If CMAT is an affront to the male gaze and Olivia Rodrigo indulges in it, how exactly should women dress? | He punched

FOr an eye-catching look for Spring/Summer 2026, why not try one of the fun ways you can dress for misogyny? There is false concern with buttons. Highly skilled arrogant nose glasses. Feather snakes scattered in anger. If you’re really so bold, why not wear a full Christmas suit of naked disgust? There seem to be far more acceptable options than there are for dressing like a famous pop star in 2026. And between the parallel hype over the very different outfits worn by CMAT and Olivia Rodrigo recently, it almost seems as if there aren’t actually any options at all about how a woman should look in public. Funny, that.

Yesterday, both Irish and American musicians commented on the recent backlash to their appearances that has come from the bottoms of the internet. On Sunday, CMAT performed on BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland. When the BBC posted clips of her performance on Instagram, the comments about her body were so vile that the broadcaster had to disable them; Interestingly, clips from the same festival showing female artists with smaller bodies are still available for comment. “It’s been so hard trying to describe how difficult the last few days have been since bbcr1’s big weekend,” CMAT posted, saying the comment caused her “deep sadness.”

Alarmingly, two years ago, CMAT went through exactly the same thing at the exact same festival. At the time, she laughed it off, saying: “I didn’t realize it was illegal to have a big butt! I’m guilty as charged. It’s time to lock me up and throw away the key.” It also inspired one of her great songs, Take a Sexy Picture of Me, about the impossible beauty standards women face. She wondered: How young do we have to be to be considered sexually attractive or even worthy of love from men: 15? 14? five? “Or two, like a child?” Instead of taking a hard look in the mirror, some idiots claimed that its lyrics advocated the sexualization of young girls rather than mocking the sly stereotype: “Is ‘CMAT’ so scary?” asked one “older male” on Reddit.

Even ruining a man’s outlook won’t stop you from being accused of pimping. In the design for Rodrigo’s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the 23-year-old pop star wears babydoll dresses in homage to the punk women of the ’90s — Kathleen Hanna, Courtney Love, Kat Belland — who revamped nightgowns into a “baby whore” look, ripping them off and smearing them with makeup to confront men who felt uncomfortable with their unwanted objectification. A concert in Barcelona, ​​during which Rodrigo wore a billowing, floral dress, sparked widespread comments online calling her a “pedo-taste” and “Lolita”. “This has been making me very upset,” Rodrigo told the New York Times Popcast published yesterday. She pointed out how illogical these comments were: In the past, she had performed in a bra and shorts, without any protest, “but I was completely covered up in a dress that people considered childish, it was inappropriate.”

Rodrigo continued: “I think this shows how we normalize child sexual abuse in our culture. And also this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re very young, which is like, ‘Don’t wear this because then a man will sexualize your body and it’s your fault.'” Rodrigo continued.

If CMAT is supposed to be an affront to the male gaze, but Rodrigo indulges in it, what plot is left? Even the narrative of reverse empowerment is a trap. As CMAT pointed out, several “well-meaning” people tried to claim her as the figurehead of the body positivity movement, but she wrote: “I do not choose to look like this or weigh this so much as some kind of punk rock freedom. I simply have a body, a body that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all this abuse, but I have had a very difficult time doing so. I can’t say whether I want to be brave or not, I simply have to sit here and accept it.” Every possibility of how a woman might appear in the public eye has been co-opted by an agenda that would rather tell her who she is than listen to what she has to say about herself.

A suggestion that is often put forward in such situations is that you should never comment on women’s appearance. But in pop stardom, the artist’s outlook is deeply intentional, integral to the enjoyment of it all, and as worthy of analysis and consideration as the music. The adapted CMAT burlesque includes the way Dolly Parton treats femininity as drag; the comic creativity of drag itself; Huns who look outrageously cool on a high street budget, with a bit of campy Catholicism to boot. And while Rodrigo is best known for growing up as a Disney Channel actress, at home, her mother played “Babes” in Toyland and Hole, so her look is a nod to her maternal lineage as well as the rock legacy she’s carrying on. (It’s also probably very comfortable playing live, a far cry from the stirrups and stilettos that young pop stars had to wear 20 years ago.)

And while millions of fans understand this, their appreciation is fading. CMAT wrote that she would like to stop discussing how badly some people talk about her body, “but I can’t because it’s happening at an accelerating and worsening pace as my fame grows… No one can protect me from this, and all that’s required of me is more and more work because every environment I’m put in becomes more hostile.” Success, she wrote, “became increasingly distorted by the fact that I would have been allowed to enjoy it much more if I had been thin.”

We are in the midst of a major conservative retreat around femininity that is also being manipulated by bad actors. To me, the wave of comments like this towards CMAT and Rodrigo comes with a distinct touch of bot farming, a coordinated attack backed by figures or movements with a vested interest in curtailing the ways women can exist in public spaces. It’s the latest pathetic costume for misogyny: a bunch of losers huddled in trench coats, fooling everyone.