Rpale uban in her hair, black choker necklace with small heart pendant, powder pink wrap-around like a prima ballerina, the character of Priscilla, young wife of Elvis Presley − she was 14 when she met him 24 −, is the eponymous heroine of Sofia Coppola’s latest film.
A teenager under the influence of the King, represented with this glamorous aesthetic, all in silk and false eyelashes from the 1950s, which strangely resonates with this strange fashion among certain young women today. The latter appear in size 10 Vichy dresses, with pigtails and falsely innocent pouts. Their hashtags: #nymphette and #coquette.
In these TikTok videos, these delicate young girls, often with milky, slightly pink skin, wear outfits straight out of a little girl’s wardrobe. Little ribbons at the end of the braids, lace Peter Pan collar, slip dress and teddy bear-shaped backpack, hearts above each letter “i” that she writes on white and pink stationery scented with Miss Dior. The nymphet romanticizes the infantilization of women and the sexualization of little girls, while defending herself against it. In ancient Greek, the term “nymph” means “young girl”, “betrothed”. It also defines the small lips of the vulva.
The figure of the woman-child, a sort of femme fatale in short pants, innocent and scandalous, has been widely disseminated in the collective unconscious by the success of Lolita by Stanley Kubrick (1962), free adaptation of the eponymous novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian writer gave, through the narrator’s voice, another definition of the term “nymphet” to describe the excesses of his forty-year-old hero, who makes a 12-year-old child, daughter of his companion, the object of his desire while presenting oneself as a victim: “Young virgins are sometimes found between the ages of 9 and 14, who reveal to the bewitched traveler their true nature, which is nymphic, that is to say demonic. »
All the more sulfurous
On the film poster, Lolita (Sue Lyon), with a provocative look under her heart-shaped red glasses, was licking a pink lollipop, like Serge Gainsbourg’s Annie (France Gall). From now on, Lolita 2.0, by adopting a universe close to that ofAlice in Wonderland, appears wiser in appearance. With her frilly white socks, her little ballerinas with choir straps and her push-up bustier, the nymphet with her bourgeois and refined style only becomes more sulphurous.
You have 30% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.