Madeleine Jane

When the Harvey Weinstein thread was finally unpicked, and the swathes of stories about his sexual misconduct came loose for the world to witness, the most pressing question to me was, 'how was this only just being talked about now? Why hadn't these actresses come forward before to talk? Or why are they only just being listened to now?' The stories, horrific and graphic in nature, dated back three decades, and some of the actresses were incredibly high profile; it seemed almost unbelievable that the cover up had continued for this long. I suddenly thought about my dissertation, the topic of which was: " American Beauty and the Beast of the Male Gaze – The complex representation of female adolescence in Lolita and The Virgin Suicides" In this, I realised: A feminist reading of Lolita and The Virgin Suicides is important as for many young women, systematic abuse and objectification is everyday reality. Whilst, many critics see the representation of women