BARCELONA — Olivia Rodrigo addressed online criticism of a babydoll dress she wore during a performance at Teatre Grec in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this month in a clip from the New York Times Popcast released on Wednesday. The singer appeared in Spotify’s Billions Club Live series wearing a small pink floral babydoll dress with puffed sleeves.
“That’s been making me so upset,” Rodrigo said when asked about the backlash. “Not even for me. People can say whatever they want.” She described the online response as disturbing and emphasized that the dress was not revealing.
Rodrigo noted she has worn far more revealing outfits on stage without drawing similar criticism. She said she felt “cool and comfortable” in the babydoll dress and had no intention of appearing “sexy.”
“Being fully covered up in a dress that people deemed ‘childlike’ was considered inappropriate,” Rodrigo said. “It just shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture and also it’s just this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is like, ‘Don’t wear that, because then a man is going to sexualize your body, and it’s your fault.’ It’s so weird.”
She rejected the idea that clothing choices should be dictated by fear of misinterpretation. Rodrigo cited punk icon Kathleen Hanna and rock artist Courtney Love as style inspirations for the dress. She has previously said she is inspired by the punk lineage of artists such as Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love, who juxtaposed babydoll dresses with their music and performances to challenge patriarchal expectations of women.
“All these people are my heroes, and I felt cool and comfortable in it,” she said. “If we start dressing in a way that’s driven by fear of how someone else might interpret it, I think we’re losing the plot. I’m very protective of younger women and girls, and I don’t ever want them to be fed that rhetoric.”
Rodrigo wore a similar blue babydoll dress in the “Drop Dead” music video and a pink flouncy dress for her upcoming album’s cover.
No independent assessment of Olivia Rodrigo’s claims was available.