Is paedophilia sexy again?

It has never been sexy if you're the victim of the patriarchal system that set such a thing up, yet I often find young prey of online grooming and manipulation to be the strongest supporters of pedophilic media. 

There's been an ongoing discussion of the right-wing mindset that has slowly been overtaking the internet and ruling over fashion, makeup, and aesthetics. Americana and coquette are two of the most popular styles de vie for thousands of young girls, but what exactly do they promote? 

How does Americana ("a celebration of American culture, history, and values. Rooted in nostalgia and a deep appreciation for the past, this aesthetic captures the essence of what it means to be American.") melt together with the idealisation of being a flirtatious nymphette as described in Lolita? Give that to the American femme fatale, Lana Del Rey. 

Lana has been known for playing around with characters. She sings about being in boarding school (which happened) and her racy relationships with older men (which happened as well), her daddy, as she likes to say. But how has sharing her private life influenced pedophilic media? 

Hey, Lolita, hey 

Hey, Lolita, hey 

I know what the boys want, I'm not gonna play

Yeah, that should do it. Reducing the novel of a century to sex will always help. Lolita is about playing with the readers, forcing them to think instead of solely taking and swallowing, because was the 12-year-old really a nymphette? Did she actually seduce him? 

Just today I stumbled upon a TikTok of a young girl in braces, red hair, and Lolita braids lipsyncing these lyrics. The comments were flooded with people saying that she's promoting underaged relationships with older men and romanticising the novel by dressing up as the twelve-year-old girl, brutally sexualised by media. 

The young girl, whose videos I will not include here since I already reported them and believe they should not be propagated around more than they need to, defended herself and her aesthetic. 

While dressing up a certain way shouldn't be forbidden - though I'm being very generous here as I believe children shouldn't sexualise themselves and call it "sexual liberation" - in her edit, which she made of herself to an unreleased Lana Del Rey song, Boarding School, feature lyrics that darken the innocent veil of "aesthetics":

L-L-Let's do drugs 

Make love with our teachers 

Come on, date a townie 

Let his tattoo'd ass beat ya 

I'm a fan of pro-ana nation 

I do them drugs to stop the f-food cravings

Oh dear, I fear it's a slippery slope ahead of us. 

Lana Del Rey was sent to boarding school by her parents when she was 14. They had hoped for her to get sober and party less, so she wrote this song about her experience in a satirical approach, trying to make fun of the overexaggerated portrayal of these schools in media. 

An interesting and valuable perspective to such a matter, yet highly dangerous when teenagers take this as a sign to dress up as Lolita and post themselves to the song, sucking on a lollipop and believing they've just reclaimed their identity as young women, missing out on everything that she was trying to say. This shows that although Del Rey's artistic intent was well-made, her words have become a template for young girls who identify with her songs but lack the media literacy and understanding to actually dissect them and see their darker implications. 

They don't have that media literacy yet; it's simply impossible for them to grasp what they're doing. They might understand how they're playing into this idea their Messiah Lana was teaching to them, but they are unaware of their effect on the internet. Any video of a child online is saved massively, so much so that the numbers of saves often surpass the likecount. A child calling herself a young Lolita will not fight against a system; it will lose itself in self-sexualisation that is imposed on them, and not done deliberately. 

So, America, as this right-wing, fascist country that roots itself in this idea of the American Dream and freedom, was added to this coquette aesthetic the moment Humbert and Dolores did that road trip - the most American thing on the planet. 

Yet, we must be aware here that this aesthetic of freedom is tied to a paedophile who kidnapped a young girl and dragged her across the country. How does one equate the other? 

Coquettes embrace the softness in femininity and pride themselves on being girly. An aesthetic that celebrates this can quickly go rogue as people associate being a girl with being a child, and young women putting pink ribbons and bows on their outfits risk sexualising things generally associated with childhood. 

So, why do young girls fall back into this? 

While for some, reclaiming their feminine side can be a sort of empowerment, it becomes dangerous when it is tied to the sexualisation and normalisation of abuse. 

Is dressing up as a little child a personal trauma response where they regress into patriarchal ideas of being a cute girl as sweet as a child? Or has paedophilia shaped the minds of children who grew up online and mostly spent their days unsupervised on the internet? 

There is no clear response, and I'm sure that the indoctrinated prey will say that it's "just cute," but when has aesthetics (i.e., fashion) not been part of politics? 

Knowing all of this, I believe that Lolita has always been part of our culture. One of the most important books to read and understand today. Our society, in my opinion, can be divided into those who haven't read the book and blindly romanticise the image media has given us and that part of society that has read the book and knows what is happening in the world. 

If you make paedophilia sexy again, you open the door for other dangerous ideologies that are hiding in plain sight, waiting to be rediscovered.