Sabrina Carpenter and the inner voyeur
The pop star's regressive brand of sexuality is all about male pleasure.
Sabrina Carpenter’s A-list ascent has been celebrated as the dawn of a new pop girl renaissance, with Carpenter’s persona as an unabashedly horny girly girl winning praise as a supposedly ironic, feminist take on the prototypical sex kitten.
A sexy pop star is nothing new and a young woman confidently discussing sex, on its face, should be celebrated. But the insistence that Carpenter’s image is empowering or subversive, rather than a market-researched method of selling albums and concert tickets, suggests a misunderstanding of sexual liberation. Her sexuality is a product, a performance and another way to line the pockets of label executives.
Carpenter’s recent output is all about sex, but remains male-centric and fetishistic: her lyrics include pleas to have a man “come right on [her],” her desire to be impregnated and have her partner “mark [his] territory” and references to her flexibility and how she shaved for this.
She made out with fellow hot starlet Jenna Ortega in a music video and has simulated sex positions that mostly evoke male pleasure or titillation every night of the Short n’ Sweet Tour. Several of her songs are about being hotter than other women (occasionally teenagers) competing for the attention of a man, an inaugural experience for women who buy into the patriarchy.
Through Carpenter’s music, female sexuality is understood as a performance meant to affirm a woman’s attractiveness through a man’s eyes; pleasure is derived not from a woman’s desire being satiated, but through being an object of male desire.
She evokes Margaret Atwood’s concept of the inner voyeur, as described in her 1993 novel “The Robber Bride,” where women in patriarchal societies unconsciously operate through the lens of male fantasies.
As described by Atwood:
“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
Carpenter’s music and persona are reminiscent of Bimbo Feminism, where influencers embraced misogynistic stereotypes of vapidity and stupidity in sexy outfits as a purported means of empowerment and celebration of femininity.
While Bimbo Feminism has mostly fallen out of favor, it has been replaced with seemingly more innocuous trends like being “just a girl” or celebrating “girlhood,” which are largely used to convey women as sensitive and silly, in addition to celebrating hyperconsumption of gendered products as equaling female solidarity.
Similarly, Carpenter has infantilized herself through appearances in Lolita-esque photoshoots and constant references to her small stature (including the name of her breakthrough album).
Even her first smash hit “Espresso,” which repeats the grammatically bankrupt hook “That’s that me espresso,” was lauded in part because it was stupid. Her celebrity encourages women to turn off their brains and enjoy the purported upsides of traditional femininity: namely, laboring to meet rigid gender ideals in the hope that a man might find you sexy.
In the excellent essay“your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy,”writer Jade Hurley analyzed the tension between Carpenter’s decidedly adult lyrics and more juvenile aesthetic. Hurley cited Carpenter’s raunchy live outros for her sleeper hit “Nonsense,” drawing attention to a particularly troublesome pair:
“I’m full grown but I look like a niña/ Come put something big in my casita/ Mexico, I think you are bonita!” (February 2024)
“Gardens by the Bay, I wanna go there / Then, I’ll take you somewhere that has no hair / Singapore you’re so perfect, it’s no fair!” (March 2024)
To quote Hurley:
“These two particular outros left a nasty taste in my mouth. Not only does Sabrina fall into the trope of “Tiny Sexy Girl”— with a side of “Born Yesterday Sexy”—she is explicitly comparing herself to a pre-pubescent child. She looks like a young girl, her pussy is bald, and she wants you to fuck her. She isn’t sharing this only because it’s funny; for some audiences, these qualities grant her favor and capital.”
The defense that Carpenter is adopting such a persona ironically to connect with her primarily female fanbase is reminiscent of Choice Feminism, or the belief that any decision a woman makes is automatically empowering and insulated from criticism. Because her overall branding of being hot, horny and eager to please a man reinforces sexist fantasies rather than satirizes them.
Further, her male-centric approach to womanhood mirrors Tradwives, a subculture that glamorizes the conservative ideal of women existing to birth children, make dinner and serve their husbands. Sure, Carpenter wears miniskirts instead of maxi dresses and pays lip service to progressive beliefs, but both versions of womanhood fortify the idea that women are at their best when they are traditionally feminine and pursuing male pleasure.
Notably, Carpenter struggled to achieve mainstream success before adopting her current aesthetic, which often evokes the 1950s. It does not seem coincidental that her retro brand of femininity won over audiences in 2024, amid a steady rise in conservatism that was solidified by President Donald Trump winning the popular vote in November.
That Carpenter has never publicly labeled herself a feminist and has remained silent as reproductive rights have been steamrolled in the United States only strengthens the notion that she is uninterested in the less tantalizing aspects of sexual liberation.
This is not to say that sex has no place in art or is inherently crass or exploitative when referenced by women.
Pop stars have pushed the envelope in their depictions of sex for decades, like Madonna simulating masturbation onstage, Janet Jackson offering an intimate look into her sexual desires and contemporary queer artists like Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and Janelle Monáe producing bold celebrations of same-sex attraction.
But Carpenter’s whiteness, heterosexuality and conformance to traditional femininity allow her an image of accessibility and innocence not afforded to artists from marginalized backgrounds.
That Carpenter has never publicly labeled herself a feminist and has remained silent as reproductive rights have been steamrolled in the United States only strengthens the notion that she is uninterested in the less tantalizing aspects of sexual liberation.
When rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released WAP in 2020, which featured explicit lyrics centered around female pleasure, they faced the full force of the right-wing moral panic machine and were met with racist insults. When Carpenter simulated giving a blowjob on stage, she was lauded as a hilarious, relatable everygirl with any criticisms of her waved away as conservative pearl-clutching.
Some might argue that Carpenter is just a pop star and her music is not meant to be a commentary on womanhood. But no one exists in a vacuum, least of all one of the most famous pop stars in the world; with so many celebrating Carpenter as the voice of the modern sexually empowered woman, the broader impact of her message matters.
And in an increasingly misogynistic culture seemingly intent on reimplementing retrograde gender roles, it’s no surprise that one of its biggest stars is falling in line like any good girl would.
Great work per usual Emma, all of the points outlined in this piece is why she puts such a bitter taste in my mouth, and why I struggle with her as a popstar.