UK

Woolworths controversy over the little girls bed called ‘Lolita’

By team ⋅ March 27, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

The Times, 1st February

Woolworths has been forced to withdraw the new line of children’s beds bearing the sexually charged name, Lolita. Horrified mothers campaigning on the online chat room, Raisingkids.co.uk, condemned the range of whitewashed beds aimed for 6 year old girls due to its explicit reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel of the same name. However, it seems that Woolworth’s staff were not familiar with the story in which Lolita, a 12 year old girl, becomes the object of her step-father’s sexual obsession. A spokesman for the company told the Times that: ‘We had to look it up on Wikipedia…We certainly know who she is now.’

Initially, the store refused to withdraw the product, arguing that it needed to ‘respond to customer demands and follow current trends’. But after further attention was brought to the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, priced at £395, senior staff realised its connotations of sexual precociousness and quickly abandoned the range.

The decision represents the increasing influence of online parent power, says editor Catherine Hanly of Raisingkids.co.uk. ‘It’s also interesting to see how fast a multinational company can move if it’s worried about its public image.’ In 2006 Tesco discontinued its pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website, after accusations that it was destroying children’s innocence.