Why babydoll dresses, worn by Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, are sparking debate

Few items of clothing have sparked more debate in the music industry in recent months than the babydoll. The short, floaty nightgown has long been seen on female performers. Still, it has become a hot topic on social media thanks to the feminine aesthetic of singers like Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter. Critics accuse the singers of deliberately styling themselves as childlike and giving off Lolita vibes. A closer look shows that the debate is about more than just fashion. It is about how female pop stars are perceived and judged – and why their appearance so often speaks louder than their art. On Instagram, Rodrigo recently presented her followers with the cover for her latest album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. It shows her, in a pink dress somewhat reminiscent of a school uniform, on a swing. For many, this is a reference to the current pop culture phenomenon of girlhood: a playful, solidarity-driven celebration of femininity that filmmaker Sofia Coppola and fellow singer Sabrina Carpenter also espouse. Coppola popularised this idea of girlhood with films such as The Virgin Suicides (1999). It refers to a kind of aestheticised staging of girlhood, expressed through nostalgic, playful and hyperfeminine imagery – think bows, pastel tones, glitter, diary aesthetics and analogue photography – while simultaneously symbolising community, emotionality and self-discovery. Rodrigo draws on this look in her new music video for the single “Drop Dead”, in which she dances through the Palace of Versailles in Paris in ruffle shorts. The problem is not the dress Rodrigo, who rose to prominence through Disney productions, has been accused of engaging in dangerous “infantilisation” and “paedo baiting”. Critics charge that she is promoting an image of womanhood that deliberately presents femininity as childlike while simultaneously sexualising it – thereby reproducing patriarchal fantasies rather than questioning them. Others say she is being deliberately playful and that she is appropriating stereotypical images of “girlishness”, exaggerating them and making them visible. Carpenter and Rodrigo reveal something about how femininity is negotiated in pop. Female singers continue to be defined largely by their appearance, and discussions about them often shift away from their art. “The problem is not that a woman wears a short, playful dress,” says musicologist Penelope Braune. “The problem is far more a culture that permanently sexualises female bodies and then holds women responsible for precisely that sexualisation.” Many female artists now consciously play with this objectification: they ironically exaggerate beauty ideals, subvert them – or make their own physicality demonstratively their own subject matter. This is often described as reclaiming – appropriating an attribution to regain control. But there is also an ambivalence in this, Braune says. The boundary between attribution and self-determination blurs once something is out in the world. “Pop culture does not exist in a vacuum – that is a fact,” she says. “Behind every look there is an industry, platform logics, attention, marketing and so on, and that is precisely why reclaiming is never entirely free of ambivalence: it can be intended as empowering and yet still circulate within an image economy shaped by the male gaze.” ‘It’s so weird’ Rodrigo herself has said her clothing references the “Riot Grrrl” movement of the 1990s, as she told Vogue in an interview. Musicians such as Courtney Love deliberately wore girlish outfits at the time, contrasting them with combat boots, angry lyrics and distorted guitars – upending gender stereotypes in the process. Those musicians are her role models, Rodrigo said in an interview on The New York Times podcast Popcast. The criticism of her babydoll dresses makes her “so upset”, she said. “I think it shows how we really normalise paedophilia in our culture,” she said. “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 sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’ Like, it’s so weird.” What matters, Braune says, is “whether we take Olivia Rodrigo seriously as an artist with agency, or whether we immediately assume she is merely reproducing someone else’s – male – fantasies”. Fellow musicians have been supportive of Rodrigo. Singer Robert Smith, for instance, is featured on the new album and has performed alongside her. Fellow singer Courtney Love, also known for wearing babydoll dresses, has come to her defence as well. It is little wonder, then, that Rodrigo has had a string of catchy hits that draw on the pop and rock history of the 1980s and 90s – precisely the aesthetic her visual presentation references. The first of those tracks, “All I Want”, was released when she was 16. For all the debate, Rodrigo and Carpenter remain two of the most successful pop stars in the world today. Rodrigo’s single “drop dead” is her fourth song to enter the Billboard charts at No 1, while tickets for her world tour have long been sold out.

Why babydoll dresses, worn by Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, are sparking debate

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter’s fashion choices have sparked fierce discussion on femininity, agency and the male gaze in pop culture

Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter’s fashion choices have sparked fierce discussion on femininity, agency and the male gaze in pop culture