Sabrina Carpenter Didn't Cross The Line. She Blurred It.
The cover for the pop star’s upcoming record, ‘Man’s Best Friend’, has been met with both outrage and fervent defence. But what does the intensity of the discourse say about us?
On her ongoing tour in support of Short ‘n’ Sweet, her excellent record from last year, there’s a recurring bit where Sabrina Carpenter has sex. Not proper sex – that’d be a very different kind of show – but rather a simulated sex position. It’s just before the second chorus of ‘Juno’ (whose title references the 2007 comedy about teen pregnancy), where Carpenter playfully asks ‘have you ever tried this one?’ It’s a funny, surprising moment in a show full of such moments – my favourite of which is when Carpenter, rather fittingly, sits on a toilet to perform the frustrated, men-are-stupid ditty ‘Sharpest Tool’ – that also works in service of Carpenter’s wider Short ‘n’ Sweet narrative. The record, and by extension its surrounding era, have helped graduate the former Disney star’s image into something more sex-positive and mature. The ‘Juno’ position isn’t, as some have claimed, an example of selling sex to promote music. Instead, it’s a clever, tongue-in-cheek way to perform sex as a way to convey Carpenter’s point – the point here being that she, yes, loves sex, but also has agency in the bedroom. Parents attending the concert have criticised the frankness with which Carpenter discusses sex; I’d argue that her candour, which contributes to a normalisation of discussions of intimacy & relationships, makes her an ideal role model.
Up until now, Carpenter has used sex in her marketing as a means to an end. Yes, she is an uncannily beautiful woman (preface: I am a very homosexual man) but the way she markets herself – for instance, a billboard reading ‘She’s gonna make you come… to her Coachella set!’ – is humorous, winking, obviously satirical of the ways in which women have been forced to market themselves in the past. Carpenter is leveraging her sexual agency, as well as the power she has as a prominent artist, to get across her point. It’s not anti-feminist to wear a short skirt or to write a song about how you’d like your man to get you pregnant (if anything, it’s anti-feminist to advise what women should and shouldn’t do with their bodies). Nor is ‘real music’ dead for the sake of focusing on sexuality; for what it’s worth, Carpenter is a skilled lyricist, a decent singer, and she’s made some great songs in recent years, so anyone uninterested in the sexual aspects of Carpenter’s music can still find other things to appreciate. Instead, she is one of several emerging woman artists who’re being more frank about their romantic failings – and bringing swathes of fans comfort in the process.
With the cover of her upcoming album, Man’s Best Friend, the above no longer applies. (Scroll down to view the cover.) There’s nothing here to suggest that this is satirical, parodical or tongue-in-cheek. There’s no wider point or comment. It’s indistinguishable from a still of a pornographic film, many of which have the frankly disgusting ‘appeal’ of watching women by degraded and dominated by men. Many fans have defended the cover by saying that it’s just satire, but it’s a flawed defence – satire can still be poorly executed. If it were properly satirical, it would make men uncomfortable and make women feel seen. It would, say, be zoomed out to reveal that Carpenter is the man on the cover (as a metaphor for how she bears some responsibility for staying in relationships with shitty men) or would perhaps have her secretly branding a knife, or some scissors, looking at the camera menacingly. Something, anything, to say that she doesn’t condone this horrible, ‘50’s era attitude to sex. Even an eye roll would have been better than what we have.
I can’t believe I’m siding with the parents, but what example is Carpenter setting by essentially endorsing this male fantasy? Sure, it’s not her role to be perfect (and it’s worth noting that this ‘role model’ critique would never be levelled at a male artist), but it’s worth pointing out. The problem isn’t that Carpenter writes extensively about men, nor that she uses sex as a marketing tool. The problem isn’t that she’s appealing to the male gaze (which I can’t imagine she’d do; besides, the ‘male gaze’ critique is essentially a dressed-up way to slut-shame). The problem isn’t even that, as the Man’s Best Friend cover could be attempting to indicate, she likes being dominated in the bedroom. The problem is that this cover – and only this cover – inadvertently glorifies the very issue she’s trying to satirise. At best, it’s ineffective; at worst, it sets a dangerous precedent and is the latest of a series of markers that the patriarchy is coming back in full force. (That’s not to say the patriarchy’s ever gone away fully; it’s simply making itself more known now.)
Even elsewhere in this era, Carpenter is far more effectively commenting on what she’s trying to comment on here. The video for ‘Manchild’, whose subject matter you can glean from the title alone, has her taking a bath with pigs and roller skating toward a lorry to hitch a ride. The metaphors are obvious, yes, but they’re also ironic – and effectively so – clearly critiquing the issues at hand (both the immaturity of men Carpenter dates and her continual return to them) while doing so in a thrillingly humorous manner. The accompanying image Carpenter posted alongside the album announcement, depicting a dog’s collar with the tag reading ‘Man’s Best Friend’, is also effective. It gets across her point – she feels as though men treat her like an object or a pet, something to play around with but not respect as a human – without degrading her and setting an unsettling example in the process.
When approaching the Man’s Best Friend discourse, I’m reminded of the controversy last year surrounding the single art for Kesha’s ‘Delusional’. The cover in question was an AI-generated image of bags spelling the title (though, in many instances, the word was misspelt). The singer later explained that she was attempting to comment on how ‘the world expects artists to continue making art when we are so undervalued’. She eventually changed the cover on streaming services, because ‘living in alignment with my integrity is more important than proving a point’. I feel the same way about Carpenter’s cover; in trying to comment on a pertinent, universal issue, she’s missed the point and has become an example of the thing she’s critiquing.
The Man’s Best Friend incident reminds me of another smaller controversy last year, when one image from a Carpenter photoshoot (view it below) looked eerily similar to a still from Lolita, an adaptation of the book of the same name. That book explored themes of paedophilia and sexual abuse; notably, its author, Vladimir Nabokov, requested that the character of Lolita not appear on the cover, in the interest of preserving the book’s steely yet subtle critique of Humbert (the paedophile abusing Lolita) and his actions. In appearing to reference Lolita, Carpenter missed the point of that novel for the sake of a photoshoot. Like then, I’m fully aware that Carpenter is a grown woman in charge of her body & what she does with it; but like then, as now, the methodology itself is ill-advised.
I’m morbidly curious, then, as to why the discourse surrounding the Man’s Best Friend has felt so inescapable in recent days, in comparison to the other aforementioned controversy, which came and went faster than the men Carpenter writes about. Not to be the friend who’s too woke, but surely we have more to worry about than a poorly executed album cover. Women in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, are being slaughtered while my country’s government – much to the outrage of a majority of its citizens, including me, who don’t agree with Israel’s actions in Gaza – are sending more weaponry for the aggressors to ‘defend themselves’ against a conflict they started. Women in Carpenter’s home country are dying, or worse, because of antiquated abortion laws. Trans women’s rights in the UK continue to be suppressed. FGM rates are rising. Carpenter is setting a poor example, yes, but ultimately the harm done by this cover is minute compared to the other numerous atrocities being committed against women currently. It makes me revisit the immortal Jemima Kirke Instagram story, where she notes that ‘I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much – except here, the ‘yourselves’ is Carpenter.
My theory as to why we’re so outraged is that Carpenter is, simply put, an easy target, having become a lightning rod for discussions about sexuality in music ever since the ‘Nonsense’ outros started becoming a thing. She’s the default person the online mob tends to turn to when projecting their gripes – ‘music is dead’, ‘women are sluts’ and other gross exaggerations – of modern music. It’s interesting that, as Carpenter noted in a recent Rolling Stone interview, the sex actually makes up a small amount of her artistic output, saying of her concerts: “There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on.”
The public’s fascination with her sexuality, on both the critical and the reverent sides, is then perhaps a response to the increased sexual liberation of women artists. Though this sort of thing can be traced back to Madonna’s Erotica days, these singers nowadays are more often than not empowered to write frankly about their own sex lives, their own relationships; it’s dishearteningly unsurprising that the reaction to this empowerment has been one of, essentially, slut-shaming. (In 2014, Iggy Azalea spoke about fans sexually assaulting her at her shows – essentially reading her sexualised lyrics as invitations – while Billie Eilish, for a time, would only wear baggy clothing in order to avoid being sexualised.)
Carpenter isn’t setting feminism back fifty years, as some detractors might have you believe; in fact, I have every faith that the full Man’s Best Friend project will restore her penchant for thoughtful critique balanced with relatability and wit. Truly, my issue with her begins and ends with this cover. It is not Carpenter’s job to be the pinnacle of feminism, nor a perfect role model; her relatability when discussing the pitfalls of her dating life is part of why she’s become so beloved. (I’ve rarely felt so seen by a song as I have by ‘Slim Pickins’.) The problem here is that her imperfection has slipped dangerously into a error that undermines her usual sharpness, an error that unintentionally endorses the antithesis of Carpenter’s brand. For once, she’s not in on the joke.
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