Sabrina Carpenter's sexpot pop star act is good for women

Sabrina Carpenter is camp for straight women. For folks only vaguely aware of the pop star through last year's mega-hit "Espresso," that might not be immediately obvious, but there's a drag queen-esque aspect to the way young fans relate to the petite blonde. This Teen Vogue pictorial offers a glimpse of the audience at Carpenter's concerts: teen girls and young women wearing over-the-top girl gear, all pink bows and lace lingerie, with tongues firmly planted in cheek. They're simultaneously relishing femininity while sending it up. 

To be clear, Carpenter also has plenty of LGBTQ fans, but it's striking how Carpenter's ironic sexiness is resonating with straight women, many of whom have a better sense of humor about themselves than is commonly understood. Carpenter's horny songs and over-the-top sexualized outfits may seem to be for the male gaze, but judging by her audiences, they're not. Her cuteness is always paired with an undercurrent of snark that alienates straight men, at least the ones who take themselves too seriously. Think of the swipe at an ex-boyfriend in "Taste": "He's funny now, all his jokes hit different/Guess who he learned that from." It's a lyric meant to make the Jordan Peterson fan club cry, but young women eat it up. 

This context is crucial for grasping the shock value Carpenter is going for with the cover of her upcoming album, "Man's Best Friend." 

Yes, it's a comparison of women to dogs. But it's also worth remembering that the word for a female dog is "bitch" — not exactly a word associated with the submissiveness we usually ascribe to this beloved house pet. Carpenter's history, combined with the hyperbolic nature of the album art, should be the first clue that she might be playing with audiences.

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The second clue is the first single, a song literally called "Manchild," where the narrator laments about being plagued by men, saying, "half your brain just ain't there." The video layers on camp with a '70s B-movie aesthetic while she describes men in her life using words like "useless," "stupid" and "slow." You guys, I don't think she's being entirely sincere with album art implying submission to the patriarchy. 

But, the internet being what it is, plenty of people had opinions out before their brains could register concepts like "humor" or "irony." The online response to the art was painfully scolding and prudish. One Instagram commenter got 24,000 likes by complaining it's "not a very empowering image for women." "[W]hy are we proudly comparing ourselves to dogs," decried another, drawing 9,000 likes. Even on Reddit, where people tend to be a little smarter, humorless and sexphobic responses dominated. "How is she gonna be on her knees for a man when the lead single is about how useless certain men are," one person posted. "[L]adies, I have one thing to say: STAND UP," wrote another, unaware that it's nearly impossible to perform the sex act implied whilst on one's feet. 

Sabrina Carpenter performs on stage during the Short N' Sweet Tour held at Madison Square Garden on September 29, 2024 in New York City. (Christopher Polk/Rolling Stone via Getty Images)

This response was frustrating. Assuming a woman is too stupid to know what she's doing, which they are doing to Carpenter, is not feminism. It's just old-fashioned sexism, disguised as progressivism. It's also joyless. Not to make everything about politics, but Donald Trump won an election recently in no small part because podcast bros — every single one of them less funny than Sabrina Carpenter — were working a "liberals are no-fun scolds" message. I would like to think that's not true, but one can see why that message resonated. People online can't even enjoy a sexy, silly album cover without going into a diatribe that implies both jokes and oral sex are unfeminist. There have been many theories out there about why younger people are having less sex than their elders, but I think we have the answer with the reaction to this album. 

Okay, okay, that last sentence was a joke. Simmer down. In truth, I think a lot of Carpenter's fans get what she's doing, because it's not much of a departure from what she was doing before. This reaction is an unfortunate relic of the internet, where people too dim to know better feel free to opine, whereas many people with more going on upstairs have the sense to shut up. Most of the hosts on "The View" seemed to get that Carpenter is being provocative, not sexist, and they aren't all that familiar with her work. I imagine there are a lot of Carpenter fans out there picking up exactly what she's putting down. 

And what is that exactly? Well, despite the irony, Carpenter is not anti-sex. On the contrary, she's a breath of fresh air, part of a larger group of young artists — including Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Troye Sivan — who are putting lust back at the center of pop music, where it belongs. This is more true than ever, in an era where any junior high schooler with access to a phone can see hardcore pornography. Those materials can be misogynist, even violently so. But even when they're not, brief clips of people having sex decouple the act from the complex human context that defines most sex in real life. It's gynecological almost, not emotional. 

Sabrina Carpenter performs onstage at the 67th annual GRAMMY Awards on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

That's where we need our pop stars to fill in the gaps for kids figuring this stuff out. It's not like kids are going to listen to parents or teachers. Pop stars singing about longing, love, frustration and old-fashioned lust are providing important information about what sex is for. But it's even better when they bring humor, irony and ambiguity to it, which Carpenter is especially good at. No sex ed class can teach that a blow job can feel empowering, humbling, sexy and ridiculous, all at once. But Carpenter gets it. By bringing the range of emotions and reactions people have to sex in real life — including humor and ambivalence — she's re-humanizing an act that online pornography too often flattens out. 

Making fun of the way a sexist culture imagines oral sex as "degrading" can create the release valve that lets people enjoy it in a more empowering way. Knowing other people think sex is funny, too, can be freeing. Laughing at the lyrics of "Manchild" gives female audiences a little more room to forgive themselves for all the bad boys they've dated. This is what art gives us that didactic political proclamations on Bluesky cannot: freedom to play, experiment and marinate in the gray spaces where most of life happens.