By Sarah Murnane
It appears we are still doomed to have the same conversation over and over into oblivion. Sabrina Carpenter released the title and cover for her upcoming album Man’s Best Friend. The cover features Carpenter, on her hands and knees with her hair being pulled by a man in a suit not in the frame. She looks like, well, a dog.
An easy way to tell if some sexism is happening is to ask a simple, yet effective question, are the men doing it? If not, it’s time to get suspicious. The second part, is if the woman has been clearly and explicitly coerced or forced into doing something through external factors.
In this case with Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover, there are two answers to this. No, most male pop-singers do not feel the need to get on their hands and knees and allude to being treated like a dog by a man. However, I do not believe that Carpenter was coerced, forced or tricked into making this cover. The problem with the argument is that to tell Carpenter, or any other woman, that their actions are sexist is to admit in some way that if they were better educated, or untainted that they would not have made this choice. In essence, it takes away the independence of thought from women. As a woman, you could not possibly choose to behave like this, it must be an influenced factor. Well, what if it isn’t? What if Carpenter thought the idea was funny? Can she not independently choose what her album cover is? I personally feel that she is fully capable. To assume not is to assume that a woman cannot make her own informed decisions.
The second element to this whole debate has been that this a poor image to send to her younger fans, or to her female fans in general. That Carpenter is trying too hard to appeal to the gaze of men. She has effectively gotten too sexy for the woman. Before when she wore short skirts, and low cut tops, that was all for the women. See how something doesn’t quite add up?
This is not about judgement, Carpenter can wear whatever she pleases, and she should wear whatever she pleases. My point is that the line between what we accept as ‘reasonable’ provocation and ‘unreasonable’ provocation seems to be getting fairly blurry. If all it took was the slight implication of sexual behaviour to go from empowerment to offensive, there is a problem with the innate philosophy we have with how woman dress and act. It is not Carpenter’s job to appeal to any one specific group, especially for children. She is not the parent to thousands of children, it is not her responsibility in the slightest.
Finally a piece on comparison: I went to a music festival where I saw Troye Sivan and Charlie XCX play together. In the media, no one appears to care about how Charlie XCX behaves on stage. She humps the ground, throws herself around the stage in increasingly small bras and pairs of underwear and no one bats and eyelid. Troye Sivan, a self-professed gay man, openly grinds, touches and intensely kisses his male backup dancers on stage, also in various stages of undress.
Here is the thing, we like things that are palatable and that fit our particular world view on how a pop-star’s branding should fit. Sabrina Carpenter sold herself as the sexy, but still somewhat demure and ladylike pop-singer. She toyed the line with sexual innuendos, but never quite lent into an edgy brand that would allow her to perform more sexual acts without a veil of innocence surrounding them. Her new album cover, is openly fairly pornographic. There are no longer any illusions in her satire, or comedy or sexuality that she is trying to imitate. People do not enjoy these sudden bursts of self-reflection.
Moral superiority is ill advised at the best of times. My question to every straight cis-woman that critiqued Carpenter’s cover is: have you ever read a fanfiction? Watched pornography where the woman was in the submissive position? Read a smutty novel and masturbated to it? Have you had a male partner be clearly more dominating in bed and enjoyed it? I do not claim that every single woman out there likes to get on her hands and knees and have a man grab her hair while pretending to be a dog. Although, trust me, they are definitely out there.
The romance movie and novel industry would not be what it is if women did not like to read sexy stories where a ‘strong man’ comes and is dominant over them in bed. This does not speak for everyone, but I would caution someone to take a moment to think about their own sexual desires and behaviours when looking at the Sabrina Carpenter album cover and before judging her and calling it ‘un-feminist’, maybe engage in some self-reflection. Do you actually find these things to be offensive or does it make you uncomfortable to be faced with something sexual head on, no frills attached?
Ultimately I feel that we will only reach our true equality when a woman can be sexual and no one bats an eyelid. If I opened up the internet tomorrow and saw that Benson Boone has his cock out on his new album cover, it would be a ten second delight at best and then would fade into obscurity, or worse people would insinuate that he was actually trying to attempt to make a social commentary. A sexless society is a repressed society, until we can accept our sexual behaviours and discuss them, we will not be progressing much further.