The Olivia Rodrigo Dress Outrage Feels Like Bot Behavior

Olivia Rodrigo wasn’t wrong — it is quite brutal out here, especially if “here” is the desecrated place that is the internet and its ridiculous outrage over a pop star’s preference for babydoll dresses. The internet melted down this week because Rodrigo chose to have a sense of fashion. (Honestly, that place is really only good for stalking crushes).

As Rodrigo gears up to release her third LP, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So In Love, she’s been twirling around in the loose, fluttering silhouette, a signature of her preppy-meets-edgy style. She donned a bubblegum-pink, floral collared dress for the album’s artwork; a blue, ruffled one for the “Drop Dead” music video; and most recently, rocked out at Barcelona’s Teatro Greco for Spotify’s Billions Club Live while wearing a floral babydoll dress and matching bloomer shorts underneath.

Apparently, this was all too much for users on X and Instagram, who have been losing it, claiming that the frilly silhouette both infantilizes and sexualizes the 23-year-old star. “She is wearing pink dresses that are similar to what toddlers wear with frilly underwear beneath it,” wrote one X user, referencing Rodrigo’s Barcelona outfit. “This is giving child clothes and with all the sexy moves she tries to pull, it kinda looks weird,” wrote another X user. One post that refers back to the same outfit racked up 21 million views and simply reads, “Maybe I’m too woke.”

These looks are nothing new for the singer, who has been pairing feminine dresses with combat boots since she kicked off her musical career in 2021. Rodrigo’s style has also always been referential; it’s a hallmark that’s helped her gain fans across generations. Back in 2023, she told Rolling Stone that her mom used to wake her up by putting on Babes in Toyland’s Fontanelle. “Rock in that feminine way, that’s just the coolest thing in the world to me,” the pop star said at the time.

It’s no wonder the singer has taken a page from Babes lead singer Kat Bjelland’s book when it comes to clothes, too. Bjelland was one of the icons of the riot grrrl scene in the Nineties, and along with Courtney Love and Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe, she was known for sporting hyper-feminine, girly dresses. This harmless, doll-like look juxtaposed with the anger running through their punk discographies and unruly performances and was meant to subvert the expectations of women as docile objects in the patriarchy.

It’s not that shocking that folks aren’t picking up on Rodrigo’s blatant references. What is surprising is the insistence that she must be supporting something nefarious by dressing this way. If anything, that all feels contrived and brings to mind the manufactured outrage online bots are so great at. Could it be yet another example of a bot-coordinated attack? It’s possible.

In the past year, GUDEA, a behavioral intelligence startup that tracks viral, reputation-harming claims on the internet, flagged two separate bot smear campaigns against Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan. These attacks happen when fake profiles create incendiary echo chambers by continuously posting about something, giving the appearance that there was viral consensus amongst internet users, the last place one would expect it. So far, there hasn’t been a confirmed bot attack to explain away the anger at Rodrigo and her fashion. But the weirder the outrage, the more likely it is all totally baseless.

It may all be as simple as good ol’ misogyny, something Rodrigo knows all too well. “Putting out music in the age of social media can be really daunting,” Rodrigo told Alanis Morissette back in 2021 for Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians. “I think people hold young women to an incredibly unrealistic standard.”