Madeline

“Lolita is defined as a type of street fashion known only in Japan. But for me, Lolita goes far beyond fashion and serves as my unwavering, absolute personal policy.
Wearing a frilly blouse, a skirt over a huge ruffly petticoat with my waist squeezed into a corset, and a totally outlandish headdress, is my way of pledging that I have devoted myself to Rococo. If I didn't dress in this totally conspicuous and bizarre way, I'd make friends and be popular with boys... is what people tell me, and the more they say that, the more it fans the flames of my Lolita passion and stiffens my resolve to be a Lolita through and through.”
― Novala Takemoto, Kamikaze Girls

“There were swings in one of the parks, but because of our skirts, which might be blow up by the wind and then looked into, we were not to think of taking such a liberty as a swing. Only boys could taste that freedom; only they could swoop and soar; only they could be airborne.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“... choosing things with your own personal sense of 'I like this, I don't like that" is the ultimate individualism that sustains the very foundation of Rococo. Rococo, therefore, embodies the spirit of punk rock and anarchism more than any philosophy. Only in Rococo--elegant yet in bad taste, extravagant yet defiant and lawless--can I discover the meaning of life.”
― Novala Takemoto, Kamikaze Girls

“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist