Olivia Rodrigo pushed back on criticism of the babydoll dresses she wore while promoting her third LP on Wednesday, saying the reaction to her outfits exposed a troubling double standard. Speaking on ' Popcast, the 23-year-old singer said people should not be responsible for the way “some guy” sexualizes them when that was never their intention.
Rodrigo said the backlash hit harder because she has worn more revealing looks onstage without similar outrage. “I’ve been on stage in a sparkly bra, little shorts, which is my right,” she said, adding, “That’s fun. I felt cool and comfortable in that.” By contrast, she said, being fully covered in a dress that some people called childlike was treated as inappropriate. “And it just shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture,” she said.
The criticism followed Rodrigo’s use of babydoll-style dresses while promoting her third LP, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So In Love. She wore a pink flouncy dress for the album cover, a similar blue dress for the Drop Dead music video and a floral babydoll dress with matching bloomers at Spotify’s Billions Club Live in Barcelona’s Teatro Greco. Internet commenters accused her of sexualizing herself and promoting pedo core.
Rodrigo said she did not see the dresses the way critics did. “I didn’t think I looked sexy in that at all,” she said, describing the look as something that reminded her of Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love. She said the reaction reflects a message girls are taught from an early age: don’t wear something because a man might sexualize you and it will be your fault. “I’m just very protective of younger women and girls, and I just don’t ever want them to be fed that rhetoric,” she said.
The dispute lands in familiar territory for Rodrigo, who has previously said she is inspired by punk artists such as Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love, performers who used baby doll dresses as a rejection of expectations that women should look docile. In that light, the backlash did not just criticize a wardrobe choice. It exposed how quickly a feminine stage look can be recast as provocation, even when the artist says its point is the opposite.
