Topline

Sabrina Carpenter, one of pop music’s biggest new stars, unveiled the cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend” on Wednesday, quickly setting social media ablaze with both fierce criticism of what some feel is a “degrading” cover, while others defend it as a clear work of satire.

Glasgow Women’s Aid, a Scotland-based advocacy organization for women experiencing domestic abuse, slammed Carpenter in a post on Instagram on Thursday calling the album cover “regressive,” and stating it evokes “tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.” A column in The Telegraph Thursday complained in a headline that Carpenter’s “over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,” and the writer Poppie Platt noted Carpenter has many young fans and said her marketing is “troubling,” comparing it to TikTok trends like the “trad-wife” aesthetic that promote subservience to men. Some of the most-liked comments on Carpenter’s Instagram post of the album cover were critical. “Is this a humiliation ritual? WTH is this cover,” one comment, which garnered 8,000 likes says, while another commenter stated: “Explain to me again how this isn’t centering men? How this isn’t catering to the male gaze?”

Carpenter’s fans praised her cover as satirical. “I am a little concerned about people’s inability to immediately clock that the cover is obviously a commentary on the way women are treated,” one post on X, which garnered more than 44,000 likes, states. The fan cited her single “Manchild,” in which she pokes fun at men, as a hint the upcoming album may also be satirical. Entertainment editor at the U.K. publication Metro, Brooke Ivey Johnson, wrote Thursday that Carpenter “knew you’d hate her kinky album cover – that’s the point,” defending her as an “expert in shaping a narrative” and stating Carpenter’s brand is “built around men being little more than background noise.” Johnson called Carpenter’s aesthetic “a kind of satire: A knowing wink at how femininity is constructed, consumed, and commodified,” citing her new single “Manchild” as a “satirical exaggeration” of submissiveness to men.

No, Carpenter has not directly addressed the controversy over her album cover. But in a cover story in Rolling Stone published Thursday, Carpenter addressed critics of her sex-positive stage presence, stating she feels she has “never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinized in every capacity.” While performing her song “Juno” on tour, which contains the lyric: “Wanna try out some freaky positions? Have you ever tried this one?” Carpenter mimics a different sex position during each performance, which has inspired a TikTok trend and also sparked detractors. “It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” Carpenter told Rolling Stone, stating there are “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.”

Carpenter’s new album “Man’s Best Friend” follows her breakout year, when her album “Short n’ Sweet,” earned multiple hit singles and won her two Grammy Awards. The album’s lead single “Espresso” was named by some publications as the 2024 song of the summer and topped the charts in many countries. Her string of hits continued with “Please Please Please” and “Taste,” and she released a deluxe edition of the album in February with new songs.

How Sabrina Carpenter Dream-Come-True’d Her Whole Life (Rolling Stone)