Even before its release, Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album, Man’s Best Friend, had been scrutinized on social media and in feminist spaces. Critics claimed that her songs were too male-centred, leaving little room for female empowerment. Moreover, her album cover was heavily scrutinized for promoting women’s submission to their male partners, as the singer is depicted on her knees in front of an unknown man standing and holding her by the hair.
The conversation surrounding this album cover raises the larger issue of women taking charge of their own sexualities, and at what point sexual agency comes full circle to satisfy the male gaze. Some people online insist that the consistent subject of romantic relationships with men in Carpenter’s songs characterizes her as anti-feminist. While many of her songs are centered around men, we think there is an overarching expectation in online spaces for female artists to represent feminism and women as a whole. The insinuation that a woman would have her feminist or non-feminist views skewed by Carpenter’s album assumes that fans cannot make their own opinions without pandering to their favourite celebrities. If anything, synonymizing Carpenter’s album cover with a how-to for women fans is an insult to women’s ability to think critically and to separate art from their self-view.
When Carpenter sings “And I like my men all incompetent,” in the album’s first track “Manchild,” listeners might first take it as a show of her un-feminist lyricism. We think this song should be taken as a satire, as she is poking fun at the incompetence with which her past partners have gotten away. We think that the criticism of Man’s Best Friend as anti-feminist says more about critics’ failure to read into the lyrics than Carpenter being internally misogynistic.
Successful female pop stars have always been criticized for depicting their relationship with sex through their songs, music videos, or performances. In Man’s Best Friend, Carpenter refers to Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, and even movies like X, Pearl, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. All of these pop culture icons and sensual works of art have represented the complex theme of sexuality, with most of them having also been victims of this decade-old debate that Carpenter now confronts. In addition, exploring one’s own sexuality does not have to equate to wanting to please men. The presumption that Carpenter’s album cover was created for that purpose feeds into the idea that sex is only enjoyed by men.The amount of attention placed on this album highlights that, comparatively, male artists are not held to the same standards as female artists, and are rarely criticized for having too many songs about women. Male artists like The Dare and Ye (formerly Kanye West) have had sexually explicit album covers and have not received nearly as much online slander as Sabrina Carpenter. We believe that, despite the provocation of her album cover, Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is a feminist piece of work that shows her will to explore her own sexuality. All in all, the backlash she has faced represents an ongoing issue within our culture that holds female artists to a higher standard of moral and sexual purity than male ones.
