Difficult Things To Deal With In The Fashion
In the time that I’ve been into and
wearing Lolita fashion I was extremely lucky to not have anything majorly
unpleasant happen to me. This doesn’t mean that Lolita fashion doesn’t come
with its fair share of difficulties and here are some of the biggest ones that
I’ve been working through so far. These aren’t things that can simply be wholly
overcome and I doubt that this is everything that I’ll face. I had been
thinking about writing up a blog post on similar lines, but my ideas haven’t
quite clarified yet, so this is perfect timing. It is going to be a serious post
and it will discuss topics that some may even find triggering, so if you find
topics such as body image or comparing yourself to others triggering, I suggest
you give this one a miss.
The greatest difficulty that I have
had to deal with in Lolita fashion is definitely body image. Many of us have been or are struggling with our body
image outside of Lolita fashion too, but wearing a fashion that is primarily
aimed at the East Asian market (Japan, China, Korea), the sizing of which can
be extremely challenging when this is not your body type, can exaggerate the
struggles that you may already be going through. Now, Lolita fashion can also
have a positive impact on our body image: it can give us confidence, make us
feel beautiful in our own eyes (because we dress like this for our own
pleasure, not anyone else’s), it can even accentuate some of our best features
or make us feel better about our ‘imperfections’ (those of us who are small
breasted now enjoy being able to fit into brand blouses, while those with great
calves can show them off in all kinds of lovely OTK socks). But the fact is for
many Western Lolitas this fashion tends to accentuate the downsides, not the
upsides, when it comes down to body image. Unfortunately, there is no remedy for
it either – this will be a long journey towards self-acceptance and it will not
be easy. What has helped me on that road was cutting out most of the mainstream
media targeted at women, where body shaming is prevalent, but also immersing
myself in two quite different worlds: burlesque and Japanese onsens. Both
allowed me to see women of different body shapes and sizes in the nude and
realise that no shape or size is less beautiful than the other and that our
body never stays the same, it is natural for it to change over time. I still
have moments of relapse: when I struggle with the zip (not even because of
size, usually because zips just get stuck at the waist seam), when I have to
put a sports bra to do a garment up, when I’ve eaten and feel bloated, when I’m
taking all my Lolita gear off and see where it dug and left red marks… But for
most of the time Lolita gives me confidence and I accepted that I won’t fit
into certain things not because I’m the wrong shape or size, but because the
company aims their products at a different kind of customer and had them, not
me, in mind when designing this particular garment. It’s not easy to tell that
to yourself, but eventually it will help.
Secondly there is that strive for perfection, especially
pushed through by social media. There’s nothing wrong with being a
perfectionist, as long as it doesn’t overcome your life or end up having a
negative impact on your mental health. To try to use an example, it’s ok to
want your outfit to be perfected to the last detail, but it’s not ok when that
perfecting process makes you think that without this one last detail your
outfit is horrible or ruined, that you can’t wear it now and end up not going
to a meet as a result. A different one: it’s ok to take a couple of outfit
shots to get the one that’s just right, but it’s not ok when you end up
spending literally hours on this and still find something to criticise in every
single photo. Although Lolita is a fashion, so it’s natural for us to want to
look good and have great outfits, at the end of the day these are also just
clothes and sometimes it is more important that we have a good time at a meet,
compromising on the perfect outfit for the sake of practicality. I said that
social media pushes that image of perfection through and it’s true – we watch
dozens, sometimes even hundreds of carefully curated feeds which show us a
glimpse of someone’s life and without seeing the behind the scenes it’s easy to
fall into the trap of thinking that these people lead perfect lives every
minute of every day of their lives. Remember, if you took a while to get a
perfect outfit shot or the right photo for your Instagram, then so have these
other people. If you struggled with your outfit not coming together quite like
you had hoped it would, then so have your social media idols. And in between
posting on Instagram, they have been to work or school or grocery shopping,
doing similarly ordinary and unglamorous things as you have, but haven’t posted
about those on their social media. Sometimes I have to actually repeat that to
myself out loud, but I know that if I didn’t, I could land myself in quite a dark
place and ruin years’ worth of work in terms of confidence-building. If you
have to, it’s better to turn your phone off and talk out loud to yourself than
to constantly feel inadequate and ruin your mental health because of striving
for a superficial perfection that never extends beyond that one snap on
Instagram.
Both of the above are linked to the
difficulty of trying to avoid comparisons.
We start feeling worse about ourselves when we compare ourselves to others,
which we’re perfectly aware we shouldn’t do, but sometimes can’t help. To me
it’s important to remember to draw the line between admiring and comparing, and
to cut any comparisons as quickly as possible, before they grow into
self-doubts. If distracting/changing the topic doesn’t work, I tend to use a
few internal mantras. For example, to ‘I wish I could wear makeup like her’ my
internal response is ‘You can – but it’d look different because your facial
features are different and you can’t change that’. To ‘I wish I could wear her
coord’ I either say ‘You wouldn’t feel like you then, that’s her style, you
have your own’ or, in rarer cases, ‘Do you want this dress badly enough to
alter it? Then it won’t be that exact same coord’. To all the ‘I wish I could
put a coord as nice as hers’ I go ‘You can! Just look at how she’s done it and
then try with your own stuff’. And to any comparisons regarding body size and
therefore relating back to my previous point of body image, I will remind
myself of how unhappy I was that one time I had to diet (I had put on weight
and felt very miserable about not fitting into some of my favourite clothes)
and that all the clothes I currently own fit me well, so is there an actual
need for me to go through that process again and will it actually make me feel
any happier? The point is, the sooner you stop the comparison brewing the
better for your mental health and the better for you. Remember that there are
people who appreciate you and your Lolita style because it’s you – if you
stopped being you for the sake of trying to be like someone else, who would you
be then?
Last but not least is the battle between wants and needs. You
could argue that since Lolita is a fashion, and not necessarily the most
practical one, there aren’t any actual needs within it, but that would kill all
the joy, so I won’t take it that far. However, even when regularly checking
where my wardrobe gaps are and what bits I am in need of adding, it’s always a
choice between waiting for that to appear (since my needs got quite specific
now) and buying something I want and like now. This involves additional
balancing of one’s budget and storage space, none of which are limitless, but
I’ve also learnt that it very quickly becomes just a buying habit, addiction in
extreme cases. Yes, because this is a fashion, then the majority of ways to
participate in it will involve buying things to wear, but once you’re in the
habit of buying new things quite regularly, it’s not easy to just stop. Lolita
fashion requires constant exercising of one’s self-control and finding ways to
distract yourself from buying things when you can’t afford them, don’t have room
for them and don’t even need them.
These difficulties I talked about
are probably fairly common within the Lolita community, however, they are not
often addressed, or at least not very loudly or publicly. It’s important to
talk about them in order to make others aware not only that Lolitas are humans
too, but also that going through these doesn’t make you a lesser person or a
lesser Lolita. You don’t have to copy someone else’s looks or constantly have
to have something new to enjoy Lolita fashion (unless that’s what you really
want and what will make you happy). Also, the first step towards overcoming a
problem is acknowledging that there is one and many may not even realise that,
for example, they excessively compare themselves to others or that their
perfectionism is getting a little out of hand until it’s pointed out to them.
Remember, it’s ok to be imperfect and it’s perfect to be who you are.
What are some of the difficulties
that you have had to deal with in Lolita fashion? I sincerely hope that you all
avoided the really nasty ones (e.g. bullying) and if you feel like reading more
relatable stories around this, check out what the other bloggers have written:
I totally agree with you, I think the problem is that Lolita fashion is so online-based and people only post their best outfits, never their more simple, maybe slightly imperfect outfits, so especially young or new-to-the-fashion people feel pressured to have only perfect outfits and feel they can't keep up with those (few) girls who look like models and have enough money to buy cool stuff and look amazing. Luckily I overcome this when I got older and also learned to distinguish between Social Media and real life.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head there. This is one of the many reasons why I encourage newbies to overcome their nervousness and fears and join a local comm, as that can go a long way towards overcoming those fears of having to constantly be 100% perfect. But it also takes a degree of maturing and being able to participate in social media in a healthy way and realise when it gets a bit too much for us to handle.
DeleteThe body image & perfection points are really recognizable. Even when I like lolita fashion because it's just feels more me and even while I can fit into a lot of things, there are things like body proportion. Some girls have the greatest proportions, and I just get jealous because I see my calves and bust and the proportions are just weird, not cute at all (to me). Even when there are supercute people who are maybe a size bigger, I still feel bad about myself and then at the same time I feel like I'm not supposed to feel that because there are so many people with all different size that look like they don't give a damn and look cute anyway.
ReplyDeleteI strive for my coords to look like there is something new everytime, but at some point you also just want to wear them, just to wear them and maybe that makes for more boring/casual coords, but yeah I don't really mind that. However, for the more special occassion I do want to wear something new and it gets harder everytime. I just don't want to buy new things every time you know :P it's quite expensive but it also feels unneccessary for me to do that (like I'd be wasting money I should spend on something else) and then I just don't know what to do or how to feel :/.
That's such a valid point! Dress sizes or weight fail to take into account the fact that people's body proportions might be different and therefore clothes will look different on them, even if they're wearing the same size. It doesn't mean that your body is wrong, simply that you might have to avoid certain cuts that won't make you feel good about yourself because they won't accentuate what's good about you. At the end of the day, while we might be jealous of someone's bust to leg proportions, others might be seeing something beautiful and enviable in us, which we won't even realise. It's hard to really learn that and let it stop you from comparing yourself to others, but it's well worth putting the effort to really learn and believe that.
DeleteI relate so much to this! And I think there's a bit of pressure from social media to always wear something new as well. But it can be costly to always have something new, especially when you're getting stuff for a big event and want you exact vision to come true. We need to be kinder to ourselves and realise that for most meets it really doesn't matter and the only people who will point out you wearing the same thing twice are petty and not worth our attention. I have these dresses, I spent my own money on it, so I want to wear it more often than I do now, sometimes even in the same ways if I like a coord. And there's nothing wrong with that. I started trying more to look for things I might need offbrand in charity shops or vintage stuff on eBay, as well as try to craft more, so that I do feel like I have a different outfit without spending loads of money every time. But sometimes even that's unnecessary and just playing around with flatlays can help overcome that. :)
I agree! I've been considering taking a break from Instagram as it's very easy to get depressed >< It's all like...ahh, everyone has such huge wardrobes, and then there's me *^* It's also pretty difficult to avoid comparing yourself to others.
ReplyDeletewww.milkysjournal.blogspot.com
Sometimes taking a break from social media is the best thing you can do. I know that I'm very prone to FOMO, but every time I went on holiday, for example, and couldn't really check social media as regularly, I felt happier having done other things and didn't feel like I have missed out on anything major. If you need it, take it. :)
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