There are a lot of things to be angry about right now: war, genocide, income inequality, the rise of the far right, a global economic system that enriches a small minority at the expense of a sprawling majority, fakemink’s breath control. And yet, this week, people are choosing to be angry about Olivia Rodrigo wearing a nice little dress.

People are saying that this dress – which she wore at Barcelona's Teatro Greco for Spotify's Billions Club – is infantilising, that it’s sexualising children’s clothes, that it’s even “promoting paedophilia”, or that it’s part of a broader trend of “white girls” enjoying the so-called “sexy baby” aesthetic. Rodrigo, who is mixed-race for a start, has somehow become a symbol of cultural decline all for wearing a floaty dress on stage.

Can everyone literally calm down? Rodrigo is not wearing children’s clothes. She is wearing adult clothes – specifically a dress by Chemena Kamali, the creative director of Chloé, whose runway show Rodrigo attended in March. Chloé – which counts Martine Sitbon, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo and Clare Waight Keller among its previous designers – has long been associated with soft, romantic femininity. And Rodrigo’s style has always referenced girlhood and coming of age, much like her music, so this crossover is hardly surprising: Chloé makes floaty dresses and she likes wearing them.

The design itself – the babydoll dress – was not even made for children originally. It emerged in the 1940s as a way of conserving fabric during wartime rationing, and was later popularised by the 1956 film Baby Doll. It was later taken up in the 1990s, as a symbol of sarcastic hyper-femininity, by female rock musicians like Courtney Love and Kim Gordon as part of a trend called Kinderwhore. Rodrigo has nodded to the fashion of both eras throughout her career. The outrage, then, says far more about how some people interpret her dress than about her choice to wear it.

And even if she were wearing children’s clothes – which, again, she is not – is that really such a problem? Rodrigo’s performances are not especially explicit or provocative, nor are they geared towards the male gaze.

That’s what makes this backlash so strange to me. In the great pantheon of provocative celebrity dressing, this hardly qualifies as shocking. Have we really become that puritanical?

I don’t know, maybe people are just feeling touchy after Sydney Sweeney’s ‘sexy baby’ scene in the new season of Euphoria. In it, we see Sweeney wearing nappies, sucking a dummy, and spreading her legs apart for the camera. But Sam Levinson’s ragebait (which I have previously accused of celebrating female degradation) and Rodrigo’s playful, retro femininity are entirely different things. 

There is something deeply ironic about accusing Rodrigo of promoting paedophilia while people continue to consume media made by, about, or centred on men accused of actual abuse. The new Michael Jackson biopic – which refuses to acknowledge or address his allegations of child abuse – is currently performing extremely well at the box office (at time of writing, it has grossed $241.9 million in the US and $581 million worldwide).

So maybe the real cultural problem isn’t the 23-year-old woman wearing a cutesy dress on stage. Rodrigo is an artist in control of her image and clearly having fun with it. And she’s literally just wearing a fairly short dress. If you think that makes her look like a sexy baby, then maybe that’s on you for thinking babies are sexy. Please save your outrage for something that matters.