Gothic Stereotypes

According to the book Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, Attitude is an opinion, belief or value judgement that is based on experience or shared knowledge. (O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery, & Fiske, 1994) The study of attitudes is particularly important when assessing stereotypes, bias, prejudice, persuasion, and survey material. It is therefore important to discuss this concept together with stereotype. Stereotype, on the other hand is defined as the social classification of particular groups and people as often highly simplified and generalized signs, which implicitly or explicitly represent a set of values, judgements and assumptions concerning their behaviour, characteristics or history. (O’Sullivan, Hartley,

It is usually perceived as evil, bad or dark. In fact urban dictionary defines its use in relation to the macabre or other darker elements. The black clothing and accessories create an atmosphere of fear, unease and horror thus gothic is stereotyped as evil and dark. Whereas Japanese Gothic Lolitas just want self-expression by means of dressing up, it does not connote darkness or something evil. For them fashion is both individual and collective, it is a way of communicating their economic status and social class, personality, sexual preference, character, political position to others around them. (Gatlin, 2014)
Also Goth Lolitas try to remove the sexual undertones connected with Nabokov’s novel. According to Perry Hinton, author of the book Returning in a Different Fashion: Culture, Communication, and Changing Representations of Lolita in Japan and the West, the term Lolita comes from the famous fictional work by Nabokov (1958, first published in Paris in 1955), detailing the story of a middle-aged pedophile, Humbert Humbert (Hinton, 2013) hence just the mention of the name Lolita signifies some sort of whore that has a very negative perception. (Stavros, 2008)