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The Babydoll and the Boot

what’s really disturbing is i feel like i actually have worn outfits that are maybe revealing on stage. like, i’ve been on stage in like a sparkly bra and little shorts, which is my right. that’s fun. i felt cool and comfortable in that. and that wasn’t inappropriate, but me, like, fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike was inappropriate. and i just think it shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture … and it’s also this rhetoric we’re fed as girls … which is ‘don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualize your body and it’s your fault.’ … you shouldn’t be responsible for some guy sexualizing you in a way that was never your intention.

—olivia rodrigo, nyt’s popcast


let me start by saying this outright: olivia rodrigo’s bloomers aren’t indicative of “the rise of fascism” if we’re already there. The woman’s just trying to sing her songs, stomp around the stage, and maybe remind us that the coquette revival on tiktok comes straight from 2014 tumblr.

and let me make it clear—since apparently people still need this spelled out—i believe the u.s. has been a fascist state since its founding. not “sliding toward,” not “at risk of becoming,” but already built on the scaffolding of authoritarian control, racial and sexual hierarchies, and state‑sanctioned violence.

but the discourse (and oh, is there discourse) around olivia’s babydoll dresses, her bloomers, her pouty lips is doing something interesting. it’s making people ask what it means to perform femininity in an era where fascism feels less like a warning and more like the daily weather report. Cloudy with a chance of surveillance, am i right?


THE BABYDOLL PROBLEM

aesthetics don’t exist in a vacuum. they never have. every hemline, every silhouette, every fabric is part of a bigger cultural conversation—especially so when the performative nature of femininity, both mature and nubile, is at hand. and that’s where the babydoll gets complicated.

now, i’m not here to teach the history lesson you’ve already heard. i’m sure by now we’ve all seen the numerous tiktoks, substacks, and instagram carousels going into detail about the birth of the babydoll dress. yada yada… wwii fabric shortages… yada yada… patriarchy informs fashion…

but an instagram reel by @kait.don threw me down a rabbit hole i found especially interesting:

in the 1800s, trinidad [and tobago] started their carnival … they would specifically have the baby doll masquerade. and these would be black women that would dress like baby dolls and hold baby dolls that look exactly like them … the baby doll in their hands would be a child of rape.

these characters were meant to show the exploitative nature of the slave trade and hold the men in their society accountable.

i watched a video from ttt (trinidad and tobago television) to learn more about the baby doll in their culture. in it, artist and designer amanda t. mcintyre shows through her contemporary fashion piece how the baby doll masquerade was never about celebrating innocence so much as dramatizing its theft. she layers satire, mourning, and outrage into the costume—the gingerbread house details, the delicate lace fabrics—and in doing so forces spectators to look at the violence that produced those “childlike” images in the first place. the narrator even expresses the strength of this character: “known for commanding space, telling stories, and confronting power.” the carnival baby doll is a theatrical indictment that performs the trauma of colonial sexual economies so the audience can’t pretend the aesthetic is harmless.

so i can’t deny the mere existence of the babydoll dress is loaded. it plays with the idea of girlhood—not womanhood, not adulthood, but girlhood, in a way that can feel both empowering and unsettling depending on who’s looking (and even who’s wearing it).


GIRLHOOD UNDER THE GAZE

            here’s the thing: cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal beauty standards reward those who perform nubile femininity the best. that’s not a moral judgment; it’s just how power works. the closer you align with the “ideal”—young, soft, pretty, unthreatening—the more cultural capital you get handed. and olivia fits that mold.

            but the panic around her stage outfits is partly projection. after years of real-world horrors and the constant moralizing of youth and their bodies, people are primed to read danger into anything that looks “too young” or “too soft.” in an era of publicly available epstein files and pedophile presidents, olivia’s babydoll dress isn’t exactly doing what folks think it is (pedo baiting). for instyle, madeline hirsch writes:

accusing her of everything from self-infantilization to machiavellian political psy-ops, users on platforms like x and threads made dubious claims connecting her look to a culture of child abuse. but according to the singer herself, it seems girl rock history served as inspiration more than some psycho-sexual plot. “i really love the idea of a babydoll dress,” rodrigo told vogue in an interview earlier this month. “i just remember being younger and having pictures of courtney love and kat bjelland from all these riot grrrl punk bands in their babydoll dresses, just owning it.”

            @elusiveworm on instagram makes a solid argument against the notion that olivia is pedo baiting too. in a stitch to instagram user @ebonywarriorstudios1, they say:

the problem is when we focus on what a woman is wearing, as the source of the issue, we end up repeating a logic that women have been dealing with forever: if men sexualize you, then you should have been dressed differently. survivors have been hearing versions of that argument for decades. it does not matter whether the outfit is revealing, modest, childish, conservative, trendy.

further, under @elusiveworm’s post, one commenter says, “he should see the ‘what they were wearing’ exhibit. it might make him understand.” another commenter says, “my friend was in a band tee and tripp pants, wearing [a] hoodie. it was never about clothes.” and most interestingly, many other commenters describe @ebonywarriorstudios1 as a groomer and misogynist that was called out by kat blaque on tiktok and has been “bouncing from one platform to the next” since.

as a leftist who thought his takes were generally good, i was disappointed but absolutely not surprised. it reminds me that men will always be men. misogyny that’s veiled behind calling out “white women” is still misogyny—and especially since olivia rodrigo is a mixed filipina woman.


THE BOOT IN THE ROOM

            fascism thrives on rigid gender roles, strict binaries, and the idea that everyone should look and act a certain way. it loves uniformity. it loves predictability. it loves aesthetics that reinforce hierarchy.

hirsch writes, “internet critics might wonder instead why their toddler’s clothes resemble sleepwear and underwear designed for adult women...” you see, it was never about the women trying to be girls. quite the contrary! it’s always been a fascist patriarchal society forcing womanhood onto girls to abuse, rape, and kill them. this goes back to the baby doll carnival character in trinidad and tobago, too, where we ought to consider the implications of these societal impositions on children.

when we trace the babydoll’s genealogy we find two overlapping logics. one is the colonial/patriarchal logic that sexualizes and commodifies youthful bodies; the other is a counter-logic—a tradition of performers who deliberately weaponized “childlike” styling to expose, mock, or resist that commodification. the carnival baby doll dramatizes stolen childhood; the riot grrrl babydoll reclaimed it as a stage prop for rage. both are political, but they point in opposite directions. in elle’s “what’s so wrong about a babydoll dress?” matthew velasco writes:

at its core, the babydoll dress is an act of defiance … in the ‘90s, it took on a more subversive meaning when artists like [kim] gordon and [courtney] love wore it to juxtapose the edge of their music with overtly feminine styling.

like rodrigo, these women challenged the idea that overt femininity exists only to be consumed by or catered to the male gaze.

rodrigo’s approach to the babydoll dress feels similarly tongue-in-cheek.

what olivia and women before her have done—subvert the babydoll aesthetic—does the opposite of what fascism demands. it’s messy, emotional, nostalgic. it’s a little bratty. it’s not an aesthetic that lends itself to authoritarian control because it’s too rooted in personal expression, even when it looks innocent on the surface.

riot grrrls knew this. the tumblr girlies knew this. and even olivia rodrigo knows it. she’s participating in a lineage of fuck you’s and frills. babydoll dresses used to create cognitive dissonance. a singer in a frilly slip screaming about abuse forces the audience to reconcile sweetness with fury. that dissonance is political because it refuses the neat categories fascism depends on—you are not simply consumable, you are not simply docile.

the tumblr coquette revival repackages that same dissonance for the tiktok generation, but the throughline is the same: using “girlhood” aesthetics as a site of resistance rather than surrender. olivia’s nods to courtney love and riot grrrl imagery are less about courting male attention and more about inheriting a tactic. dress like a doll, then refuse to behave like one.


BABES AGAINST THE MACHINE

in the end, the babydoll isn’t about returning to some idealized version of nubile femininity—of girlhood. it’s about reclaiming it, reframing it, and wearing it proudly in a world that tries to weaponize it every chance it gets. honestly? it’s even about simply wearing “nice fucking clothes,” in the words of courtney love.

personally? i’ll keep wearing my vintage slips and bobby socks, thank you very much. not because i’m trying to cosplay innocence or be perceived as a fragile nymph that needs to be protected from the big bad world. but because they’re cute, they’re comfy, and they make me feel like i’m in a coming-of-age sofia coppola film. and wearing them as a nonbinary femme csa survivor who doesn’t remove their body hair makes pedophiles especially uncomfortable—my favorite pastime!

but seriously, in a fascist state, one of the most radical things you can do is exist in a way that is true to you, in a way that goes against the grain, in a way that doesn’t make you palatable for everyone.

don’t let the boot stomp out the babydoll.



Edited by Joyce Kristine Culong

Works Cited

@elusiveworm. “livid at being called feral for believing the burden of men’s reaction lies on

women to dress differently.” Instagram, 16 June 2026,

@hausofpopcapital. “Olivia Rodrigo addressed the babydoll dress criticism in a new podcast

interview with @popcast.” Instagram, 27 May 2026,

Hirsch, Madeline. “The Complete History of the Babydoll Dress, a Much-Needed Fashion

Lesson.” You’re All Taking Olivia Rodrigo’s Babydoll Dress Way Too Literally, InStyle,

@kait.don. “The baby doll dress is trending and white feminism is doing what it always does.”

TTT Live Online. (2026, February 9). We focus - exploring the cultural significance of the baby

doll in Carnival [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52ViBw9_uS4.

Velasco, Matthew. “What’s So Wrong About a Babydoll Dress?” The Olivia Rodrigo Babydoll

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