Olivia Rodrigo: The cure to the cultural devaluation of ‘Girlhood’
Music News Blitz’s Darshan Kaur Gill explores the superstar Olivia Rodrigo’s success, not only as an artist, but also as a cure to the continued devaluation of the things we associate with ‘girlhood’.
Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo emerged as a global pop phenomenon just over a month before her eighteenth birthday when her debut hit single, drivers license, was released on January 8, 2021.
The single debuted at number 1, making Rodrigo the youngest artist to ever do so.
Just recently, drop dead, her lead single from her new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, debuted at number 1, making Rodrigo the first artist to ever have the lead single from each of her three studio albums debut at number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
The societal dismissal of female expression
For decades, girlhood has been one of the only phases of life where almost everything connected to it is entirely dismissed.
Pop music, romance, fandom and obsession culture are all things that can be identified as key parts of girlhood, yet they are also routinely dismissed as shallow, embarrassing and frivolous.
Ironically, society constantly consumes these themes, whilst simultaneously refusing to accept and respect what connects them all by treating teenage girls as trend signifiers and profitable audiences, but rarely as meaningful cultural thinkers.
But Olivia Rodrigo flipped the script.
A new wave for girlhood in pop culture
When the artist’s single drivers license debuted, it exploded across streaming platforms and social media in an immediate and overwhelming reaction.
The song, alongside the background story fans attached to it, sparked millions of listeners worldwide who related to the heartbreak, longing and emotional devastation that the song captured.
Despite this impressive cultural impact and reception, Rodrigo’s success was still marked as frivolous, completely disreputing how the song conveyed the seriousness of a teenage girl’s emotions.
Girlhood: Only legitimised when it is commercial?
Modern culture has long framed teenagers, teenage girls specifically, as excessive.
Their emotions are portrayed as hormonal and melodramatic, suggesting that they are irrational and unstable.
To “act like a teenage girl” is often used to suggest that a reaction is overdramatic or superficial, resulting in the cultural byproducts of girlhood to become automatically devalued.
Teenage girls are often seen as irrational, when they’re just navigating emotions that are then unfairly treated as embarrassing, unserious and excessive.
It’s almost implied that if teenage girls like something, it must immediately lack depth.
This is a pattern that repeats endlessly and their emotions are treated as embarrassing until they prove their influence.
Things like boy bands and fandom culture are mocked and ridiculed until society realises how the popularity and female expression they generate can be commercialised.
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A “Sour” antidote
Rodrigo, particularly in her debut solo album “Sour”, refuses to hold the emotional restraint expected of young women in this transitional phase in their lives.
She addresses and captures feelings of jealousy, resentment, pettiness, humiliation and rage through her music.
Songs like traitor, favourite crime and good 4 u, are all unapologetically emotional, and Rodrigo disrupts this never-ending cycle of girlhood’s perceived superficiality by refusing to detach herself from the very emotions girls are told to suppress.
Rodrigo’s authentic and articulated emotions
The sincerity that Rodrigo captures in songs like lacy, from her sophomore album “Guts”, are part of what makes her music feel so culturally radical.
The global phenomenon has become more than just a successful pop star; she has become symbolic of a broader cultural shift toward reevaluating the characterisation of girlhood itself.
Her success did not emerge because she transcended girlhood, but rather because she articulated it so precisely.
Using her songwriting to capture the instability of adolescence, Rodrigo’s music continues to express the complex themes of femininity – wanting attention whilst despising the visibility you seek, craving love while resenting vulnerability, seeking the unattainable ‘effortless girlhood’, and performing confidence whilst quietly unravelling behind the scenes.
Rodrigo has managed to deliver these emotional contradictions into universally recognised artistry.
An ongoing social battle
The devaluation of girlhood has never been harmless, but in recent years, the belief that young women are somehow less intelligent, political or culturally valuable has been cropping up at a worryingly more frequent rate on social media.
Dismissing girls’ emotions means dismissing their perspectives, creativity, autonomy and authority, which teaches young girls that their experiences are excessive rather than meaningful, making girlhood something they are desperate to escape instead of something worth understanding.
Rodrigo’s widespread success revealed that girlhood was never trivial, but rather integral to the way society functions.
Teenage girls have helped shape trends across society including language, fashion, aesthetics, fandoms and entertainment industries.
They have always been cultural architects disguised as consumers; a demographic that is constantly refused of being recognised as meaningful.
Though Rodrigo didn’t invent the idea of girlhood, she forced mainstream culture to confront it directly.
Her music became a reminder that the vulnerabilities associated with teenage girls are not disposable - they are serious and are art within themselves.
Her new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, is set to release on June 12, 2026 with her second single, the cure, releasing on May 22, 2026.
