Olivia Rodrigo responds to criticism over babydoll dress in 'Drop Dead'

Olivia Rodrigo has hit back at online criticism of her choice to wear a babydoll dress, saying the logic behind the backlash reveals something deeply troubling about how society thinks about women's bodies.

The 23-year-old singer spoke about the controversy in a clip from the New York Times Popcast, after facing criticism for wearing the style in her Drop Dead music video and at a recent Spotify Billions Club Live concert. 

Some online commenters argued the look was infantilising and inappropriate. 

Rodrigo found that reasoning not just wrong, but genuinely upsetting, and not primarily because it was directed at her.

"Not even for me. People can say whatever they want," she said. 

"What's really disturbing is I have worn outfits that are maybe revealing on stage. 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. And that wasn't inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deemed to be childlike was inappropriate."

The double standard, she argued, points to something far more concerning than a fashion debate. 

"The reactionary response 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. It's so weird."

For Rodrigo, the babydoll dress was never about provocation, it was a deliberate nod to the female rock icons who shaped her artistic identity.

"I didn't think that I looked sexy in that at all," she said. 

"I was like, this is so cool. I feel I look like Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love, all these people who are my heroes, and I felt cool and comfortable in it." 

She added that dressing to proactively deflect male sexualisation was a line she had no intention of crossing. 

"I just think if we start dressing in a way that's like, 'I don't want some f*cking 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. I'm just very protective of younger women, girls, and I don't ever want them to be fed that rhetoric."

The Popcast appearance arrives ahead of Rodrigo's third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, due on 12 June. 

She has released two singles so far, Drop Dead and The Cure, with a tour planned for later in the year.