What to Know
Olivia Rodrigo has been busy promoting her upcoming album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which hits stores next month. And people are definitely talking about the 23-year-old singer — just not in the way she probably wanted. The babydoll dress she wore during her recent Spotify Billions Club performance has earned her a lot of backlash, and Olivia said it only proves that our culture “normalizes pedophilia.” Why did people’s brains even go there?
People thought Olivia was trying to dress like a little girl.
On stage, she wore a pink floral babydoll minidress and coordinating shorts that really did fit the vibe of “Drop Dead,” the first single from her new album, and the commentary has been pretty brutal.
In response to a post on X calling Olivia’s outfit inappropriate, one person wrote, “Is this outfit supposed to make her look like a toddler? That crap weirds me out.”
Another critic added, “At least most other female artists have sexualized themselves to appeal to grown men who like grown women. She’s sexualizing herself to appeal to grown men who like the look of underage girls.”
Now, we know that Olivia has seen the backlash, and not only is she not happy about it, she’s straight up disgusted.
Olivia is “so upset” about the reaction.
She addressed the reaction to her performance on the new episode of The New York Times’ Popcast podcast, revealing just how “disturbing” she found the discourse. She didn’t see anything overtly sexual about her outfit, but said that the fact that some people did “shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture.”
“Also it’s just this rhetoric we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is, don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualize your body and it’s your fault,” she said. “It’s so weird.”
She said she felt “cool and comfortable” in her outfit, and that’s all that matters.
She made it clear that she doesn’t want to set the example for her fans that they should keep these types of people in mind when choosing how to dress. Why should their opinions matter in the first place?
“I’m just very protective of younger women, girls, and I don’t ever want them to be fed that rhetoric,” she said.
The entire internet isn’t against her on this, though. Despite how loud her critics have been, there are plenty of people on Reddit who are now coming to her defense.
“No matter what we wear, our appearance is policed. It’s the never-ending moving of the goal post… of people who have no business telling a woman what to wear or how to act,” one commenter wrote.
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