I have recently noticed a lot of debate on Sabrina Carpenter’s body of work as a whole, and the message she is attempting to promote via her songs. Her music is notoriously scandalous and explicit by nature, but lately, some fans have begun speculating about the seemingly-misogynistic quality of her lyrics. While some people believe that her writing is satirically critiquing the patriarchal stereotypes often perpetuated in heterosexual relationships, others find it to be directly playing into, and assigning value to those stereotypes. As someone who is relatively indifferent to her music, here is my opinion on the subject:
Just to clarify, I am in no way criticizing Sabrina’s ability as a musician. In fact, I very much respect the brand that she has built for herself and the joy that she has created for her fans. That being said, I don’t particularly think that her music promotes feminism. To state the obvious, almost all of her music is about her relationships with men, which is not inherently a problem, but she typically speaks about those relationships in a way that glorifies emotional unavailability. As mentioned above, many people feel that this is satirical commentary on the incredibly low standards for modern men, and while I do think she uses overgeneralization and dramatization to articulate her point, I don’t entirely agree that its satire. At the very least, I don’t think it’s good satire.
In order to be effective, satire needs to be obvious enough for its audience to understand, otherwise it runs the risk of accidentally promoting the subject that it is meant to critique, which is the issue I think she runs into many times throughout her body of work. A particularly strong example of this is the album cover for Man’s Best Friend, pictured above. It doesn’t really translate as satire to the average eye, and therefore becomes an example of female submission to a man. Her music contains a lot of mixed messages about her opinions on men and relationships as a whole, but at the end of the day, Sabrina Carpenter does not need me to think her music promotes feminism. She is an incredibly successful artist with a massive fan base and she will certainly survive without my direct support.
