Hello and welcome to the new MILK ✦ CIRCUS website! After hosting on WordPress.com, I’ve decided to remake my blog into a WordPress.org site so I can independently host it for many years to come. On this new website, you’ll find old blog posts and articles from my original blog but all new content will be posted here. I wanted to use this post as an introduction for what to expect on the new website as well as my reasoning behind this decision. The website is still heavily under construction as I reupload photos and convert old blogs into the new blogging format but most things are still available! 🙂

There are a few tutorials I had started but was not able to post on my former blog. I think crafting, thrifting, and re-purposing are huge parts of Lolita Fashion culture, and just greater J-Fashion culture as well, but there aren’t really a lot of straightforward easy-to-track articles on how to make certain things. Recommendations for types of paint you can utilize for repainting old furniture or objects, how to polish old tea sets for current use, how to repair damages bags or shoes, and so on. Lolita Fashion is an expensive hobby but it doesn’t always have to be. I am a strong believer of re-purposing secondhand goods. In addition, there are plenty of ways to utilize your own creative energy to make items for yourself, Those are topics I definitely want to explore more with this new website!

This is an area I don’t really see a lot of content get produced, especially in regards to shopping guides. Unfortunately, a lot of overseas shopping still requires a shopping service of some sort and if you’re new to Lolita Fashion or just J-Fashion in general, it can be difficult to know what sources are reputable or affordable. Additionally, I want to review brands or services and give detailed unboxings.

As Lolita Fashion becomes more popular in the United States, I want to try to go to more events and do reports on how they are. I will of course, post my own events and meet-ups. Additionally, this website will act as a catalog for all of my coordinates! I don’t wear Lolita every day but I wear it often enough that I usually average around 30 coordinates a year now. As I become more active in the community, that number will likely increase so I’d like to keep this as my own personal photo album as well.

As time goes on, I get more and more frustrated by the lack of Lolita content that shows black Lolitas. We are rarely in videos, in brand photoshoots, or in interviews that don’t involve our skin color. And even though a lot of Western indie brands are created by Black or POC Lolitas, this fact is usually unknown by the people who wear the dresses. I want to be able to showcase a side of Lolita Fashion that is not just pale. I want to be able to create content specific for people of a darker complexion such as crucial makeup tutorials and photo tips, and of course inspiration posts because there are still people who feel like they are too dark to wear certain colors or styles due to prevalent racism in the greater J-Fashion community. With the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s transparent that large parts of the Western J-Fashion comm need improvement and so I want to make this clear: As a Black Lolita, I fully support BLM and this website will always be a safe space. Racism, fatphobia, transphobia, etc are absolutely beyond my tolerance level and are not welcome on this website or on any of the content I produce.

As part of this new website, I want to start creating Lolita themed videos! I hope to have article pairs with most videos I create. Videos hosted on this site will be long and in-depth with behind-the-scenes content as well.

As my Lolita Wardrobe grows, being able to archive the pieces of my wardrobe has become very crucial to me. With this website, I’ll have a controlled space to track and monitor the additions to my wardrobe without the worry of losing information due to personal computer failure or the death/change of an separate image hosting website. It makes it easier for me to have a more concrete gauge and what I own, which is especially needed when it comes to things I have to sell. In the event I ever leave Lolita Fashion (though likely I’ll leave this world before that happens lol), I want to still be able to know the names, brands, and information of everything.

In a digital age where it’s getting more and more difficult to control your content, I decided to go backwards in order to go forward. I saw a tweet one day that was somewhere along the lines of “we all use the same 5 websites that we hate” and it made me think a lot about how I spend my time online, especially as a “content creator.” So this is sort of my way of taking back control. Whether it’s Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, or others, every platform has been dismissive if not outright hostile towards Lolita Fashion. We often get paired together with problematic content and punished due to these companies not devoting the time to researching. and if you’re dark-skinned like myself, you’re often buried or ignored entirely by cruel algorithms. Additionally, the Lolita Fashion community also faces a lot of photo theft and harassment. Websites like Pinterest normalize photo theft in a way that often removes images from their sources. From here on out, I will be able watermark all of my images so in the event my photos travel, they can be sourced back to here. I have complete moderation of my website so any inappropriate comments can be deleted and blocked without a second thought.

It’s getting simultaneously more difficult and less difficult for independent creators to monetize their content on the Internet. While there are now more choices and more platforms, creators are often at the whim of a platform’s arbitrary rules and conditions. I’d like to start producing videos but due to Youtube’s awful support and disdain for Lolita Fashion content creators by demonetization, I want to be able to have a personal place where I can safely host my video content without worry of penalty. Additionally, this site will only ever host ads by relevant Lolita content if requested (such as sponsorships) and will have a completely optional subscription tier or one-time donation.

I understand that personal websites are kind of out of style at the moment so I’m not anticipating a lot of traffic. But seeing how many visitors I was still getting on my old blog after a year of inactivity made me feel a bit hopeful that maybe there still is a draw for this kind of content. And because Lolita Fashion is already so easily misunderstood, being able to take control of the narrative is very important to me, especially in an age where algorithms continue to throttle content. If you’d like to keep up to date with my website but worry about remembering to visit, consider subscribing to my mailing list! While a hyper active schedule sounds nice, I want to keep articles as relevant as possible and minimize noise so you don’t have to worry about being spammed with updates. Anyway, thanks for stopping by the new website! I’m excited to see where things go from here!