Lolita and Woolworths

Shame on Woolworths for calling a range of girls’ bedroom this and that Lolita.

Anyone would have thought that the magazines aimed at young girls were downright pornographic, and actively incited under-age sex, including with adults. Or that the Police and the prosecuting authorities had presumptuously lowered the age of consent to 13 for all practical purposes.

Or that every character much over the age of 11 seems to have an extremely regular and varied sex life on the soaps and other popular television series, even on those, such as Waterloo Road, which are actually set in schools, and probably even those broadcast at about five o’clock and aimed directly at teenagers. (They were like that in the Nineties, and I really do think that the likes of Coronation Street and EastEnders have deliberately copied them in this and several other, notably drug-related, regards.)

If Woolworths were operating in that sort of cultural context, then its actions might be small beer. Just as well that our society is not remotely like that. Isn’t it?