the paradox of sabrina carpenter
fame brings both new fans and criticism
Until earlier this year, Sabrina Carpenter was known for opening the Eras Tour with Taylor Swift, her reasonably popular album emails i can’t send, a few Netflix movies (she was the only good thing in the torture of Tall Girl) and her status an alum of Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World. She was just between Famous and one of those singers/actors that a certain portion of the internet knew of. To quite a bit of surprise to some of her newer fans, they found out that she had been releasing music since 2015. Nearly ten years of work finally erupted in her big break with the release of her two smashing singles, Espresso and Please Please Please. One of the main factors in her success was her shift in branding, a topic my friends and I love to observe. She was able to escape from the Disney mould (they were the record label she was signed to for her first four albums) and reinvent her image to be a twist on the 50s/60s aesthetic, brimming with lace, bows, luscious blonde curls, flowing babydoll dresses and corsets, paired with chunky go-go boots. One of her other signature qualities is her proclivity for raunchy lyrics.
I adore Short n’ Sweet and the fair share of emails i can’t send, and find her branding very interesting, as well as liking Sabrina herself generally—she’s very funny and has a beautiful voice. But with her explosion into the mainstream and her tour drawing massive crowds, her ‘inappropriate’ behaviour has attracted lots of criticism. This is the double bind of successful female artists: as soon as they start to find their place in the music industry, the doors open for a wave of irrational yelling and attacks. However, I believe some of it is warranted, such as the questionable choices that connect her sexuality to her childlike appearance. I won’t go over all of the instances, as this essay already did a brilliant job. Just a few points on this concerning link include her lyrics saying ‘full grown but I look like a niña / come put something big in my casita’ and her Lolita inspired photoshoot. There are some other critiques of this issue I’d like to note—people are always more shocked when a white woman acts explicitly in contrast to Black women, who have experienced so much sexualisation that it’s expected. Purity is intrinsically linked to white womanhood and femininity, and the same grace is not extended to women of colour. And secondly, some people (though I don’t think this is an overwhelming proportion) are tired of the ‘exploitation’ of women’s sexuality, whether done by the self or others. In the past ten years and longer, there has been such a large proliferation of sensual content that some people would just like to see something different, and also because of the influence it has on the young people—it pressures girls to try and act twice their age, and prompts boys to expect this behaviour from the girls they are around too.
However, the majority of people mad at her are coming from a more puritan approach rather than a concern for unhealthy connotations of sexualising childlike looks or the complexities of double standards. At the end of the day, Sabrina is an adult who makes music that is aimed at an audience who are a little more mature—I’d say teenagers and young adults. Half the songs on her album are explicit and about sex (bed chem and juno being the most obvious ones), you should expect both her performances and lyrics to go along those lines. But one of the interesting responses to Sabrina’s suggestive dance moves was actually from a teenager who is on the older side—not a 13 or 14 year old, but a 17 year old.
This sort of criticism was also aimed at Olivia Rodrigo for releasing a shot glass on her 21st birthday. The thing is—she’s an adult and it’s to celebrate her birthday, and I’d argue that most of Olivia’s music isn’t aimed at very young audiences either.
The return to puritan culture among the younger generation isn’t a healthy turn; it encourages women to be pigeonholed into a stiff box where self expression is frowned upon, and freedoms are encroached upon. Some people need to realise that some music and artists just aren’t right for them. Especially parents who get upset after buying tickets to a Sabrina or Olivia concert and then are shocked and horrified at how bad a role model the artist is for their 8 year old and how that singer should do a better job of regulating herself if she knows she has children in the audience. Yes, I agree we should do what’s best for the children. But it’s the parent’s responsibility to make sure that the media their child engages with is suitable for their age, or at least what the parent thinks is appropriate. Also, did they not do any research before spending hundreds of dollars on tickets to a high demand concert??? Whose fault is that???? I saw a video of a man literally tear up his tickets when he found out what the concert actually was like.
Neither of these artists ever said they were child friendly, and the blame shouldn’t be on them for not catering to an audience that they didn’t make their music for. Perhaps this vitriol aimed at Sabrina and Olivia also arises from the knowledge that they were both Disney Channel kids, a platform that creates content for an audience of kids up to around 13. This particular breed of parents feel uncomfortable that these artists are actually growing up and exploring themselves after a constricting contract that Disney binds them with—they want them to stay the same; as an innocent child who their own kids can emulate, rather than their kid (who is still very young and not at all grown up) trying to be like their role model who is no longer on Disney Channel.
There is an expectation for these female artists to be kid-friendly, but when male artists or actors (for example, Ryan Gosling was a ‘mouseketeer’ alongside Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears) take on more serious or explicit roles/music, they don’t face nearly a fraction of what the women went through. Did parents start shaming Justin Timberlake when he was fined for DUI, because their children really looked up to him? Not that I know of (maybe they did lmao I wouldn’t put it past them). It’s happened to Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez… it’s an endless cycle and these two women are just the latest targets.
There’s something to be said for the larger cultural landscape that has promoted the self sexualisation of teenage girls and the pressure to conform to these standards, but the people who are scared or offended by Sabrina and her fellow artists are terrified when they see a woman who is comfortable with herself and her sexuality, for she does not fit into their narrow view of what a good female should do with her life. From the extremes of hook-up culture comes the pendulum swing in the opposite direction: a fear of women’s bodies. We need to be able to find a balance between the two, rather than seeing black and white and choosing one or the other. We as individuals need to get better at interrogating our attitudes, beliefs and biases, and questioning ours and others’ reactions to these artists who can serve as vessels for our society’s deeper problems.
hi! thank you for reading <3 i’d love to hear your thoughts—agreements, disagree, a bit of both, all of it! it’s you who makes this newsletter possible, thank you for your support. if you’d like to leave a like or a comment that’ll fuel me to write xoxo
ONCE AGAIN A WONDERFULLY WORDED ESSAY 👏
bring back nuance!!!!