One of her one-shots touched a nerve in me. The story starts innocuously enough with a young woman living alone in Tokyo. She gets frequent phonecalls from her family telling her to go back home for marriage meetings that they've set up but she refuses as she's determined to keep her independence and her love for loli fashion. As a lolita, she gets plenty of stares and whispers whenever she goes out wearing her frilly dresses and parasols. Is she lonely? It's hinted that she is isolated and ostracised because of her goth loli love. Her only companion is a robot doll (one of Mihara's favourite recurring themes is life-like androids who sometimes are more human than humans themselves) and another person whom she has never seen but communicates regularly through her cellphone over their mutual adoration for EGL fashion.
At the end of the story, nothing is what it seems and the young woman is revealed to be not so young in actuality. And it's implied that the stares she attracts is not because she wears lolita but because she's probably in her 50s more or less and still dressing up in loli fashion. She's living in a delusion created by herself that she's still young, still pretty and she doesn't need friends or human companions, just her doll and her dresses.
This is where it hits me. How old is too old? On forum discussions regarding age, one does see older lolitas in their 30s and 40s but they are very much in the minority. And naturally most would say that it doesn't matter what age one is at as long as you still love the fashion. That's the nice, positive outlook to have but in all honesty, loli simply isn't a very good fashion style to wear when one has reached a certain age and does show that age. This fashion does have ageism factors, no matter how we try to encourage older lolitas.
I'll be hitting the 40s in a few more years and even if I still feel like a 20 something-year-old mentally, my body is definitely aging and showing the wear and tear that comes with the territory. Another school of opinion states that as long as one looks good in loli, who cares if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Thing is, not everyone can be an ageless-looking Nicole Kidman, Aishwarya Rai (or Mana with judicious photoshopping if you really want to push the ageless gothic lolita envelope). Regular women, even those who exercise regularly, would start seeing signs of age starting from their mid-30s.
Loli fashion in itself isn't very forgiving already to those who are plus-sized, let alone if one has age spots, crows' lines, deepening grooves around the nose and cheeks. Aging signs doesn't have to be horrible, of course. People do and can age gracefully! But is persistently wearing a subculture fashion that is very much targeted and styled for a young crowd aging gracefully? And I do think loli fashion has an ageism limit to it. Even for the milder classical styles, there comes a time when loli dresses just looks and sits oddly on one's gradually aging appearance and body.
Even though positive and well-meaning thinking dictates that as long as you love the fashion, it doesn't matter or shouldn't matter how people look at you when you're out and about wearing it. But all that's said and done, it does take a great strength of will and character not to care or feel hurt or embarrassed at times about the whispers, curious sidelong glances, snickers or nasty remarks. I can't help but think a lot of older lolitas do and would start feeling more self-conscious as pressure would be stronger on older women 'to dress your age' because that's how I feel, especially in an Asian society.
She's got Bette Davis eyesssss
