The Sabrina Carpenter Album Cover Controversy, Explained

Cosmopolitan

21 hours ago

It has come to my attention that Sabrina Carpenter has once again done something provocative that has, in turn, once again resulted in public shock and scandal, despite the fact that doing a satirical sex thing is pretty much the most Sabrina Carpenter thing Sabrina Carpenter could possibly do. Naturally, the initial outrage from the pearl-clutching set has subsequently generated a rousing round of internet discourse re: female sexuality under patriarchy—on which, as your resident Sabrina Carpenter Sex Things reporter, I feel it is my duty to weigh in. So let's discuss, shall we?
On the heels of her latest single/immediate contender for song of the summer, 'Manchild,' (which, banger), Sabrina took to Instagram yesterday to announce her new album, Man's Best Friend, which is coming out August 29. The post featured an image (widely assumed to be the album's cover art) of Sabrina on her hands and knees while a man pulls her by her hair. In other words, it's a sexually submissive pose, one that invokes Dom/sub dynamics including ownership kinks and Master/pet play. (A second slide features an image of a dog collar with the album's title written on the tag, likely a nod to the sub collars often worn by submissive partners in these kinds of kink scenes.)
Cue: immediate hand-wringing from the public claiming the (presumed) album art is 'regressive' and 'degrading' to women, with many critics arguing this supposed endorsement of subservience to men is particularly troubling amid a political climate that continues to threaten women's liberation. Instagram comments of note include one user who called the art 'insensitive' in light of the precarious state of women's bodily autonomy under the current administration, while another claimed it 'just set us back about five decades.' Meanwhile, a headline in the Telegraph proclaimed that Sabrina's 'over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,' while an Instagram post from Glasgow Women's Aid, a Scottish-based organization for women experiencing domestic violence, claimed the art evoked 'tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.' Woof. (Pun intended.)
In response, others defended the imagery as satirical, interpreting the art as a tongue in cheek nod to the exact kind of criticism it did, in fact, generate and to which Sabrina is regularly subjected, which insists on missing the irony and painting her cheeky aesthetic as problematically male-gaze appeasing.
While I can't say I'm the world's foremost Sabrina scholar, I think that—based on Sabrina's music, which frequently calls out and subverts the gendered power imbalances women face at the hands of men in heterosexual relationships—this reading of the art as an ironic response to the exact slut-shaming it received is a pretty solid bet!
That said, irony or no irony, I think it's worth noting that being submissive in bed—including engaging in forms of consensual kink play involving degradation, ownership, humiliation, subservience, etc.—is not inherently 'degrading' for women (or for anyone of any gender, to be clear). What we do and like in bed—especially in kink—is not necessarily reflective of who really are as people. In fact, sometimes our sexual proclivities represent a subversion of and/or escape from who we are in our day to day lives. Which is to say, women can be sexually submissive without being (or wanting to be) subservient to men in real life. (Yes, we exist!)
Moreover, even within a kink scene itself, being submissive isn't about having no autonomy, but rather willingly relinquishing control to a Dominant partner. As certified sex and relationship psychotherapist Gigi Engle, resident intimacy expert at dating app, 3Fun, previously told Cosmo, 'In kink, the sub is not actually powerless. The Dom and sub are both in control because the scene has been negotiated and boundaries have been established. Therefore, you can let go and be a submissive, but ultimately you know you are not, in fact, powerless.' In other words, submission is part of a dynamic exchange of power, not the lack of it.
Meanwhile, as others have argued re: the recent discourse, claims that Sabrina's open displays of sexuality are 'regressive' are, in fact, rather regressive themselves. As one Twitter user put it, 'I fear we may have 'stop doing things for the male gaze'd ourselves back into expecting women to be modest and shaming them otherwise.'
Quick Feminism 101 refresher: One of the core tenets of patriarchy is the policing and control of female sexuality. Patriarchy does this by shaming and censuring women for engaging with their sexuality outside the societally sanctioned bounds of heterosexual, monogamous relationships, therefore ensuring it remains under male control. When we are shaming Sabrina's sex-forward aesthetic—even on the supposedly 'progressive' grounds that it panders to the male gaze—what are we really doing other than reinforcing male systems of power that encourage women to be modest, chaste, and—dare I say—submissive to men?
All of which is to say, whatever it is Sabrina was trying to do with her new album announcement, I think we can all simply agree that she looks fabulous doing it and get on with our day.