called them “Carl’s Farts” and now we… I just mention it at random, like any plain inside joke in all of existence, but uh…
[laughing]
R: And we kept passing it around, it’s like we couldn’t… it’s like, “Oh, I don’t like this, but I’m gonna have another one…”
[laughing]
A: Mm… Carl’s Farts… um… Another one I can think of off the top of my head is… There’s a website called Gaia Online… And you know…
T: [laughs]
A: You’ve got your profile, where people can look at your account, or say hi, or whatever, and someone posted a comment, because I’ve been in a couple issues of the Gothic and Lolita Bible [US version], and someone goes, “Oh my God! Are you the real Ashlee Foster?” And I replied like, “Noooo…” Just like, to see what they would do… [giggling] And they got all sad and uh… Jen’s sister Ashley, she , she’s not here right now, but she [pause] posted on, like again, like on the same page, like you know, making fun of that person, like, “Oh my God! Are you the real Ashlee Foster? Can I stick it in your pooper?” [giggling] And ever, ever since then, it’s “Are you the real…” add anything on, tack anything on the end of that and…
J: There’s also the Bible issue too. “Are you the real Ashlee Foster from the Gothic Lolita Bible?”
A: Oh yeah…
J: As opposed to what? The God Bible?
[laughing]
H: That’s kind of funny. [laughs]
A: I like that Ruby posted on my MySpace like, “Are you the real Ashlee Foster from like, the God Bible? Are you, like, are you Moses?” [laughing] And I posted back, “No, actually I’m God, sorry I didn’t tell you…
[laughing]
T: I still find it hilarious that, I was talking with some of my friends, and they mentioned to me that they saw you on Forchan and that they were asking if you were a boy instead of a girl… And the whole controversy whether Ashlee was a boy or whether she was a girl…
A: Noo…Tamara, not in public…
T: Sorry…
[giggling]
A: It’s probably… like, did I ever tell you guys [Jen and Renee], or like… I don’t, I don’t know if you guys are even, did I even know you during my like, “I am a boy” phase, or… whatever?
R: I don’t think so…
A: It was on For chan like, you--you met Kim like, she had like, gone to my account and like, didn’t know my uh…like that my computer was broken, and like, the day after she posted something, it like, she edited my signature, and put a really retarded picture of me in there going, “Urrgghh…” [giggling] I like, this weird dress, and it said like, “Hurhur… I’m a boy,” in the signature or whatever? And uh… the day after that, her computer broke, so neither of us had internet for like, a week.
J: Oh no.
R: Oh my God.
A: So we were hanging out like, the whole week, and then I get back on and I see that and there’s like 500 comments on my profile… [laughing, wheezing] “Really??? Oh my God, you’re a boy…!” And then, just for the heck of it, we left it as my signature for like…
[laughing][
T: A long time…
A: Forever… I never-And I never actually ever said I was a boy, like in the… like if I conversed on the forums I never said I was a boy. People would ask, “Are you a boy?” I’d say, “No, that’s a joke…” But still, just because of the one sentence in my signature, apparently everyone on the face of the planet and their mom is a gullible fuck. So… [giggling] I dunno… [giggling]
T: Hey, that’s actually a question… [pause] when you are--when we dress like Lolitas, does that also mean that we act different?
A: Like…
R/J/A: …Lifestyle?
T: Yeah, lifestyle.
R: Yeah…
T: Like, I don’t…
A: Some people choose to…
T: I don’t change the way I talk because I’m dressed in frilly stuff. I don’t… I still spit. I still hock a loogey and all that crap. I still act like myself. Even though I’m wearing Lolita, because I, I find it highly entertaining to spit in from to someone and then see--see them stare at me in like, my girly clothes, and just like, “Why’re you doin’ that? Aren’t you supposed to be really girly?” It’s like, [pause] I’m myself, wearing girls clothing.
A: It’s kinda weird like the… I guess… [snaps fingers] Not--it’s--I don’t think stigma’s the word… is it? …Or it’s just weird what people… expect from a, a set of clothing. It’s sort of like, if you saw someone running down the street really fast, and they were wearing this, what the fuck would you think? It’s like, take it off, put a jogging outfit on, suddenly it means something else. It’s like, we have uniforms for everything that we do… But, I don’t’ think that… like, cuz especially…
J: It’s more of a human issue than anything…
A: Yeah, but I-I think that like, your fashion choice doesn’t have to denote how you act… But, but I would actually feel nervous, like, jogging if I wasn’t wearing a “jogging uniform.” Cuz it’s like, people’d be like, “Holy shit! What they running from? Is it a fire or something?” I like, sometimes I think that like, I’ll see somebody running, and they’re not wearing a “jogging uniform” and I wonder what’s wrong, and then I realize that they’re jogging… [laughing]
H: Any other jokes or stories?
J: I’m trying to think of any…
A: There’ve got to be more…
R: There’s gotta be more, I’m sure that we just don’t realize what they are…
A: I think it’s only because “Are you the real Ashlee Foster” and Carl’s Farts are like, from the last month… and we remember it. We’ll forget in like, another month probably.
R: Do you remember this?! No, what are you talking about, weirdo…
A: Guh, who’s Carl? Ugh…
R: Why’s he farting?
[laughing]
J: Yeah…
H: Um…
A: Carl’s Farts…
[pause]
H: I lost it… [giggles]
A: Okay, I’m getting really creeped out by like, that person, who’s looking at us…
T: Do you mean the…
R: She thinks you’re beautiful…
A: She loves me… I like doing the creepy voice… [mumbling]
H: Does your group have any like, customs that you do, like, every time you get together or you do something…
A: Shoe shot!
R: Shoe shot and butt shot!
[laughing]
A: It’s like, where you…
R: But that’s more of a joke really…
A: The butt shot at least…
R: But some people do it seriously. We do it just like, “Let’s do a shoe shot!! Just for kicks!”
A: And a shoe shot, a shoe shot’s just like, speaking for the recorder…
R: Guys, we haven’t even done one yet…
J: God, yeah, we have to do a shoe shot!
A: …where we stick our like, put one foot in, and then in a circle, so like, all of our feet are in the camera frame, we just take a picture…
J: There’s also fringe…
A: That’s butt shot.
J: Butt shot with fringe shot…
A: The only reason “butt shot” exists is cuz, I think was originally a California group of lolitas that came up with shoe shot, and so then it was like, the Chicago lolitas that were like, “Yeah, well we’re gonna do butt shots…” And then… created a butt shot, and now people do butt shots too.
R: You do finger shots now too…
A: Yeah, I do finger shots. I don’t know if that really caught on though, cuz people don’t seem to wear, I’m not even wearing that much… Oh, and your recorder needs to know that a lot of this spreads via the internet. Cuz there’s hundreds of Lolitas that we probably all know, have accumulated that we all…
J: Yeah.
H: Yeah, like I was just going to ask… Like, do you know other groups like elsewhere?
T: Like, the LiveJournal stuff…
A: I don’t know what you wanted, like…
R: Hell yeah.
J: Yeah.
A: …Lolita communities or…
T: Yeah, I just wanna know like, where, like, the Portland community of Lolitas or maybe…
A: There’s no--there’s not a Portland, there’s like, an Oregon one.
T: Okay, or an Or-Oregon… and…
J: Orlolipops…
A: Orloli--lollipops…
R: Orlollipops…
A: Why did they name them that?
T: Okay, that just looks… Lol-if I were to look at “lollipops”…
A: It’s, it’s like… Wait, is it spelled like lollipops?
R: It’s like “Or-lollipops”… but I-I say it “Or-loli-pops,” cuz we’re lolis not lollies.
T: But lolis are…
[pause]
A: What?
T: [giggles]
A: Well, yes, there’s another meaning for it, but it’s like, in Japan the…
R: They’re called “Rori.” [in Japanese, R’s and L’s are basically the same]
A: Rori… and I guess Americans, since most of us can’t roll our R’s, it’s loli, but…
T: Yeah, cuz loli is little girls… I mean, not girls dressing up in little girls dresses, but little girls…
R: You know, it’s interesting because the reason why we are called “lolis” is because in Japan they had to mis--they had to change the spelling of “Rorita,” so that “Rori” and “Rorita” aren’t confused with each other… Cuz people would look it up online and be like, “Oh, I’m looking for Lolita…”
A: Didn’t it used to just be called Loli? Or… I have no idea…
R: “Gossu Rori” [Goth Loli] is the… Japanese word for it…
A: Well, also another abbreviation is…
J: …and abbreviated considerably… It’s a borrowed word…
A: I know a lot of people say like, “It’s not connected to the Nabokov novel.” But like, where else would Japan get… Like, I’ve always wondered, like no one, there’s no definite explanation for where that term came from, other than that book.
J: Yeah.
T: Yeah, that’s the thing is also, is that I’ve never read the book…
A: I, I think they just--the name, cuz it’s, it’s uh, it’s a Spanish name…
R: Yeah.
A: Maybe they just liked it, or maybe someone thought it was cute in school and they… I mean, it’s not supposed to be sexualized, but I’m pretty sure they stole that name from that book.
T: Um… I com--I completely and utterly disagree. For me, the Lolita fashion… Cannot be anything but a fetish…Not like a dirty fetish, but…
A: Well, I think some people, see it as a fetish…
T: I consider it… uh in…I mean, for young women, I would say… I know I’m 21, almost 22, and I’ve been dressing like this since I was about 19/20, that was the age group that I started. I think you don’t really do it much younger than maybe… 16 or something…
A: I’ve seen some 14 year olds doing it…
T: Well, I mean, the way I see it is that… Most Lolitas that I’ve known of are between late-teens, early-20s, up to maybe 24 or 25 or something like that. But if you’re wearing that type of clothing, and you’re making yourself look younger… Cuz that’s what it, that’s what it is to me, I feel as, as it’s a fetish… But not like a fetish, like a sexual fetish… Cuz fetishes don’t only have to be sexual…
A: Is like, is your definition of a fetish just like, [mumble]…I have no idea…
J: A fetish is something that’s required for you to orgasm.
R: Yeah.
A: No.
J: People misuse the word “fetish” all the time.
T: Um…
J: The clinical, psychological definition of the word fetish, like a shoe fetish…
A: Do you think it’s sort of like…
J: …it’s you absolutely need a shoe to bring on an orgasm.
A: Is, I mean like, the word, sort of like… Is it sort of like how people misuse it, like it’s changed, like the word “gay” has changed over time? Like…
T: “Gay” used to mean “happy” and “energetic” and all that kind of stiff, and now it means that you’re…
A: Yeah. Do you mean fetish…
J: [mumble] word…
R: Yeah, the English language is constantly evolving…
T: Well… my defin-definition is it’s… going outside of normal, the society’s uh, “normal”…
A: Like someone with a mohawk or something…? Like that would be… a fetish for somebody?
T: Mmnnaahh…
A: Like, do you just mean like…
T: Kind of a clothing fetish, like a style fetish itself, but either way, like… I-I don’t find it as like, something that you just wear… well, I don’t--I’m making no sense right now…never mind.
A: [giggle] [pause] Wait, what was the question?
[pause]
T: There wasn’t really a question…
A: Oh. [giggle]
R: So there’s the “normal” then there’s “deviants.” That’s kind of what we are…
A: Yeah.
R: Not to say “sexual deviants,” or anything. Just, deviants.
A: We don’t want to do normal…
T: But at the same time, I do like wearing some Lolita clothing, that’s more Ero-Lolita as opposed to like, sweet Lolita, I do appreciate both aspects of that. Using it as more… sexual terminology as opposed to, just dress style. I use it both ways, so. I’m not sure, really, I don’t think you do it, that way or… I’m not really sure or…
R: I don’t see it as a fetish. I see it as a style…
A: I’m actually scared to death of like, looking, like, I wish I could look like everyone else, like if everyone else started suddenly wearing Lolita, like even the men… male-version… If everyone walked around like this I’d probably be happier. Like, I wanna fit in, I just really like this… [giggle] Don’t know if anyone else is with me on that, but… Like, do you guys get like, scared being different sometimes? Like…
R: You know…
A: Ever since I was like, a little kid like, I really…
R: No, I get scared…
A: …don’t like being like, around people that I don’t know like, I think I just explored this but, if I’m like, by myself, even if I’m not dressed weird, like, and I walk down a like, aisle at the grocery story and someone comes down like, the other end, I’ll just walk away and go in a different, like, I cannot handle people in, in public, like, I don’t--I can’t handle… [nervous giggle]
T: I don’t like, as I said before, I don’t dressing up Lolita all by myself. I feel very, very uncomfortable because, it does attract a lot of attention. And I really don’t care for that type of attention. It’s not that I don’t want attention, it’s I don’t want that type of attention. Like, I don’t want people honking when I’m walking… I-I-I absolutely despise that type of attention, I hate it.
R: I get, I get honked at even if I’m dressed normally.
T: Well that, so do I , and I …
A: I think I’d run into a tree if people were staring…
T: …I don’t like it at all. It creeps the hell out of me. It’s like, “Why are you honking at me? I’m not trying…” I mean, I understand if I do dress up, that people are gonna honk at me, but I still don’t like it. I really don’t.
H: Just changing the subject again, um, compared to like, just like area, um, like, area-groups, like this, like the Oregon community, or whatever. Like, how different do the communities like, vary?
A: Go West coast!
R: West coast yeah!
[laughing]
J: Really big area differences, or do you mean like, smaller group differences, or like…
A: Like the United States… bigger groups…
H: Um, like, yeah, is there, is there a change between like…
A: There actually is a stark difference I think…
H: How much, yeah, like, the style, like, sweet Lolita seems more popular around here, but is like, gothic Lolita more popular like, on the East coast, or…?
A: In America it seems like sweet Lolita…
H: You know…
J: Sweet’s kind of dominating.
R: Yeah.
A: It used to be gothic. Like when I first started, I was so scared to do sweet cuz everyone was like, “Whoa! Gothic!”
T: Because of Malice Mizer and all like, all of that…
R: Mana-sama, wai-wai! [high voice]
[laughing]
R: Don’t hit me, I… sorry…
A: You’re like, “I had to do it.”
T: Well I guess, it’s also, so like, there seems like in Japan per say, there’s a lot more men that dress up Lolita, like in more… like…
A: That’s just people’s boyfriends like, that they drag along… Like, if I forced Jason to dress up for something, and just give him like, a dress shirt and tie, and be like, “There, you’re stylish.”
R: Oh God, that reminds me, I’ve gotta post those pictures of Spork… I took pictures of her with this skirt…with a [inaudible]…
A: Oh Lord.
R: She, she looks like a cross dresser.
T: That looks like Kim…
A: Probably… I have a picture of my best friend going, “Jeepers!” It looks ridiculous. But like, I guess back to the question, there is am I mean I know that people will always be biased towards what they like, they’re always gonna be biased towards liking themselves, and their friends, better than somebody else, but…
J: But we’re the best…
[giggling]
A: Yeah, uh for… To be perfectly honest, there are several really large Lolita groups across the United States. There’s New York, there’re several groups in California, I think there’s New Jersey, there’s a couple interspersed in the middle. And no, I’m not good at geography, so they get to be in the middle… Um, there’s Chicago, Chicago’s the only one I can think of but… To be actually perfectly honest, coordination wise… [Renee shows her a picture on her phone] Oh good lords, Spork looks crazy… [giggling] She looks like a paper doll! Um… but coord-coordination wise, like if you actually break down people’s outfits, like, we meet all these people. These gr-different groups post pictures on the internet, and if you actually break them down and have an objective eye, I think girls from Oregon and parts of California actually do have the best like, sense of style. And not even saying myself necessarily, just… a l-like a lot of people on the West coast and the middle, they don’t really seem to think of fashion. Just more as, “I’m not gonna do my make-up, I’m not gonna do my hair, I’m just gonna put on a, a dress and be really serious about it.”
R: And wear black shoes with everything.
A: It’s not that they don’t look good… It’s just, I think… [mumbling] Yeah, just, it’s people all, anywhere, but the West coast, I think it’s honestly… The internet gives a lot of like, internet spreads information quite well, but there’s still a language barrier, so I think we’re actually getting people coming over onto our coast, directly first. So we have… a better look at the style, just because we’re closer to Japan than they are… I mean, it’s just geographical…
R: I mean, we have a lot more Japanese influence over here…
A: I mean, you know what I’m talking about…
T: Yeah.
A: Like, you guys are U of O town, there’s tones of Asian people there…
T: Well, when I got to New York, I went to a convention there when I was 16, and there was a lot of Lolitas there.
A: I don’t know if any of the Lolitas that you would’ve seen then are active now…
T: No, I don’t think they probably would be. Cuz most of them were a little bit older than me, but it seemed more gothic, but that is also like…
A: It was different back then…
T: …6 years ago.
[pause]
H: What about, what about from America and Japan? Like, like as, as with style, like, I know that a lot more… um…
A: They’re free-er.
H: Yeah, like, more free or like, is there a lot of like, strictness over here and like…
R: The Japanese are definitely more into their brands, I think…
A: It’s like, they almost seem more serious about buying brand, but like, they’ll break Lolita rules all the time…
T: You know, they’ll also alter their stuff…
R: Yeah.
J: But they’re…
T: I mean, Americans, Americans don’t seem to alter their clothing as much, and make it more individual. They just kind of, wear it straight off the shelf…
A: I wish like, walking down the street here, you don’t see very many interesting people, but in Japan you would…
T: Not now…
A: I think they just… They’re so subjugated, in their… I guess Monday through Friday life, that they have to supplimate something else to make them happy on the weekends. At least, that always reminds me that they have to be absolutely crazy.
T: But even so, I’ve heard that it’s also been going down like, it’s not thi-as popular as it used to be. This is also second-hand information but…
A: I heard that too, and I don’t know why…
T: I might have heard if it from you… I this was at Kumoricon when I heard it…
A: Hmmm…
[pause]
T: I wish that… there weren’t so may elitists…
H: Do you…
A: Yeah…
H: Do you, do you like to mix different like, Lolita styles, like, I dunno, like, a classic top with a like, a sweet bottom?
R: Oh yeah!
[inaudible talking over each other]
R: I wore these shoes with my sweet skirt…
H: Yeah…
J: I totally casualled up my outfit. I didn’t even really, you know, dress to the nines or anything, but like…
A: And you still look cute!
J: Well thank you! [giggling] But e-even if I’m not doing Lolita, I can stiff incorporate a skirt into my outfit, you know, not wearing petticoats, and you know, it would work, big pleats, or something, but you know, isn’t exactly by the book Lolita, but I can still incorporate it into my everyday outfit. In that case, yeah, I’ll wear that on a daily basis. But, you know, dressing up to the nines, I don’t, you know, do that everyday, but I can, you know, mix and match different things into my normal wardrobe.
T: 4:20!
H: Pshh… I don’t know you… [giggle] um…
T: What I do?
A: [giggle]
H: Do you like, do you guys get together for like, group, group birthdays and stuff or like…
R: We did…[mumble]
A: Oh yeah.
H: Or special stuff for like, birthdays or holidays or whatever…?
A: Sometimes we do…
R: I think we should have a Christmas meet-up this year…
A: Oh, that would be really, really fun…
J: I’m going to be gone for Christmas…
A: No!
R: Nooo!
A: Why?
J: Sorry!
R: How could you?
J: We’re going out of state…
A: Oh, your, your mister?
J: Yeah…
A: Like, wait, wait, when are you leaving? We could always do it before…
J: We’re leaving… I’m leaving December 19th?
A: Oh we could have it like two weeks before…
R: What we could do is we could do uh, the lighting of the tree…
A: Oh!
R: We could get together that day…
A: That’d be nice… Sorry, we’re like, making our plan… [laughing]
H: Well, well it’s nice to see how, how you like, figure out these things, you know like, do you plan things on the spot, or do you like to have like, at least a month in advance before you like…?
A: We usually like a bit in advance.
R: We, we need it in advance, because there’s so many of us and we work, we go to school, we have lives outside of Lolita…
A: And a lot of us don’t live in like, Portland…
J: Yeah.
A: Or if we do it’s like you guys [Renee and Jen]. It’s like, an outlying area… and now me too, but…
H: Yeah.
A: But even if…
H: Do you always get together in Portland? Or do you get together elsewhere too?
A: Sometimes we get together here and drive. Like when we were, we like, our friend Ruby, she is the one that is violently ill and vomiting her guts out, so she couldn’t come today but… She just invited everyone to stay at one of her parent’s beach houses, because they like to resell houses, so they’re really rich and have like, super, super fancy houses. And we just spent the night… [gasps] I just thought of another inside joke! I just thought of another inside joke, sorry…
R: Oh my gosh! [laughing]
H: Okay, try to remember it.
A: Okay, we watched, we were watching a couple movies there, at her beach house, the night that we spent. And we watched the movie Cube. Well one of the people…
R: Who died first?!
J: [whines]
A: Who died first?! There’s who died first, that, Renee, like, texted me after she’d left and asked who got killed first, so… I kind of hurt her…
R: You totally ignored… [mumble]
A: I hurt her with that joke forever. But there’s a mentally challenged guy in the uh, film, and the film is just like, all these, the whole movie takes place in like the same room as this cube, and uh, there’s essentially traps set that’re, picking off all the expendable characters ‘til the end of the movie. And the retarded guy, oh excuse me, mentally challenged, to be politically correct, uh, he sees like, he acts kind of dumb but, he almost like, he kind of helps them with some of the trapped rooms. And one of the rooms was like, voice activated, and he got--if you made a sound, you would like, get cut in half or something. And they open the room and he goes, “Traaaap!” in a really retarded voice, and then it like, it launches the uh, trap or whatever, and they’re like, “Oh gee, like, thanks dude!” But like, the whole time they’re like, fuckin’ afraid that while they’re going through that room he’s going to be like, “Traaaap!” and they’re all gonna die. So Jen’s sister Ashley came up with that one, now suddenly she’ll just walk in and go, “Traaaap!” [laughing] Okay, anyway…
R: Wow.
A: But yea, I remember. It would go…
J: That cabin’s at Canon Beach…
A: Yeah we went to visit Canon Beach, where her beach house was, and, I think that was actually our first… Other than when you [Jen] and Ashley spent the night at my house, I think that was the first uh, overnight trip we’ve had? But I don’t know, I feel comfortable with all of you guys, like…
R: Yeah.
A: You guys [Renee and Jen], I know you about as well as I know you guys [Holly and Tamara]. So it’s like, yeah…
R: I think so too!
[giggling]
J: To answer like, that question, most of our meet-ups, yeah, we’ve had in Portland, but we have had some destination meets, like that Canon Beach trip, or when we went to Enchanted Forest, we’ll bail in there and…
R: We’ll drive there.
A: No, we walked. [giggling] All the way there.
R: Took a while, but we got there…
A: Ten years later…
T: And a couple of outfits later…
A: Um…
[pause]
H: Do you, do you like to wear your clothes so that you can see like, every single layer that you’re wearing? Like, just to show it? Or…
A: I do that outside of Lolita. [laughs]
H: Like, you know, you know what I mean. or do you just wear like, some like, underneath, just, just to like, make it poof out, or… do you like to see the petticoat underneath or…?
A: It’s okay if it’s a necklace… [mumbling]
J: I don’t like to see the petticoat. And I try to keep everything covered.
A: That’s like the one thing I don’t want people to se is my, my under, under, whatever’s under the skirt.
T: For me, I like to have my petticoat shown. If it’s a good quality like, the petti--I-I make my own petticoats, and like, I’d like, gone through the effort of dyeing my petticoats to match my dress. And so for me like, I don’t mind my petticoat showing like, just a little bit of lace underneath the dress, cuz I think that looks really cute. And maybe having some of the bloomer, a little bit of the lace show, but not anything else. Like, I don’t wanna have like, the wind blow up and my petticoat, my skirt to be so short that you see everything.
R: Oh yeah.
J: I’ll make underskirts for layers, but I don’t like petticoats showing, and I don’t’ like my bloomers showing, or anything like that…
A: I think if it was like, a stylistic outfit, and the point was like, do you have really cute bloomers or something that were pink and polka dot, like maybe that was the point of the picture or something. But I dunno. Mine are gross, so I wouldn’t want to show that. If they were cute and you… [mumble, inaudible]
R: I like having really cute bloomers, and I would never want to show them… like normally. Like if the wind blew up, I want to be cute, just, you know, “Look, they’re not disgusting.” But I don’t like having then shown underneath skirts. I think the focus is the skirt, and the next focus down should be socks and shoes. I don’t like that in between bloomer-showing-out-under-the-skirt thing. I don’t like it.
T: I really don’t share your guy’s troubles at all. [giggling] I’m a show off. I, I will flash people when I’m wearing Lolita, just so that they’ll see my bloomers…
A: I thought you said you don’t like being flashed?
T: I-I mean I have no problems with doing that, I think it’s just utterly cute. At Kumoricon I flipped up my skirts and had other Lolitas uh, spanking me, so I mean… [giggling]
A: How disturbing, oh wait, I remember that…
T: Yeah. [giggling] I had her stepping on my back with her shoes…
A: Oh [mumble]…
T: So, I’m a little bit different in that aspect I guess.
A: Yeah.
H: I dunno, any closing, closing shots…
A: [mumble]…that ugly lady in the background…
H: Dude! Heh, Ashlee.
[laughing]
A: What did you say? Any outfit…?
T: Totally ugly…
H: Any closing shots, or closing statements? Or anything you wanna say or…?
[pause] [we all kind of looked at Jen, who made a panicked expression]
[laughing]
R: You [Jen] looked like you were going to say something so we all looked at you.
J: I know!
T: Even more so than wearing it I love designing Lolita.
H: Yeah.
T: That’s my main passion besides just wearing, is designing it and having people wear it. Like Ashlee for instance, I want Ashlee to wear my Lolita clothes. So I make ‘em.
J: I, I kind of agree with that, in that, in the creative outlet sense, because it is something…
T: It’s time to make a dress. [whisper]
J: Exactly! It’s, it’s something fun to pass the time. But, only when I’m in the right mood for it. Cuz if I sew too much, I get sick of it and then it’s no fun, it’s more of a chore to finish something. And I hate that.
T: Do you sew by hand or by machine?
J: Oh by machine. No way in hell would I do it my hand.
[laughing]
R: I’d cry.
T: I did two of my dresses by hand…
J: I’d cry too.
A: I’d probably put myself out of my misery and cram the needle into my temple and die.
[laughing]
R: I think um, Lolita has definitely been a changing force in my life. To start caring about how I looked, myself… uh, I’ve had issues with self-esteem in the past, and this has really boost my self-esteem, and I really appreciate that. I love designing them, I don’t, I can’t just, sew as much as I probably should, but I just love making these plans. And trying to incorporate it into everyday life, you know, it’s really been great for me.
J: I’m kind of in agreement with that, as well, in terms of, it’s really made me, think more about coordination and about, you know, presenting yourself well. Because, you know, prior to my getting into Lolita, yea, I had a feminine style. Um, but I didn’t really care a lot about how I presented myself. I would be like, “Alright, I wanna put of a sweater and a skirt; a sweater and jeans, whatever.” And now, I’m a lot more focused on, you know, proper coordination of colors, making an interesting outfit.
A: Yeah.
J: Something that’s nice to look at, maybe not over the top, maybe not really attention getting, but something nice to look at. Instead of just being in random jeans and T-shirt walking around. It has healthy effects to have a fashion sense, I’d never had that before.
A: I think I actually like, got into Lolita like, because like, I think I didn’t care about the way I dressed until like, I mean, you know, like this was like, the last part of like senior year of high school I suddenly…
T: No…
A: …started--or was it junior year?
T: No, it was junior year.
A: Okay, junior year. But like, partway through high school I just randomly started…
T: It was when the Japanese uh, exchange uh, students came over, you started layering…
A: A girl had a furry coat and I was like, “That is the coolest shit I’ve ever seen.” It was actually like, the Japanese kids that made me wanna dress…
T: Cuz pretty much Ashlee went from being a complete and utter “I don’t care about my appearance, I don’t do anything to actually like…”
A: Like, “look at me look at me look at me,” but like…
T: Yeah.
A: Ever since then like, I’ve been really into coordinating outfits, and then I saw Lolita as something that was like, had distinctive rules for coordination or whatever. I was like, “Oh yay, something that’s like, the same as what I’m doing now.” So…
H: Well, all of these like, “distinctive rules” for like, coordination and stuff. Like, you say they’re like, rules, but are there…
A: Well it’s sort of like…
H: Like, they’re not like, written down… or anything you know?
A: You, you can break--you can still be a Lolita, even if you break them. It’s just like, like a general sweet Lolita would be like, pastel colors, probably a dress with a print, you want it to stop about 2 inches above the knee…
T: You wanna wear a blouse underneath… You don’t wanna be showing off your skin…
A: Yeah, like with a jumper skirt, you wanna cover your--I don’t know why they want, want you to cover your shoulders up, but, maybe it just looks better… you probably want to wear… like there’s not like, that much of a stigma against ankle socks, but like…
R: I think they look trashy…
A: Well, most people just like, they wear socks that like, end right at the bottom of your knee, so like, the only part of your skin that is showing is generally part of your arms… And then like, around 2 or 3 inches around your knees. And then, oh, always wear bloomers, that’s apparently a rule too.
T: I’m breaking it…
A: As I’ve learned before, I didn’t used to like bloo-actually I hate them. But these skirts tend to fly up in the wind really easy, and then people go, “Ahuh… I saw your junk…” [giggles] And you’re like, “Okay, ehehe…”
R: Guess I’m wearin’ bloomers!
A: Yup.
R: I started wearing bloomers under all of my skirts now. It just--I feel more comfortable with then there.
A: Nice.
T: Going back to the clothing, I guess one thing is that… I had a problem dressing girly. Because, forever I was a tomboy. I would not wear pink, I hated pink, I loathed pink, I loathed wearing anything girly… And then suddenly, it was really awesome that, just for like, a day or two out of like, the month, I would dress so utterly girly if would want to make me vomit. And that makes me really happy.
A: Urrrgh [barfing noises]
[giggling]
R: Yeah, I, I was one of those people who used to wear like, a Nike T-shirt and those uh, pants that are made out of the same material that tents are, and I would always feel gross, maybe like, “I feel so terrible about myself… Why?!”
A: Whyyyy?!
R: Oh, maybe that’s the reason. Cuz I don’t like the way I look.
T: I wore jeans and a black sweatshirt all throughout high school, cuz people made fun of how I looked, and I was told I was too small, underdeveloped, and that I looked like I was 12. That’s another reason why I like to wear Lolita, because I can look young, and I don’t care. I finally look my age with the Lolita clothing on. Or I look the age that people think I am…
[pause]
H: Anything else?
J: Mmm, no.
R: No.
H: Think we’re good? Okay. Thank you guys!
A: Uh huh!
J: Thank you!
R: You too!