What do you wear to an Olivia Rodrigo concert? Purple plaid is so “SOUR.” Leather and fishnets are out. Rodrigo’s new style for her third album, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love,” features soft pinks and florals, loose fabric and short skirts. She’s bringing back the babydoll dress, and the Internet is freaking out.
Two recent outfits sparked online controversy, with comments about Rodrigo infantilizing herself by wearing a babydoll dress.
Some critics conflate babydoll dresses with actual baby clothes, but the babydoll dress began with women’s fashion. According to the fashion magazine ELLE, the silhouette came from lingerie shortened during the 1940s wartime fabric ration. By 1957, babydoll dresses entered high fashion, and women wore them to rebel against the slender waists and long, full skirts of the time.
The name “babydoll” is associated with the movie “Baby Doll” (1956), in which a 19-year-old virgin wears a babydoll-style nightgown and marries an older man. But the punk rock and riot girl movements of the 90s used the babydoll dress to embrace sexual freedom, reclaiming the dress from the male gaze by juxtaposing its fragile innocence with powerful rock ‘n’ roll.
In the music video for “drop dead,” the first single off the album, Rodrigo wears a rosy pink and periwinkle dress with a chiffon skirt, white ruffles and matching bloomers. The video, released on April 17, features Rodrigo frolicking through Versailles.
On May 8, she performed “drop dead” at a Spotify Billions Club concert in Barcelona, wearing a light pink floral dress, frilled white bloomers and high-laced black boots.
Comments criticized Rodrigo for dressing like a baby. People called her bloomers a diaper and accused her of encouraging pedophilia by sexualizing a child’s outfit. Others referenced the babydoll dress’s feminist history and defended Rodrigo’s right to wear what she wants.
“I think it’s crazy that just from wearing a dress, people are associating it with pedophilia,” said Colin Skinner M.A. ’27, who covers Rodrigo’s songs with the student band Monarch. “That thought did not even cross my mind.”
Rodrigo has been open about who is influencing her new look, naming Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland as inspirations.
“She’s leaning into the fact that she wears her influences on her sleeve,” Matthew Gilbert Ph.D. ’27 said. “She’s trying to say, ‘My influences are really cool, and hopefully I can introduce them to a new generation of listeners.’”
Gilbert, who taught a singer-songwriter and pop culture course, said that Rodrigo’s aesthetic change signals a new moment in her catalogue for “you seem pretty sad,” releasing June 12. She’s telling fans to expect more introspective love songs and less angry breakup music.
The backlash against Rodrigo’s latest fashion demonstrates that women still can’t wear what they want without consequence.
“There’s not really any winning for a female pop star,” Chloe Hughes ’26 said. “If they dress traditionally scandalously, they’ll be seen as a slut, but if they dress modestly like how babydoll dresses actually cover, then I guess you’re also a slut, but for a different reason.”
Rodrigo’s choices in the “drop dead” video are not sexual — they’re fun. She’s dancing on her bed, she’s rocking out with her band and skipping through the halls.
“You have to keep in mind that there’s a whole team of people who are engineering this marketing maneuver,” Gilbert said. “It’s not just the music. There’s a whole visual element to it.”
Compared to the adorned bras and short shorts she wore during her “GUTS” tour, her Barcelona dress is conservative. While short, the babydoll dress is loose-fitting, with full coverage on top and puffy sleeves. Yes, her bloomers show, but not in a provocative, flashing-her-underwear way.
The bloomers are another feminist callback. In the 1850s, suffragist Amelia Bloomer popularized the garment, which women wore for comfort under corsets and long skirts. ELLE reported that bloomers were back in 2024 as shorts, following the trend of women’s underwear becoming outerwear.
For Rodrigo, bloomers are practical. She skips around the stage and kicks her legs when she performs — her skirt is going to fly up. Rather than seductively showing her undergarments, she wears bloomers as part of her ensemble.
“What’s really disturbing is I feel like I have worn outfits that may be revealing on stage,” Rodrigo said on the New York Times Popcast. “That wasn’t inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike is inappropriate? I just think it shows how we really normalize pedophilia.”
It’s okay for women to want to feel feminine and dress in clothes associated with girlhood. If people have a problem with that because they think it’s sexual, that says more about them. The problem is not Rodrigo’s dress, the problem is that predators infantilize women in the first place.
Blaming Rodrigo for promoting a “sexy baby” fetish dangerously approaches the victim-blaming territory of “What was she wearing?” and “She was asking for it.” It is not women’s fault when men sexualize their clothes. Rodrigo is not catering to a male audience, and she’s not trying to dress like a child. She has been very clear about her intent to reference rock icons and express themes from her upcoming album. By wearing what feels “cool and comfortable,” as she told Popcast, she encourages girls who listen to her music to do the same.
I see the dress as a feminist symbol and a statement on Rodrigo’s right to feel pretty without judgement. Her babydoll fashion feels whimsical, carefree and empowered in her femininity. Let her be a girl so in love and twirl around in ruffled florals.
When her Unraveled tour kicks off in September, what do you think Rodrigo’s fans will be wearing? That’s right, babydoll dresses.