2009/11/07 by Joyce Koeman · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01050.x
openalex publication_date 2009/11/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The Lolita Effect by Meenakshi Gigi Durham offers a community advocacy, critical, and ethical view on the sexualization of girlhood in today's highly mediated and global society. Although the book is rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and feminist scholarship, its content is accessible to a wider nonscholarly audience, as both the academic knowledge and personal experience of the author are interwoven with numerous recognizable examples from daily life. Overall the book deals with the devastating as well as liberating impact of the Lolita Effect, but first and foremost it shows how to recognize and respond proactively to the distorted and delusional set of myths about girls' sexuality by unraveling five myths. The first myth of the Lolita Effect is the translation of girls' sexuality into an ideal femininity that involves exhibitionism and a submissive appeal to the “male gaze.” Visual metaphors of sex work are found on magazine covers, in advertisements, Web sites, music videos, and other forms of popular culture and attribute to the importance of “being hot” in everyday life. Young girls are well aware of the fact that desirability is vital to social success; however, there is a thin line between acceptable hotness and unacceptable “sluttiness.” In search of what is acceptable, examples such as complaints about Bratz dolls and fashions hinting at pole dancing and the marketing of a plastic Peekaboo pole dancing kit are brought up, as is the marketing of Playboy stationery and push-up bras in little-girl sizes, underlining the role of commercialism in youth culture.