# The "Lolita" bed for young girls
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [February 2, 2008, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975 "2008-02-02T13:35:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/1 "2008-02-02T13:35:51Z")
I don’t know what’s worse, that someone would think Lolita would be an appropriate name for a bed marketed to young girls, or that the staff at Woolworths had no idea who Lolita was and didn’t know what the kerfuffle was about.
[And why can’t they just rename the bed? Why pull it from the stores?](http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC16848020080201?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=22&sp=true)
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### Author:  [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/2 "2008-02-02T13:44:24Z")
Holy crap! They say the American education system is crap? What’s next Linda Lovelace Pacifiers?
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/3 "2008-02-02T14:21:59Z")
This is some kind of British version of April Fool’s right?
Right?
Please tell me I’m right. _whimper_
Right?
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/4 "2008-02-02T14:26:25Z")
[QUOTE=ivylass]
And why can’t they just rename the bed? Why pull it from the stores?
[/QUOTE]
From the linked story:
> [@](#):
>
> “Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect,” the chain said.
>
> “We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about.”
If they are selling a brand from a third-party manufacturer/vendor, they cannot simply rename it. If the manufacturer/vendor actually intended the connection, they are pretty much at a loss. If the manufacturer/vendor was simply as clueless as (British) Woolworths\*, then I would expect to see the bed remarketed under a new name, soon.
- (They have been a separate company from what had been F.W. Woolworth in the States since the early 1980s.)
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/5 "2008-02-02T14:41:52Z")
That’s public education for you, and ‘teaching to the test’.
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### Author:  [@zuma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuma)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/6 "2008-02-02T14:55:30Z")
Woolworth’s is still around?
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/7 "2008-02-02T15:04:38Z")
Yeah, it still staggers on. Not much I’d want inside it, though.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/8 "2008-02-02T15:26:44Z")
Ha. I decided last night that I’d link to this article the next time the “stupid Americans” insult was tossed about. Apparently they turn out their share of morons in the UK too.
But I suppose it could have been worse, like a Gacy brand of clothing for boys…
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### Author:  [@fatgail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fatgail)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/9 "2008-02-02T15:30:01Z")
[QUOTE=askeptic]
Holy crap! They say the American education system is crap? What’s next Linda Lovelace Pacifiers?
[/QUOTE]
John Holmes Pogo Sticks?
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### Author:  [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/10 "2008-02-02T17:43:47Z")
They didn’t know? That’s BS. If they didn’t know they wouldn’t have named the bed Lolita in the first place. Of all girl names in existence, they innocently, by happenstance, selected the one name that’s become synonymous with adolescent female sexuality, and the manufacturer, distributor, buyers, marketers, merchandise managers, Woolworth’s execs, product and project managers all had no knowledge of the association. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. I believe that.
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### Author:  [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/11 "2008-02-02T18:08:20Z")
[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia]
They didn’t know? That’s BS. If they didn’t know they wouldn’t have named the bed Lolita in the first place. Of all girl names in existence, they innocently, by happenstance, selected the one name that’s become synonymous with adolescent female sexuality, and the manufacturer, distributor, buyers, marketers, merchandise managers, Woolworth’s execs, product and project managers all had no knowledge of the association. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. I believe that.
[/QUOTE]
So you believe they wanted to shoot themselves in the foot? Or maybe they were stupid enough to think they were more clever than the rest of us and thought it would be an inside joke? I too have a hard time imagining nobody caught this but I have a harder time believing it was intentional. I remember some poor attempt at psyops by the Iraqi army when I was over there in the early nineties, they broadcast reports that Bart Simpson(!?) was sleeping with our girlfriends back home. Maybe with so much manufacturing in china this is a language/cultural mistake. But still, the first sales person in the furniture dept. at the store should have caught it.
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### Author:  [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/12 "2008-02-02T18:11:08Z")
They still sell the _Catherine the Great bed with Horse Harness[sup]TM[/sup]_
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### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/13 "2008-02-02T18:16:44Z")
Maybe some ad exec’s daughter is named Lola, maybe Lolita as a nickname?
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/14 "2008-02-02T18:37:37Z")
[QUOTE=ivylass]
Maybe some ad exec’s daughter is named Lola, maybe Lolita as a nickname?
[/QUOTE]
**Lola** , by The Kinks
> [@](#):
>
> I met her in a club down in old Soho
> where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Cherry Cola
> C-O-L-A Cola.
> She walked up to me and she asked me to dance.
> I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said, “Lola”
> L-O-L-A Lola, lo lo lo Lola
I’m not sure that would have been a good choice, either.
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### Author:  [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/15 "2008-02-02T19:07:22Z")
[QUOTE=zuma]
Woolworth’s is still around?
[/QUOTE]
Not in the U.S. but England still has 'em.
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### Author:  [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/16 "2008-02-02T19:10:39Z")
My bet is that somebody offered up “Lolita” as a joke, and when it was accepted he decided to see how far he could take the joke, but then chickened out of fessing up when it went too far.
I just don’t see how anybody could suggest “Lolita” as the name for anything without thinking of the Nabokov book. Seriously, has anyone ever heard the name in a different context? I’d Google “Lolita” to check but frankly I’m terrified of what kind of hits that search would get. I could maybe see people never having heard of “Lolita” before, but I don’t see how such a person could suggest the name in the first place.
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### Author:  [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/17 "2008-02-02T19:15:46Z")
Well, if it was from a Chinese or Far Eastern supplier, I could see why “lolita” would sound just like any other girls name - a bit like the “nigger brown” sofa cushions.
That’s doesn’t explain why the Woolies management allowed it in stores though, but the majority of Woolworths customers ain’t likely to read much Nabakov, to be fair. 🙂
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### Author:  [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/18 "2008-02-02T19:19:57Z")
[QUOTE=Chefguy]
**Lola** , by The Kinks
I’m not sure that would have been a good choice, either.
[/QUOTE]
And there’s always
> [@Adler and Ross](#):
>
> Whatever Lola wants
> Lola gets
> And little man, little Lola wants you
> Make up your mind to have no regrets
> Recline yourself, resign yourself, you’re through
I think the girl in that famous book by Nabokov was actually named Dolores.
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### Author:  [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/19 "2008-02-02T19:21:45Z")
[QUOTE=TWDuke]
I think the girl in that famous book by Nabokov was actually named Dolores.
[/QUOTE]
Apparently you’re right, but she was nicknamed Lolita.
ETA: Which is to say, in the book her nickname was Lolita.
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2008, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lolita-bed-for-young-girls/435975/20 "2008-02-02T19:21:47Z")
**Rysto** - Actually, the results, on the first page, aren’t too scary - Wikipedia articles about the book, and the 1962 movie, IMDB pages for the movies, a link to someone’s YouTube video which I am too chicken to view, an Amazon link for the book, a review and a Sparknotes site for the book. Oh, and a mention of an NYC Bar named Lolita.
Which is why I’m not going to go past that first page. :eek:
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