How Sabrina Carpenter's ‘Pornhub' album cover sparked fury by pushing sexually dubious image to millions of young girls
KNEELING on all fours, black mini-dress riding up, Sabrina Carpenter pouts for the camera – her trademark platinum hair in the grip of a man's fist as her hand lingers suggestively on his leg.
So, little wonder the cover image from
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The cover image of Sabrina Carpenter's up-coming album Man's Best Friend has sparked outrage online
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Sabrina had already caused controversy earlier this year with her eye-popping legs-akimbo performance at the Brits
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Sabrina's performance prompted more than 900 Ofcom complaints from viewers
While the former Disney Channel star has been praised in the past for
One fan on X labelled it 'straight-up Pornhub fantasy', while a domestic violence charity issued a statement saying: 'Sabrina Carpenter's album cover isn't edgy, it's regressive.'
The Espresso singer had already
Now, with her latest racy shot on the album cover, 26-year-old Sabrina is determined to send out a message that she has
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Which is all well and good were it not for Sabrina's army of pre-teen fans who have helped propel her so quickly to stratospheric stardom.
Her last album Short N' Sweet spawned a string of No1 singles and her tour sold out in minutes — with many children of primary school age among the concert-goers.
Nicknamed
That comparison to Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel about a professor fixated on a 12-year-old girl is one the artist embraced in a shoot for W mag.
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Breaking
She recreated an image from Stanley Kubrick's film version of Lolita where 14-year-old actress Sue Lyons gets soaked in a garden by water sprinklers.
A friend told me recently how she had treated her daughter to tickets to see Sabrina's performance at the
But given Sabrina's latest imagery, I for one won't be in a rush to sing along with my 11-year-old to lyrics such as, 'I told that boy to sit me down on all fours/I told that boy go faster, now I'm all sore' — a tweaked version of the lyrics to Nonsense, which she sang to an audience in Singapore last year.
The star has even described herself as 'vulgar' and 'obnoxiously horny'.
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On her recent Short N' Sweet tour it became a fan-favourite segment for her to mime a surprise sex act, while giant confetti cannons erupted in a suggestive way.
Of course, such pornographic posturing is certainly nothing new in the world of pop.
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But in an age when
Indeed, recent figures estimate close to four per cent of young women aged 18 to 34 are selling content on X-rated platform Only-Fans.
Sure, most won't be behaving like Blue, but it exposes a trend toward women feeling compelled to sell themselves on the internet.
There are, of course, many fans who praise Sabrina as a woman in control of her own music and performances.
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They applaud her sexual frankness and witty lyrics.
'ANTI-TAYLOR SWIFT'
One tweet from a fan, following a sold-out concert last year, went viral. It read: 'Sabrina Carpenter is a genius for how she embraces her sexuality but still keeps women as her target audience.
"Like, how is she performing in lingerie and I still feel like it's not for men at all?
"I can't comprehend it, but I love it.'
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But I worry Sabrina's latest album cover, with its overtones of subjugation, has gone far too far.
Coupled with growing fears about young boys being radicalised by
Sabrina Carptenter's Rise to Fame
SABRINA Carpenter's first role was as the lead in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World. Between 2014 and 2017, she appeared in over 70 episodes.
She also signed with the Disney-owned Hollywood Records and released her debut single, Can't Blame a Girl for Trying, in 2014.
After four albums, she moved to Island Records in 2021.
Her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send (2022), had her hit singles Nonsense and Feather.
Around that time, Sabrina started to gain notoriety in the UK.
She opened for Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour in 2023 and then achieved wider commercial success with her sixth album Short n' Sweet, which was released earlier this year.
Number one singles from the album include Espresso and Please Please Please.
In a sense, Sabrina is carving out a niche for herself as something of an anti-
During Taylor's
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While Taylor puts on a jaw-dropping show and is no stranger to donning a glitzy corset, by her own admission she has never thought of herself as sexy.
She once said: 'In my life I don't gravitate towards being edgy, sexy or cool.
"I just naturally am not any of those things.
"I'm imaginative, I'm smart and I'm hard-working — and those things are not necessarily prioritised by pop culture.'
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But while the two singers may be different, they are also good friends.
Very like Taylor, though, Sabrina has
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Sabrina dated Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan and even writhed with him in the video for Please Please Please
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Sabrina is carving out a niche for herself as kind of anti-Taylor Swift
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Sabrina dated Saltburn actor
The star, who also dated singer
The couple are still together but in the song Sabrina claims his behaviour has caused her to fear boyfriends will cheat on her — and indeed, it has been rumoured that her
Her father did, though, encourage Sabrina's talent from a young age.
Growing up in Quakertown,
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Aged just ten, Sabrina began posting videos of herself singing along to Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube — and soon after that her dad built her a recording studio.
In 2009, she came third in a singing contest run by
Her
But Sabrina's latest attempt to shock may have finally backfired.
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Read more on the Irish Sun
Her brand of performative sexuality might please, please some — but certainly not me, I'm afraid.
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RTÉ News
6 hours ago
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Sabrina Carpenter has addressed criticism that her music and image are overly sexualised, insisting there's far more substance to her artistry than critics give her credit for. The 26-year-old Grammy-winner recently divided opinion among her fans after unveiling the artwork for her next album, Man's Best Friend. The provocative imagery sparked debates on sexuality, power, and representation in pop culture. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter argued that lyrics about sex make up only a small part of her artistic output and says the scrutiny placed on her is unfair. "I don't want to be pessimistic, but I truly feel like I've never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinised in every capacity. I'm not just talking about me. I'm talking about every female artist that is making art right now." During Carpenter's Short and Sweet tour, she famously strikes an array of X-rated poses as part of her Juno song routine. The Espresso hitmaker highlights that the same audience criticising her is also fueling the popularity of her sexually explicit content. "It's always so funny to me when people complain. They're like, "All she does is sing about this." But those are the songs that you've made popular. Clearly you love sex. You're obsessed with it." "It's in my show. There's so many more moments than the 'Juno' positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can't control that. If you come to the show, you'll [also] hear the ballads, you'll hear the more introspective numbers," she added. "I find irony and humour in all of that, because it seems to be a recurring theme. I'm not upset about it, other than I feel mad pressure to be funny sometimes."
The Irish Sun
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Sabrina Carpenter goes totally nude except for thigh-high tights in steamy Rolling Stone shoot
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