When Sabrina Carpenter dropped the cover art for her latest album Man’s Best Friend on June 11th, the internet erupted in outrage. While some accused Carpenter of derailing feminism and catering to the male gaze, others defended the pint-sized pop singer, claiming such a provocative image wasn’t actually regressive—it was her signature wink-wink-nudge-nudge brand of satire.
Personally I despise provocation for provocation’s sake. As Stella Bugbee notes in a compact conversation in the New York Times, the cover seems “deliberately engineered to create controversy.” My problem is there’s no purpose behind the provocation. She’s being controversial for the sake of being controversial—and so she can profit.
Carpenter apologists claim it’s “satire” or—worse—insist it’s just a playful image. As Olivia Craighead densely defended in The Cut, “It might not even be that deep; maybe she’s just 26 years old and wanted to take a provocative photo—God forbid!” (“it’s not that deep” being the anti-intellectual internet’s favorite way to shut down meaningful conversation).
Let’s address the most common argument in favor of the scandalous album cover: the idea that it’s all a joke, all satire.
How is this disturbing image satirical?
It quite literally shows a dolled up Carpenter in a slinky black dress and heels submissively kneeling on all fours as a faceless man aggressively pulls her blond hair. There’s something undeniably dark about the image: she looks almost in pain, her eyes glossy with tears. This distinctly pornographic picture (coupled with the album’s title Man’s Best Friend) position Carpenter as men’s pet. There is no subversion of sexist stereotypes—only reinforcement. As Glasgow Women’s Aid, a Scotland-based domestic abuse charity, so sharply said: “this isn’t subversion. It’s a throwback to tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, possessions.”
If Carpenter’s goal was to critique the way the media constantly infantilizes and hyper-sexualizes her (or women in general), it was a stunning failure. Since many on the internet clearly need a reminder of what the word “satire” means, Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as the “use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity and vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other issues.”
The problem with calling her degrading album cover “satirical” is it isn’t clearly criticizing anything.
Her distressing image doesn’t undermine the ways men reduce women to one-dimensional sex objects—it itself reduces Sabrina to a one-dimensional object. Can something be satirical if the “commentary” is indistinguishable from the object of criticism?
At times, it seems like Carpenter resents her sex pot image. When recently speaking to Rolling Stone, she responded to those who call her music too sexual saying, “It’s always so funny to me when people complain. They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.”
Sabrina criticizes our culture’s larger obsession with sex (after all, we might find fault with her suggestive music and titillating album covers but we still go to her wildly overpriced concerts and buy her music) but can she rightfully criticize something she herself participates in? She’s as obsessed with objectifying herself as her audience. Carpenter is a cog in the misogynistic machine—not a radical trying to cleverly subvert it.
Though I acknowledge Sabrina’s talent—she’s a vocal powerhouse and often has a cheeky, charming stage presence—her 1950s bombshell aesthetic has always been too sexualized for me. Take her Eiffel Tower visual joke at her recent tour stop in Paris. Was it shocking? Sort of but is enacting a sex position on stage really all that subversive or shocking in a world steeped in pornography?
Such pop star “provocation” is downright boring. A woman using her sexuality to scandalize American audiences is nothing new. The “former Disney star trying to shed her squeaky clean, good girl image” is a tired trope (remember a scantily clad, tongue out Miley Cyrus humping Robin Thicke at the VMAs over a decade ago?). It would be genuinely provocative if Carpenter (or any public figure) took a stand on our day’s pressing political issues.
And before you call me a prude, I’m not against a beautiful woman owning her sexuality. I’m not against kink or submission or any sexual preference really. I am, however, against one of the most powerful pop singers in the world rebranding exploitation as empowerment.
Sabrina’s retro brand of bubblegum hyper-femininity is not at all subversive. After all, what’s subversive about portraying yourself as a powerless sex object? equating yourself with “man’s best friend,” the dog, a creature known for its unquestioning loyalty and obedience?
When women’s reproductive rights are being rolled back and monstrous men like Diddy are on trial for their disgusting abuses of women (one of which was dragging his longtime girlfriend Cassie by the hair), Miss Carpenter’s contentious album is tone deaf at best, regressive at worst.
Pop culture is that deep. To paraphrase Atlantic critic Sophie Gilbert, culture doesn’t just reflect reality—it conditions it.
Violent sexual images promote violence against women.
Playing into pornographic troupes and dressing like Lolita normalizes sexualizing children.
Demeaning portrayals such as Carpenter’s suggest women are merely objects, decorative props meant to be objectified and ogled at.
Patriarchy has convinced women that twerking and wearing thongs is “empowerment” when it’s really another form of subservience. Carpenter claims to be “in on the joke,” but is she—are all women— just the punchline?
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