Sabrina Carpenter and the Limits of Feminism
The pop star flirts with subversion.
Cover photo: Man’s Best Friend, album artwork for Sabrina Carpenter (2025). Via X, formerly Twitter (cropped).
Intro
Is Sabrina Carpenter a feminist? That is the question following one of pop music’s biggest stars today. The singer has built her career on unapologetic sexuality and witty lyrics. Her summer hit Espresso was the top global song last year, reaching over 1.6 billion streams on Spotify alone. Now, provocative art for Carpenter’s upcoming album Man’s Best Friend has reignited the discussion.
Man’s Best Friend
The cover art for Man’s Best Friend stirred immediate controversy upon release. In the image, Carpenter is on her knees in front of what can be assumed to be a male figure. Both subjects are dressed in black, inside a sparse room, posed against a plain white curtain. Carpenter wears a short, form-fitting skirt. The man’s face is out of view, rendering him anonymous.
The title, Man’s Best Friend, frames Carpenter as a proverbial pet, hence she is on all fours. Carpenter steadies herself with one hand, while reaching for the man’s leg with the other. Most strikingly, the man holds her hair in a tight grip. Carpenter’s expression is neutral — neither lustful, afraid, nor embarrassed. She looks directly at the viewer, but with an emotional vacancy that leaves the image curiously inert.
Online fans were quick to defend the artwork as subversive, claiming it challenges traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, there is little evidence in the image alone to support such a claim. The composition is stark and sterile, the lighting flat, and the pose directly evocative of pornography.
Worse than pornographic, Man’s Best Friend is simply unoriginal. It’s a shallow, disinterested suggestion of sex. TikTok film and culture critic Megan Cruz (@Jstoobs) demands, “what’s to [expletive] get about that image, genuinely?”
Artists like Martine Gutierrez, in her Body En Thrall series, employ similar power-play aesthetics but infuse them with tension and theatricality. While Gutierrez’s work is about autonomy and identity, Carpenter’s image feels like a borrowed gesture.
A simple role reversal — Carpenter standing while the man kneels — would have made the image more memorable, though not particularly groundbreaking. Instead, the familiar script plays without deviation. Perhaps this is the limit of corporate subversion, enough to attract attention but not enough to provoke real discomfort.
Sex Still Sells
Carpenter’s appeal is undeniable. She boasts a strong voice, catchy melodies, and fun lyrics, but those alone did not make her a superstar. Carpenter is a conventionally attractive woman, able to command the familiar visuals of pop culture. “You want to grab people’s eyes,” explains communications advisor Alyssa Farah Griffin.
I first heard of Carpenter through her cheeky Coachella billboard: “She’s gonna make you come…” It’s an innuendo so predictable it would have left my own advertising professors woefully unimpressed. This brand of sexuality feels less disruptive in a culture saturated with similar imagery.
From Espresso’s playful brags — “he looks so cute, wrapped ‘round my finger” — to the pleading vulnerability of Please Please Please — “don’t embarrass me” — Carpenter’s songs still largely orbit men. Because I Liked a Boy explores society’s labels for women: “I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut”. Can a pop star subvert the male gaze while still performing for it?
Carpenter is following a well-trodden path to fame carved by predecessors like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus, but where they felt confrontational, Carpenter feels curated and safe.
American Feminism
Carpenter’s rise comes at a difficult moment for American feminism. The rollback of abortion rights, the collapse of diversity programs, and the public backlash against gender discourse have left the movement fragmented. What does it mean to be a women in America today?
The conversation around Carpenter matters because she is not just an artist, but a cultural product tuned for a marketplace that still profits from female desirability more than female defiance.
