Pop princess Sabrina Carpenter delighted her fans with the recent announcement of her new album, Man’s Best Friend dropping on August 29th. The front cover shows the singer in a little black dress on her hands and knees, being pulled by her hair by a faceless man. With the back cover showing a dog’s body with a heart-shaped collar reading the album title.
Now please don’t come for me, I love Sabrina Carpenter as much as the next girl, but I feel like her new album cover missed the mark. Before you come at me with ‘it’s satire’ and ‘people have no media literacy these days’, it’s okay to acknowledge if you think something was a swing and a miss, and I just think this was a miss.
We’re not at a stage yet where a woman with the kind of power and reach that Sabrina has can be doing subtle ‘satire’, as more and more women have their power removed from them by society around the world. We need pop culture that slaps you in the face with its messaging.
Dropping an album cover like this in the midst of news about rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegedly dragging his ex-girlfriend by her hair during an argument, seems at best, poorly-timed and at worse, a grab for controversy and attention.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that I simply don’t understand satire, but what exactly is she satirising? What point is she making that hasn’t been made before, men abuse their power over women? Well-executed satire would be if the roles were reversed, but I have not seen one man who is uncomfortable with the album cover, just women.
While I’ve listened to the album’s first track Manchild and can understand that it has feminist messaging, there seems to be a disjunction between the imagery of the album cover and the lead single.
The fact is, this isn’t the first time Sabrina has been marred with controversy for wrongly portraying anti-feminist imagery. Only a few months ago she posed for a Lolita-style photoshoot. Before people tell me that Lana Del Rey heavily leans into the Lolita references, I know. I still don’t think it’s something we should be platforming.
Don’t get me started on the Man’s Best Friend title, comparing women to pet dogs is also just a bad move in the current political climate.
The dictionary definition of satire is “the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues,” and I’m struggling to find any humour, irony, exaggeration or ridicule in the album cover. It’s just a picture of a situation that has happened many times before and if the patriarchy gets its way, will continue to happen indefinitely.
Sabrina Carpenter is a wealthy popstar, I’m sure she wouldn’t have taken part in the photoshoot or the advertising of this album cover if she did not fully consent or she was unhappy with it. And yes, feminism is about letting women make their own choices. In this case, though, I personally think this was deliberately controversial to get people talking about it, because how often do multiple media outlets cover an album cover before the album’s even released and we only have one song to listen to?
I’m sorry if I’m coming for your fave, but ultimately, this isn’t satire because it’s something that has happened, like with Diddy’s victims. Sometimes ‘media literacy’ is acknowledging when you can see where someone has attempted to be ironic, but has missed the mark. The more we sit there and defend this album cover, the more we distract ourselves from the stories about this happening to women in real life. Ultimately, it’s just an album cover, but one that will be seen by millions of women and girls around the world. Unfortunately, it’ll also be seen by countless men and boys around the world and all it’ll do is reinforce the stereotype that women are playthings, toys or worse – good dogs that’ll lie down when they’re supposed to. Her mouth is saying one thing, but the visuals are saying something else, ironic, isn’t it?
