Olivia Rodrigo, sad girls & babydoll dresses
a pretty sad conversation for a girl so in love with a dress
Like many of you, I haven’t stopped listening to you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love since it dropped on June 12th. As a fellow pisces and avid writer, I’ve related to Olivia Rodrigo’s style of storytelling since SOUR was released in 2021. Her music is a mirror to the contrasts that exist in girlhood and youth, the love and the heartbreak, the joy and the horror, the self-discovery and the doubt.
I don’t tend to be interested in critiquing people’s artistic endeavours because I know how difficult it is to share art in any capacity. What I explore in my publication is the way art shapes and intersects culture, and the muses that influence creatives. Therefore, this article won’t dissect Olivia’s new album but rather focus on the complex cultural landscape it has been released into.
As Olivia was in the pre roll-out for her third album she got caught up in a storm of wrath from the internet, an occurrence not uncommon for famous women. However, we don’t have to be public figures to understand this type of scrutiny surrounding our bodies and how we look. The laser-eyed focus on Olivia’s choice of babydoll dresses has been playing on my mind.
When the music video for drop dead was released in April, I watched it on repeat. Shot in Versailles, it follows in the lineage of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. As one of the few music videos shot in the palace, it was directed by Petra Collins mainly on camcorder. The video is decadent in ornate surroundings, yet stripped back in terms of how it’s shot, as if we’re there with Olivia running through the palace in pyjamas. As an introduction to the album, our first taste of the visual and sonic landscape, it made a strong impact. And perhaps an impression that wasn’t intended…
It was from this music video and a photo promoting the album that the babydoll dress controversy arose in regard to Olivia. There is a connection between this conversation and the response to Marie Antoinette. Although now a cult-classic, it premiered in 2006 to much controversy and scandalised outrage. Critics weren’t pleased by the way Sofia Coppola combined a period drama with modern punk music. There is a recurring theme of women not being allowed to be seen as more than one thing. It makes people uncomfortable if they can’t box us in a safe corner. Olivia occupies a similar space in her art, situated between a gentleness and brutality that can coexist. Her latest album is split in two, one side of the record called girl so in love, the other you seem pretty sad. She is well equipped to exist in a world of contradiction.
The babydoll has become a historical, cultural, and political statement. This won’t be the first or last time Olivia will navigate the contradictions of growing up as a woman surrounded by the male gaze. The dress is a style that is traditionally worn by children. It was first designed for women in the early 1900s by Paul Poiret as a departure from the cinched waistlines of corsetry. Over the decades it has gone through many iterations but is usually distinguished by it’s empire (or higher) bust-line or no bust-line at all, and short hem. It’s interesting to note the current rise in this style in pop culture after a long period of the corset’s popularity. I’ve been anticipating a swing in fashion’s pendulum for the last few years, and Olivia signals the shift. I won’t go into detail on the long and complex history of the babydoll in this article.
Briefly, it was redesigned by Sylvia Pedlar in the 40s as a type of lingerie or nightgown that was a lot shorter than traditional nightwear. As a style that opposes the restrictive silhouettes of corsets and long hems, it was deemed liberating. Until the disturbing Baby Doll film about a child bride was made in the 50s, leading the dress to symbolise sexualisation of girls. By the 60s and 90s the style was reclaimed by women in a stance against patriarchal norms. Over the decades it has shifted yet remained in the zeitgeist, transforming with each new interpretation. It is an item of clothing that holds as much contradiction as Olivia’s work, and as a result causes discomfort in our culture.
Olivia is certainly not the first woman to wear a babydoll dress. Her fashion choices tend to refer to style icons like Jane Birkin, a woman famous for her summer babydolls. The minidress Olivia wears in the beginning of the drop dead video is a replica of one Jane Birkin wore in the 60s. I imagine it is Jane’s uncontroversial and unquestioned love of babydoll dresses that Olivia is partially inspired by.
However, perhaps it is the second era Olivia is referencing that causes her to be scrutinised in a way that is different from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, although I think there are racial undertones to this conversation too. Sabrina has had a less harsh reaction to her dress of choice compared to Olivia. The babydolls of the 50s are the styles that Sabrina wears. She often completes the pastel looks with robes, garters, and heels, ultra-girly, paired with her tongue-in-cheek, hyper-sexualised music.
Olivia, on the other hand, refers to the riot grrrl era and female punk artists of the 90s like Courtney Love. During the rise of grunge, Kurt Cobain also wore a babydoll dress onstage. The women of this time were wearing babydoll dresses as an ironic rebellion against the patriarchy. It was a statement that they could remain feminine and soft while not pandering to men. They would often pair the dresses with combat boots, like Olivia tends to. This was problematically named the kinderwhore aesthetic by journalist Everett True in 1993. The aesthetic is a contrast of hard, heavy, utilitarianism with youthful, pastel, innocent silhouettes which has long caused friction in society.
The controversy the babydoll causes is confusing. The dress is comfortable, more so than many other styles. As a shapeless shift, its silhouette doesn’t highlight the figure at all. Dressing in a less restrictive manner is also a response to the recent but long-lasting fad of constraining corsetry and shapewear. Olivia said that she likes the dress, and the comfort the style offers. It can be a relief to wear a shapeless outfit. However, it’s ironic that showing less of your body still manages to objectify girls and women. It is the association with girlhood which is the reason that the dress is fetishised. This in and of itself is the most troubling part of the conversation. Why should it be women’s responsibility to dress in accordance with a gaze that is not our own?
Olivia continues to be questioned about the babydoll dress on her press tour. In an interview with Popcast, she was asked by the two male hosts about the controversy surrounding her choice of clothing. Olivia says she has worn far more physically revealing outfits on stage like a bra and hot pants, yet these are not the outfits that have caused outrage and scandal around hyper-sexualisation. She finds it disturbing how when she’s covered up in the babydoll dress it’s considered inappropriate because it’s “deemed child-like.” Olivia feels “very protective of young women and girls.” She says, “It’s this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little which is ‘don’t wear that because then a man’s going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’” She says if we’re dressing to avoid the fetishising gaze of men who deem “dressing like a baby” sexy, then “we’re losing the plot.”
This is the line of questioning I keep returning to. Why is there so much conversation around a woman wearing a dress, and not about the projections women are made to wear? Why can’t a dress just be a dress, and a woman wear whatever she wants?
Wear the dress or don’t? All I have to conclude is that fucked up desires, thoughts, and projections should not be worn by any woman or girl.
It’s not the look we’re after.
References:
Olivia Rodrigo’s drop dead music video directed by Petra Collins
Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola
Popcast interview with Olivia Rodrigo
"Why is there so much conversation around a woman wearing a dress, and not about the projections women are made to wear? Why can’t a dress just be a dress, and a woman wear whatever she wants?"
That's what we should talk about more. It's absurd for women to be criticized for the way they dress, and it's difficult to predict when this will stop. Women are often scrutinized when real issues are at stake, but these issues are often ignored when everyone is too busy discussing the inappropriate nature of a simple dress. Brilliant writing and a right message!
Great read, thank you! I am fascinated by the vast difference in Sabrina Carpenter´s and Olivia´s approaches. While Olivia purely just wears an infantile dress and keeps wearing combat boots and singing about relationships, the former commodifies the striking contrast of portraying herself as a teenage girl while openly singing about sex and performing sex positions. This I cannot help but find disturbing. As it´s not the male gaze creating this distinction, it´s the author herself.