Sabrina Carpenter may be ‘highly sexualised' – but that's not what is most provocative about her

The Guardian

07-07-2025

There are some hot takes on feminism that it's better to bow out of when this isn't your first rodeo. The reveal of Sabrina Carpenter's album cover, which landed last month, was such an event. The photograph shows Carpenter on her hands and knees, with her hair being pulled by (presumably, as you couldn't see his face) a man. The Daily Mail reported that 'over-sexed Sabrina Carpenter' had been 'roasted by fans' for her 'highly sexualised and provocative album art'.
Could we prove that she wasn't being criticised by people who hated her already, while her fans understood something different from 'sexualisation' and were not provoked? Never mind. When you are in the business of slating young women, the onus isn't upon you to explain what the problem is, or whether it's you who has the problem, or indeed whether it's some other constituency, be it 700 bots on X or real people who think. All you have to do is say what you see.
Nevertheless, the 26-year-old singer, songwriter and actor is already mega enough to have got into beef with Taylor Swift, released seven albums and gained worldwide renown. So, realistically, what does she care if she is being used in an argument about sex, pornography, the male gaze, female desire and blond hair that has been going on since before her grandmother was born?
And yet, on Sunday night, I saw Carpenter play in Hyde Park – a performance so vivacious and self-determined that, even though she needs defending less than ever, I still feel like clearing up a few things.
First, women are allowed to play with whatever 'highly sexualised' tropes they like, because the obverse of that – any woman who does so is a plaything and the mouthpiece of the patriarchy – is so last century. If you remember the Britney years – the prurient, global is-she-isn't-she ick around her virginity, the way she was asked to carry contradictory Madonna-whore expectations of womanhood that reached back centuries (and woe betide her if she didn't look happy about it) – you will accept and celebrate, I hope, that things have moved on.
Whatever Carpenter is saying about the male gaze, with her cartoon pornification, she is saying it for herself. I decline to adjudicate what her message is, what mashup of irony and aesthetic puts the joke in her submissive stance, but I can see that it's a stance she chose; she wasn't gamed into it.
Second, it's just not reasonable or fair to expect every young female superstar to act as a template for every other young woman. This is a critique that comes up a lot: Carpenter, Swift and Charli xcx are creating a world in which women feel that they have to conform to a new, unabashed sexuality that is more about objectification than self-expression. At the Charli xcx gig at Glastonbury, in which, fair play, she did writhe around a bit, I heard a young woman say in disgust: 'This is just soft porn.'
Well, maybe, but the only reason to get angry about that, in a world in which sexual signifiers move so fast it's sexy to be in fetish wear one week and a Mennonite headscarf the next, is if you think she was mandating a new mode of femininity for everyone. That is not right – and would never be said about men in any era. No man ever looked at Mick Jagger and thought: 'Well, this is demeaning; now we're all going to have to wear too-tight jeans.'
Third, there is an absurd omertà around beauty now. Even though chart success is pretty much a referendum on who is the most gorgeous, stars are expected to lean into it yet pretend not to know it. Any suggestion that a young, beautiful woman might have the pick of the world is somehow a surrender to a harsh misogynist reality. What if it isn't? What if she does have the pick of the world and is happy about that?
'Highly sexualised' is right, but when has that not been true of a mainstream album cover? What is really provoking people is that Carpenter isn't embarrassed about it.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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