Olivia Rodrigo won’t let critics dress her down.
The “good 4 u” singer, 23, called the online discourse over her babydoll dresses “really disturbing” in a clip from the New York Times’ “Popcast,” pointing out that the people sexualizing a fully covered dress are the ones with the problem.
“I didn’t think that I looked sexy in that at all. I was like, this is so cool. I feel like I look like Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love, all these people who are my heroes,” Rodrigo said, citing the ’90s riot grrrl musicians whose babydoll-and-combat-boot uniform she’s channeled throughout her new era.
“I just think it shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture,” she added.
The controversy ignited after Rodrigo wore a powder-blue Chloé ensemble with bloomers in her “Drop Dead” music video and performed in a floral Génération78 top repurposed as a babydoll minidress at Spotify’s Billions Club Live concert in Barcelona earlier this month.
Clips circulated online of the pop star crawling across the stage and revealing her ruffled bloomers while performing her hit “Brutal,” a song that reckons, in part, with our culture’s exploitation of teenage girls.
X users were quick to call it “pedo bait” and say the outfit “looks like she’s cosplaying as a kid.” Others invoked the Epstein files and “Lolita,” the controversial 1955 novel about a middle-aged man’s obsession with a pre-teen girl.
The Grammy winner pointed out the double standard between the dress and far more revealing on-stage outfits. “I’ve been on stage in a sparkly bra and little shorts, which is my right, that’s fun, I felt cool and comfortable in that,” she said. “And that wasn’t inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deemed to be childlike was inappropriate.”
“I just think if we start dressing in a way that’s like, ‘I don’t want some f—king freak to think that I’m sexy like a baby’ or some crazy thing like that, I think it’s losing the plot a little bit,” she continued.
Some defenders have questioned whether the outrage is even genuine. Rolling Stone noted the backlash echoes recent bot-driven smear campaigns against Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan, though no coordinated attack on Rodrigo has been confirmed.
Her third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” drops June 12, with her 65-date Unraveled Tour kicking off Sept. 25.
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