Olivia Rodrigo: The GUTS Tour Celebrates Feminine Rage
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
In 2023, girlhood was everywhere. We did girl math, ate girl dinner, and sported the clothes of our youth: bows and ballet flats, friendship bracelets, lots of Barbie pink.
But many cultural critics identified a dark irony: that this embrace of girlhood came in the aftermath of the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. What did it mean that, as women’s autonomy was stripped away, we channeled the least autonomous time in our lives? Was this the new “going back to brunch,” turning away from politics when we needed to engage most?
I found answers to these questions in a surprising place: an Olivia Rodrigo concert.
At one of her sold-out Madison Square Garden shows, I came to see how Rodrigo embodies a new, radical girlhood. She teaches us that we can be girlish — at any age—and, at the same time, be so much more.
We can be political, and better yet: we can be pissed.
When we think about feminist pop anthems from the recent past, they’re fired up, sure — but they’re still pretty positive:
“You’re gonna hear me roar!”
“This is my fight song!”
“Who run the world? Girls!”
I belted these songs with my girlfriends when they came out; they made us feel strong, confident, empowered.
But in 2024, we’re more aware than we were in, say, 2014, of the entrenched systems — capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. — that keep us from running the world. You can’t, in fact, just lean in, power pose, or girlboss your way to the top.
So while these lyrics resonated then, they simply don’t meet the moment for girls today.
Take even the very youngest Gen Zers, born in 2012. They’ve lived through #MeToo, a Trump presidency, a pandemic. And now, their generation is fighting to defend abortion and IVF, amidst a rollback of rights that leaves them with fewer freedoms than their mothers had at their age.
Rodrigo addresses this head on. She wanted her GUTS tour to partner with a charitable cause; so, as the founder of two nonprofits — Moms First and Girls Who Code — I was enlisted to help identify organizations Rodrigo could support.
Quickly, Rodrigo knew what she wanted to fund: abortion.
Abortion, we should remember, is actually quite popular. But for a 21-year-old mega popstar to pick one of today’s most divisive political issues? Not the obvious call.
This wasn’t the first time Rodrigo took a strong stance on reproductive justice, either. Performing at Glastonbury the day after the Dobbs decision, Rodrigo told tens of thousands of festival attendees: “I’m devastated and terrified that so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this.” She then brought out singer Lily Allen to sing Allen’s, “F*ck You,” and dedicated it to the conservative Supreme Court Justices. She was 19.
In this way, Rodrigo has made her politics explicit. But the radical girlhood in her work is no less political.
Rather than the rah-rah, girlboss-pop of the 2010s, Rodrigo’s songs are vulnerable and self-deprecating. She’s not afraid to make herself look bad — she’s obsessed with your ex and she’s getting back with hers; she wants you to be happy, but not happier.
“I’m an emotional girl,” she told David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of the New Yorker.
This, in a way, sums it all up. Rodrigo does not tamp down or dress up her emotions: she says it like it is (“I got issues, I can't help it!”). She curses. She embraces her sexuality. She embarrasses herself, then laughs about it. This vulnerability, compared to girlboss-era perfectionism, is much more relatable and validating.
But how, exactly, are those feelings political? Feminine rage, as Rebecca Traister explored in her 2018 book Good and Mad, has driven social progress for decades. It’s no wonder, then, that America has historically made so-called “hysterical women” its outcasts and scapegoats. This is even more true for Black women and girls, who face added scrutiny when expressing “too much” emotion, especially anger — a dynamic that Black woman artists like Beyoncé have had to navigate their whole careers.
As fans have pointed out, nothing captures bottled-up feminine rage better than the first track on GUTS, Rodrigo’s sophomore album: “all-american b*tch.” The tongue-in-cheek song, in which Rodrigo mockingly sings that she “knows [her] place” and is “grateful all the time,” went viral on TikTok for giving a voice to this collective feminine rage. This ability Rodrigo has — to be embraced by the mainstream and unite women around their anger — is a powerful organizing tool.
Let’s be clear: this is not a call to put Rodrigo on a pedestal. The young artist is still finding her footing as an activist: she recently made headlines for distributing free Plan B at her show in Missouri, where abortion is banned, and then more headlines for stopping. And she is certainly not the only popular artist currently melding music and protest — and she would be the first to say as much.
But she is tapping into something unique. She is embracing girlhood — bows, miniskirts, sparkles, and feelings — and the righteous indignation of politics, protest, and punk rock. Plus, she’s doing it all, at 21, while selling out arenas around the world.
When she performs “all-american b*tch” live, Rodrigo invites the audience to think of something that really pisses them off — and then to scream their hearts out about it. She gives us permission to let out our rage. I was reminded of fed-up moms during the pandemic — a small group of whom gathered on a football field in Boston to let out a cathartic, primal scream.
One of the mothers told another, “It was so nice to feel out of control for the first time.”
The first time.
As I looked around at MSG, at all the girls letting out enormous screams, I felt grateful. Grateful to live in the time of Olivia Rodrigo; grateful to have her radical girlhood as our example; and grateful that these girls were learning, at such a young age, that it’s okay to be out of control.
They can look at their role model and know: this girl’s got guts.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
Want to read more Teen Vogue abortion coverage?
