2024 & 2025 have been the years of Sabrina Carpenter. She has broken countless records with her chart-topping singles “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please” which originated from her critically acclaimed, award-winning album Short n’ Sweet (which is literally pop perfection btw but that is for another article!). Not to mention, she released a phenomenal, yet controversial album in August of this year, Man’s Best Friend, which garnered 6 Grammy nominations. Sabrina was the 24th most paid musician in the world in 2025. In the first week of Short n’ Sweet’s release, the album generated $8.2 million—an extremely impressive feat. It is safe to say that Sabrina has dominated the music industry for the past couple years and it does not seem like she is slowing down anytime soon.
Nonetheless, along with success comes controversy and criticism. Unsurprisingly, Sabrina is no rookie when it comes to controversy. This year, she has been at the center of numerous conflicts regarding feminism and the duality of musicians—with one topic being at the center of the debate.
Can you guess what it is?
If you guessed the quality of her music, you are very wrong. The issue is rooted in Sabrina’s history with inappropriate lyrics and sexual innuendos in her songs. Critics argue that Sabrina has become too “hyper-sexualized” and has strayed further away from her original, girl-next-door persona. An anonymous user on X criticized her by comparing her to high school girls, stating that, “She reminds me of my high school girlfriend […] Her sexuality is [too intense].” Another wrote that “her overt sexuality is [fake] and not who she naturally is.” Both of these tweets were critiques from men, and it seems that negative opinions towards Sabrina’s sexual persona is a common critique amongst men.
However, Sabrina has also faced extreme criticism from women as well. With the release of Man’s Best Friend, she received a copious amount of backlash for the title of the record and the album cover. The album cover famously reflected Sabrina on her hands-and-knees posing as a dog and kneeling at the feet of a man, while an anonymous figure holds a strand of her hair as a leash.
The album cover image was received with . . . mixed reviews, to put it lightly. Every corner of the internet has an opinion on the album cover. Especially the female demographic, who had a lot to say.
Supporters of the cover have recognized the image as satire and the continuation of various themes that Sabrina explores in her music. She is known for mixing humor, romance, self-loathing, and regret—all while creating catchy tunes and a relatable prsona. Supporters believe that the criticism against the cover is simply an unnecessary attack on women’s sexuality and freedom of expression.
One female supporter on X said, “Sabrina Carpenter is genius for how she embraces her sexuality but still keeps women as her target audience. […] She is performing in lingerie and I still feel like it’s not for men at all.” Another one said, “To be honest, I think Sabrina Carpenter expresses heterosexual sexuality in a way that is woman focused. When I watch it, I feel like she’s trying to entertain the girlies. Not appeal to men. Even her music is coming from such a female-centered perspective. Y’all are trippin.” People have even gone as far as to reference lyrics from her songs such as her hit-single “Manchild,” which jokes about liking all her men “incompetent” and how she attracts bad guys, in order to prove that her songs are catered to women.
Detractors have labeled her as someone who only appeals to the male gaze, declaring that she plays into misogynistic gender roles of women being inherently submissive and her album cover is proof of that. Commentators have said that she has “set women back by generations” because of her album cover and her sexual expression. Critics have even called the cover, “spineless” and ignorant of “historical precedence” as stated by a user on Tiktok. Another critic said “Women kneeling is a painful image rooted in history. For centuries women were forced to kneel in submission and under abuse and now she’s glamorizing it like she’s condoning domestic abuse, so […] she can’t do whatever she wants if she’s irresponsible and causing harm to society.”
Notoriously, female artists have been heavily scrutinized for their scandalous on-stage personas. Icons such as Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, and Madonna have been under scrutiny for their sexual expression as well. Debates surrounding female artists is not a foreign concept. In most recent years, it feels as though the conversations surrounding them have become commonplace on social media.
Sabrina, herself, has yet to weigh in on the issue surrounding her album cover specifically—however, in an interview with Rolling Stone she talks about her music involving sexual innuendos and the cultural conversation surrounding women’s bodies.
Sabrina said to Rolling Stone, referencing her sexual lyrics: “It’s always so funny to me when people complain. They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about it.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love [it]. You’re obsessed with it.” She followed up with a discussion about the image of women performers,
As a young female adult who is part of Sabrina’s target demographic and relates to some of her music, I believe the discussion surrounding her has underlying tones beyond her sexual expression and has more to do with a rising wave of conservatism, return to simplicity, and a growing cultural debate on feminism in the 21st century. The question at the center of Sabrina Carpenter’s online persona is not just about her. It has to do with whether or not women sexualizing and using their own objectification as an advantage is sexual liberation or self-subjugation?
Grace Sweeney, the face behind viral Tiktok fan accounts @graceisontour and @rolemodelnationn which have garnered 8.7M likes across both accounts, has been a consistent supporter of Sabrina and has seen her in concert “various times”. In my interview with her, she provided an opinion in support of Sabrina’s scandalous pop-star image,
Her defense against the criticism of Sabrina was clearly aligned with the idea of Sabrina’s self-curated sexual image being liberation rather than promoting subjugation. On the opposing side, one of my interviewees who is a female senior at CCHS, had a clear critique against Sabrina, “I don’t think it’s possible to be liberated by objectifying yourself and playing into the roles that are inherently oppressive. Labeling it ‘empowerment’ does not erase the patriarchal lens it caters to, so I think it is degrading. A lot of people believe that any choice a woman makes is automatically feminist, as long as she made it. But choice is shaped by culture, and the one we live in is centered around ideals created by men, making it hard to separate self-expression from internalized standards.”
For further public insight, I asked students—a large part of Sabrina’s demographic—at CCHS how they felt about Sabrina Carpenter and her album cover. Neutrality was also a large response to Sabrina’s sexual image. When I asked a fellow peer, who is a casual listener of Sabrina’s music, about their reaction to her album cover—she reacted with mixed feelings, “I did initially feel negatively toward it. But, I understood it was satire, especially knowing the themes of Sabrina’s music and what she stands for. I agreed with some online discourse, but I think they were exaggerating the album cover too much especially by claiming it set women back.”
Sadly, controversies linked to the portrayal of women in the entertainment industry are not new phenomena. As previously mentioned, there is a return to conservatism that is not only political but also social. Women in music are being scrutinized at disheartening and concerning levels with their male counterparts promoting similar ideas, if not raunchier, with no push back. Sabrina Carpenter is not a rare case of a female pop star reclaiming her sexuality and expressing herself beyond the male gaze. She is simply the most recent woman to be victimized by the public.
Nonetheless, the Man’s Best Friend album cover is not worthy of zero criticism. Although the name of the album and her posing as a dog on the cover could serve as a clever connection, Sabrina missed the mark and could have easily gotten the satirical themes of her album across with another promotional image. However, I do not believe that Sabrina is guilty of preventing the progression of young women due to her sexual expression. In fact, I believe the exact opposite.
She has successfully curated an image that predominantly appeals to the female gaze, while using her sexuality as a tool for young women and not against them. Sabrina can be a fun, girly, pop star with a wild side and can still keep her fanbase in-tact, appealing to various communities.
Conclusively, I believe that Sabrina Carpenter is not setting women back. She is offering a modern yet controversial perspective to the image of a successful female musician. The debates surrounding Sabrina are not foreign and they are a result of her controversial album cover, the rise of conservatism regarding sexuality, and the public’s tendency to place young women under a microscope.
