The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

I’ve commented before on consumerism, young children, sexuality and parental/business stupidity (here and here for example). I’m not a prude, if kids want to be little Lolitas and…whatever the heck a lolita-boy would be…well, then fine. I like liberalisation and free choice, so that is really up to them to choose and, of course, for their parents to try to intervene in if the parent was to give a damn about what their spawn is up to.

But I never really thought it would come to the point where I read something about Woolworths and wanted to slam my head repeatedly in to my desk. I mean, really how could there have been no-one that picked up that there might just be something wrong in the naming of a product.

Woolworths withdraws ‘Lolita’ bed

Bedroom furniture for young girls with the brand name Lolita has been withdrawn by Woolworths following complaints from parents.

A parenting website said it was in “unbelievably bad taste” to give the bed the same name as a novel about a sexually precocious young girl.

Woolworths said the £395 Lolita Midsleeper Combi was withdrawn when the matter was brought to its attention.

Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel became famous for its controversial subject.

The story of a stepfather’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl has been adapted for film twice: first by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 and later in 1997 when Jeremy Irons played the lead part of Humbert Humbert.

Catherine Hanly, editor of parenting website raisingkids.co.uk, was among the parents to complain about the furniture advertised on the Woolworths website.

She said a Woolworths press officer had told her staff running the website “had no idea” of the word’s connotations.

“I expect a company like Woolworths to actually know what it means and the connotations and stuff,” she told BBC Radio Five Live Breakfast.

“It has become a name that is synonymous with sexual precocity and the fact that it is tied to a girl’s bed – it literally couldn’t be worse taste.”

A Woolworths spokeswoman said: “Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect.

She said the suppliers, who advertise the product on the Woolworths’ website, would be asked how the branding came about.

It is not the first time retailers have been criticised for using branding with sexual connotations on goods marketed for children.

In 2005, WH Smiths came under fire for selling youngsters stationery bearing the Playboy bunny – a symbol of the pornography empire.

Prior to that Bhs decided to withdraw its Little Miss Naughty range of padded bras and knickers for pre-teen girls.

Argos, however, defended its range of underwear for girls as young as nine including G-strings and padded bras as products in demand among children.

(Source: BBC News, 01 February 2008)

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they’ve marketted something under a bad name that really gets to me. It’s that they we’re dumb enough to use a name like that without realising what it could possibly be interpretted as being connected to.

If they had marketted it as ‘the Lolita set for your blossoming little hussy’ and sold it alongside a range of bedwear that looked like lingerie and Pez dispensing ‘personal massagers’, while issuing a version for boys that featured an inflatable ‘imaginary girlfriend’ of their height, that would have been honest and just dandy. Woolworths just didn’t know what they were doing with the name.

The sad thing is that it was an accident. There was no irony or twist involved, they really were just stupid.

Tags: children, girls, shopping