Analysis Of Lolita By Chelsae R. Huot

The infantilization of femininity

Lolita is a 1955 novel known for its controversial themes of the sexualization of a twelve-year-old girl. This book became a hit starting a trend in pop culture of showing child-like objects and attitudes as sexy, seductive, and alluring. We can see this in Britney Spears’s “rolling stone” magazine cover where she is lying out with a Teletubbies stuffed toy and a pink phone while her shirt is open with a black bra on full display. The scholarly article “Language as a social reality: The Effects of the Infantilization of Women” by Chelsae R. Huot dissects the effects of gender roles, gender-exclusive language, and child-like representations in society and pop culture. The article uses logos, pathos, and ethos

Chelsea R. Hout starts her article on how gender roles affect the mentality of women and girls alike. She uses logistics to get you to understand what exactly she is talking about. Within her first paragraph on gender roles, she explains that “To be clear, “sex” refers to the physical morphology of humans and is construed dichotomously with the terms male and female, whereas “gender” refers to socio-psychological identity categories predicated on cultural meanings and expectations, which are associated with the terms “man” and “woman” (Hout pg.2). She also states “Over 85 percent of the cards for a newborn girl pictured babies with decorative clothing, whereas only 44 percent of newborn boy cards pictured babies with decorative clothing” (Hout pg.2-3). Hout uses logos to give a deeper knowledge of what she is talking about. Hout backs up her point within her next argument of denying adulthood stating that “. Throughout the 1900s, White people often referred to Black men as “boys” to assert their racial power and infantilize Black men, despite the actual ages of the men.”(Hout,pg.8) The use of infantilization to

The cards for girls also contained more delicate animals (i.e., birds and rabbits), whereas the boy cards featured more bears and dogs”(Hout pg.3) from doing this Hout shows how we use delicateness, daintiness, and clothing to reinforce gender role in newborn babies. She then furthers her point and evokes emotions when she states that “The healthy woman was described as more submissive, less independent, less aggressive, more emotional, and less objective than the healthy man… These separate considerations could affect how men and women are helped, diagnosed, and treated”(Hout pg.5) This statement makes people think about how women are treated in medical fields and how stereotypes are deeply rooted in everything. She continues by stating that “what society has done with women’s adulthood is a benevolent version of how White people emasculated Black men. Society has taken adulthood from women by referring to them as “girls”...Western culture continues to use infantilized images of women in advertising and pornography because people do not consciously realize the harm, even though people rate these images more negatively” she uses this pathos in a way to show how society, especially men, love to view women as child-like when it comes to the privacy of their sexual desires yet publicly rebuke the ideas in