Cece Blythe reflects on the internet's war on chiffon, the true motive behind the Olivia Rodrigo discourse, and the myth of "infantalisation".
Credit - Spotify
The young ingénue takes to the stage. Lights come up. Crowd stirs in tizzied anticipation. Bass booms. Onto the stage she struts, ready to transport her crowd to the wonderland of her brand new album. A spotlight draws full attention to the starlet, in all her punk glory, and there she stands…in a babydoll dress?
The outrage would be unimaginable. How dare she flounce around the stage, bare legged, infantilised, begging for the world to stare at her body. “Look at me, sexualise me.” it says. And then, it didn’t matter about the music at all. All that mattered was the crowd, and the dress. The year was 1991, and a young Courtney Love centred the stage, as Hole warmed up the crowd for Mudhoney.
Fifteen years on, things remain the same: another war-mongering President sits in the Oval Office, another new technological advancement swept the network, and another young woman is the subject of a pitchfork waving smear campaign in the name of a flouncy empire waist, draping oh-so-criminally above the knee.
On May 8th, Olivia Rodrigo, budding pop sensation, danced on Barcelona’s historic Teatre Grec stage as part of Spotify’s Billions Club Live series to some 1,500 top fans, marking the first exhibition of her new epoch, an exclusive look at release her third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, ahead of its June 12th release. Accompanying her endemic energy, was a white floral hand-embellished puff-sleeve babydoll top (adorned by Rodrigo as a dress—paired with matching bloomers, and black knee-high leather boots), courtesy of Génération78, retailing at £525.
The crowd’s enamour seemed to exist only within the few-songs lasting, cacophonous daydream. The second the digital morality police had caught wind of the singer’s girly ensemble, Rodrigo was immediately indicted.
The internet jury hung unanimously. The crime? Treason against womanhood.
Within moments, the mob had mobilised, accusing the singer of “infantilisation”, dressing “like a toddler”, appealing to the male gaze, labelling her choice of outfit as nothing but “pedo bait”. One post on X in particular, now having amassed over 1 million views, asked “why is she so obsessed with lifting her dresses up to show us her panties it’s not cute, just weird”.
Just weeks before, Rodrigo sported a Chloé Pre-Fall 2026 pinky-blue lace babydoll top in the music video that launched her new chapter, drop dead. Filmed inside the lustrous Château de Versailles, the pop star is unleashed around the palace, skipping around the fantastical grandeur of the former Marie Antoinette residence, as if straight from a Sofia Coppola sugar-coated trip. To pair were matching silk bloomers and white knee-high socks, with nostalgic pink headphones covering her ears, capturing the essence of a modern-day Dauphine.
How an artist chooses to ring in their new tale is integral—with clothing often the instrument to do so. Playing into the feminine silhouette, Rodrigo’s subliminal messaging is largely a story of girlhood, a theme which runs through the album. By emulating the rose-tinted world of the likes of Coppola and Petra Collins (who directed the video), Rodrigo subtly nods at the polarity within the experience of being a young woman—the loneliness, the alienation, the melancholic reality sharply juxtaposed with the disillusion of luxury, which unravels in prose as the album progresses (cf. “All the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room. Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon”, per The Cure, “Some nights can be so fucking lonely, but it’s better than begging for you to stand up for me”, per Cigarette Smoke). All of which are evidence of the starlet’s lack of mens rea to qualify such crimes. It seems the internet pundits have sorely misinterpreted Rodrigo’s artistic morals.
Rodrigo, never fearful of internet critics, defended herself against the futility of the outrage. Taking to the Popcast podcast, Rodrigo clapped back, “I’ve worn a sparkly bra and little shorts…that wasn’t inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike was inappropriate. It’s like how we normalise pedophilia in our culture. It’s this rhetoric that we’re fed as little girls… ‘Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’”
She continued, “I didn’t think 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…You shouldn’t be responsible for some guy sexualising you in a way that was never your intention.”
The babydoll dress has long been subjugated to politicisation, though its beginnings were somewhat antithetical to the modern interpretation. Originally nightwear worn by housewives, the babydoll dress was collateral of fabric shortages during the Second World War, resulting in the signature above-the-knee silhouette.
In the 50s, Cristóbal Balenciaga took inspiration from the lingerie style and transformed it for the runway, where the loose, free-flowing fabric became known as the “Baby Doll” that soon became synonymous with Balenciaga himself. Givenchy too chose to capitalise on the style, harnessing the fluidity and movement the light fabric provided, in turning away from the rigidity of corsets.
Fashion icons like Twiggy and Jane Birkin wore the style in the 60s, at the height of the movement for the emancipation of women. The hemlines became shorter, the fabric freer, and the message was resoundingly one of liberation and self-determination. The babydoll became a symbol of revolution, and choice.
Perhaps the babydoll’s most well-known usage was as the poster-child for the “Kinderwhore” movement in the 1990s with riot grrrl rockers redefining the dress for themselves. Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland (of whom Rodrigo has time and time again referenced, admitting to Rolling Stone in 2023 that her mother would play the Fontanelle album in her childhood), and Courtney Love of Hole spent these years adorning Mary Janes and Peter Pan-collars with the style, and told Rolling Stone that “It was a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? thing. My angle was irony.” The 90s took the Babydoll to new heights, prancing about the stage in the so-called innocent, virginal gossamer, whilst screaming prayers of anarchy, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Sharon Tate in pink sheer babydoll by Moss Mabry in The Wrecking Crew (L), Courtney Love wears her famous blue babydoll in 1994 (R).
The legends of the 90s took the housewife—her bloomers and her beliefs—and flipped her on her head in moral debasement, slathered in red lipstick, smudged black liner, Jack Daniels and klonopin, of which the music did so well to accompany. It was messy and purposefully reactionary, and succeeded in riling up the terrified traditionalists who shivered in fear at such piety.
Love in particular has long been scrutinised for her choice of apparel, and seemingly jumped to support Rodrigo. Taking to Instagram Stories, Love reposted a video of a girl adorning a love hearts babydoll with the caption: “Me in my babydoll dress and bloomers watching Olivia Rodrigo get cooked by angry twitter users.”
In recent years, the Babydoll has remained a staple on the runway, with Miu Miu’s S/S16 collection placing a translucent chiffon babydoll as its magnum opus—this time a commentary on the political extreme, with “conservatism on both the right and left in politics,” as Miuccia Prada put it. Last year’s shows saw yet another return of the silhouette to infamy, with a new spin. Chloe’s S/S25 saw a feminine approach, a demonstration of the fashion house’s romantic savoir-faire. One garment—a soft, ruffled dusty lavender babydoll—rose to quick notoriety, and was later seen on Lily Rose Depp’s cover story for Interview Magazine.
Blugirl S/S07 (L), Interview Magazine, by Richard Kern (R).
Depp and Rodrigo are not the only stars reimagining this classic. Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, and Chloë Sevigny to name a few, have all been joining in on the fun.
What is resoundingly clear from all the he-said, she-said, girl who cried pedo-bait, is that without the requisite intention, there can be no crime. I can hardly see Rodrigo sitting down with stylists Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo pre-show, choosing the daintly, draping herself in the dress, powering up, taking to the stage, and having been satisfied, thinking to herself, “Ah, mission accomplished: I have successfully lured all the 50-year-old creeps with my child-like mien and doe-eyed naïvety.”
The true crime, however, is the double standard. That above all, women will always be the subject of criticism by virtue of their clothing. Women's bodies seem to unequivocally belong to everyone but themselves.
The reality is, had Ms Rodrigo taken to the stage in a hazmat suit, adorned head to toe in protective teflon, rubber gloves and all, the criticism would’ve been that she was too safe, too conservative, a rejection of the feminist movement.
Had it been Levis 501s and a basic white tank, she would have been labelled lazy, inconsiderate, distasteful, boring. Or a nun-like habit, hemlines safely touching the floor, that no doubt would’ve been labelled Rodrigo as shy and insecure, unwilling to push boundaries. You get the picture.
No matter what a woman chooses to put on her body, there will always be someone with something to say. Too much modesty is boring. Too much skin is distracting. Women have always been the subject of slating campaigns, and the moral is: women can never win.
Clothing has long been a primary method of subjugation used to control women. In ancient Greece and Rome, clothing told a story of virtue, with garments draped purposefully to reflect modesty and enforce the role of the woman as bearers of honor, with the lack of clothing deemed immoral, later influenced by the role of the Church—which promoted veils as symbols of piety and good character, and eventually clothing became intrinsically tied to the status of a woman’s husband. Until 1604, England relied on the Elizabethan sumptuary laws which regulated what fabrics, garments and accessories could be worn by both men and women, ushering them into opposing boxes.
The illustrious Victorian poem by Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House” depicts the ideal image of womanhood, prescribing virtues that became the conduit for Victorian girls, expected to adhere to “modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, politeness”. The overarching narrative was that a woman must be seen and not heard, and her clothing too must conform so as not to raise any voices.
Melissa Campbell-Oulton of University of Nottingham, provides exemplars like the corset and petticoat as historical examples of such control, with the social expectation of tight corsetry and suffocating lacings, writing that, “The corset literally moulded the body to create a desirable image not only for men, but for female rivals…[and] entrenched…the repression of female sexuality”, ultimately in pursuit of the “perfect woman” figure.
Political theorist Erich Fromm argued that the rise of authoritarianism across the globe capitalised on the use of women’s clothing to promote conformity, where patriarchal societies enforce dress codes “whether through laws, shame, or fear – these systems regulate women’s autonomy and reinforce control over their identities and sexuality.” The Babydoll itself is an example of this, having been turned into a symbol of shame and deterrence in wearing the fashion, in fear of accusations like those made against Rodrigo. Another being both the mandatory hijab laws in Iran, and hijab prohibitions in France, both eliminating the freedom of women in removal of choice.
There has always been an obvious emphasis of controlling women through what they were allowed to wear according to their social roles. This learned predisposition has become constitutional, passed onto today’s generation, with both men and women subject to the lifelong symptoms of patriarchy, both fearing total female autonomy, The automatic reaction is to oppose female individualism, having been conditioned to live in a realm of control.
Whether it is the fight to show more skin, or to show less, women’s bodies have always been a scapegoat to tell women what to do and what not to do. As has Rodrigo become the scapegoat for incels on X to tell women what to wear. Just a fabricated, convenient excuse for them to speak on behalf of women, against women.
The control narrative goes somewhat undisclosed online, made covert by the guise of “infantalisation”, a (male-created) concept invented by the media mongrels to give them something else to criticise women for. “Infantalisation” became a hot topic when the Japanese Lolita movement—a street fashion trend emerging in the 1990s, inspired by “cuteness, elegance and modesty” —moved West and garnered less-than-negative sexual connotations in being mistakenly linked to the Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name. Any woman in an outfit with even a trimming of lace, frills, ruffles, or ribbon was quickly demonised as cosplaying the young Dolores, in search of luring her Humbert.
When women are accused of committing “pedo-bait”, the rhetoric so astutely described by Rodrigo is eternalised. Letting such accusations creep into the everyday vernacular does nothing but champion internalised misogyny. Women then, in fear of being accused of infantilising herself, will second-guess an innocent dress in favour of something safer. She feels guilty for her clothes and her choices, rather than attributing the guilt to the true culprit—the men who fetishise a bit of lace and cotton.
These women do not promote the sexualisation of children. They get swept up in the audacity of being themselves, expressing fashionable ideals and image experimentation, and are made to face the consequences of choice.
Quite frankly, I find it odd that this is the rhetoric painted: that Rodrigo is guilty, rather than turning to cross-examine the X-users who cried “pedo-bait”. I’d wager that 99% of us who saw Rodrigo in the dress would never dream of inventing such accusations. Most of us were thinking about how pretty the dress was, how good the new music sounded, how excited we were to see what she would do next. It takes some tall imagination, or some sick, deeply-rooted debauchery to invent such a narrative.
The Babydoll speaks volumes. A pounding, high-decibel story of rebellious subversion of expectation, girlhood and politicised liberation. Those who criticise are barren in ignorance to the fashion and historical references.
When the moral reprehensibility of Britney Spears’ baby tees and low-rise pants were called into question by the maxi dress conformists and the Evangelical babies of the Sixties fearing for the children of tomorrow, the Queen of Pop declared, “I’m not their parents.” The same can be said for Olivia Rodrigo. It is not Rodrigo’s job to bestow morality upon her audience, nor is it her job to defend herself against accusations of a few sick freaks online.
My advice? Shut up and listen. The music is great. Olivia Rodrigo looked great. Sit down and keep your weird perversions to yourself.
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