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On Saturday, on my way to my birthday party in an outfit I looked forward to wearing all week, I got catcalled with a racist comment. It’s the kind of nonchalant harassment Asian women might be familiar with, and maybe it wasn’t particularly threatening, but it’s enough to make you feel ashamed and embarrassed. You turn up the volume on your headphones to avoid hearing the rest. I put on my playlist of “Asian girls with smashing guitar energy,” which includes songs from Rina Sawayama, Mitski, The Linda Lindas, and of course, Olivia Rodrigo. I stomped my heeled boots to the rhythm of “Brutal,” still stiff as I tried not to let the bare skin of my legs peek out from under my peacoat. My coat was closed and went past my knees, my boots covered most of my legs, and I had already buttoned up my shirt to cover up to my neck before leaving the house. But all women know that doesn’t stop anything, even if the world insists it might. I was mad that someone had gone out of their way to make me feel small rather than mind their business. Then I remembered, elsewhere around the city, worse has happened and continues to. Women are getting punched in public, as we’ve seen on TikTok, and more horrible things are happening that don’t end up on camera. Or worse, without even getting reported.
So, last night at Madison Square Garden, when Olivia Rodrigo told us, “When the lights go down, I want you to think of something that really pisses you off and scream,” I knew exactly what to do. And so did the thousands of mostly girls and women around me. When the room went black, the stadium erupted with a primal scream that lasted for several moments. Wow, we all needed that, didn’t we? I thought. I’m aware of Rodrigo’s pretty, thin, and white-passing privilege, but it wasn’t lost on me that a fellow Asian woman conducted that chorus of guttural screams. Nothing quite challenges the quiet and submissive “other” stereotype like a song called “All-American Bitch.” Especially the lyric “I scream inside to deal with it like AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
When the lights were on, I saw most of the crowd was comprised of young women of various races and ages in butterfly clips and sequined mini skirts and shades of lilac. Some were arm in arm with their best friends, bobbing their heads in unison. A duo held each other’s faces as they shouted along. Others filmed selfie videos, belting to songs, to be uploaded to Snapchat. One, probably no older than 10, took a selfie with her mom. Another a few rows in front of me seemed to be FaceTiming her grandpa. Before the set began, a group of boys wearing sunglasses, crop tops, and purses conducted a photo shoot with their ring light and a quartet of girls behind them cheered them on. What could these beautiful young people possibly be so pissed about?
A lot, actually, and Rodrigo’s music shows that. Growing up is hard. (“If someone tells me one more time, ‘enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry,” and “They all say that it gets better, but what if I don’t?” she sings.) Whereas last year’s celebrations of girlhood were Barbie-pink and carefree and joyous and tied up in a bow, songs on Guts and Sour remind us that girlhood is also angsty and enraging and extremely embarrassing. These formative years of your life are some of the most self-conscious you’ll ever be, especially if you’re not a straight, cisgender boy. It is a time when fitting in—whether it’s sitting at someone’s lunch table or owning a Stanley Cup—means survival, and failing to do so means questioning yourself entirely. Shame is something girls are taught at a young age and never really unlearn—whether it’s about their appearance, who they decide to be intimate with, what they decide to do with their bodies. Comments evolve from, “You’re too loud,” to “Your skirt is too short,” to “She’s wearing too much makeup,” to “She’s a slu*t,” to “You’re too bossy,” to “Why aren’t you married yet?”
Being a kid is especially hard right now. We’re in the midst of a teenage mental health crisis (with teen girls twice as likely as boys to experience sadness), books are being banned from schools, access to gender-affirming care is being threatened, and reproductive health care is becoming more and more difficult to obtain. One year after the fall of Roe v. Wade, 25 million women were living in states with severe abortion restrictions. Rodrigo herself knows that; some of her tour proceeds will benefit her Fund 4 Good, which aims to support girl’s education and reproductive rights and prevent gender-based violence.
Being a girl means facing all those big challenges and the tiny everyday ones, and taming the storm of emotions that come with them. It’s wanting to kiss someone’s face with an upper cut and also wondering, why don’t they love me? with mascara streaming down your face. It’s knowing you should be grateful all the time but getting jealous of another girl, because she posted a nice photo. It’s yelling at your mom, because she doesn’t get it, but calling her immediately when you don’t know what to do. It’s feeling like everything you do is tragic and hating yourself for it, even though, years later, you might eventually look back and laugh. It’s wanting to call a boy stupid but being terrified that he might physically hurt you. And it’s being furious that all of it has to be this complicated.
It’s also not just girls. As P. Claire Dodson wrote for Teen Vogue after Guts was released, these feelings aren’t only reserved for adolescence. We belittle Rodrigo’s songwriting—and our very own emotional capacity—by doing so. These messed up feelings don’t cease to exist when we turn a certain age, so we mustn’t be ashamed to keep feeling them. We should embrace them as we continue to come of age, even into our 30s or beyond.
During her Guts World Tour, Rodrigo invites us to feel all of that out loud. There might be a lot of things to be mad about, but there’s a beauty in feeling it together. At MSG, the emotion was just as palpable during her many ballads as during her head-thrashing rock songs. During her acoustic arrangements, I was struck but how young the voices sounded singing along. They belted “traitor” with full force: “You BETRAAAAAAAAYED MEEEE.” It’s comforting to know that Rodrigo is giving these girls, some of whom looked like they were still in elementary school, a safe space to feel hurt, even if they haven’t experienced the kind of heartbreak she’s singing about yet. (Little girls have big feelings, too.) In a world where women are conditioned to shrink ourselves to make other people comfortable, Rodrigo encourages us to not hold back, to be messy and yell, “f*ck it, it’s fine!” and be on our worst behavior for a night. And when she floated above the crowd on a metallic crescent moon, Rodrigo also provided a feeling of magic. Faces and phone screens lit up alongside the twinkling star decorations hanging from the ceiling, and when she waved at sections of the crowd, you could feel the euphoria as girls cheered and felt seen.
There have been many before Olivia Rodrigo (she’s brought Sheryl Crowe and Jewel onstage), and there will be many after her. But she understands that girls, and women, are strong and delicate and precious and intelligent and complicated and confused and so, so powerful. They should be given the space to dream—and the grace to scream.
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