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“Have you ever tried … this one?” Sabrina Carpenter asked coyly at the second night of her Paris show, before bending into an Eiffel Tower position with two of her background dancers and launching into the chorus of “Juno,” a joyful anthem to lust on the tour’s titular album, Short and Sweet. This isn’t her only sultry stunt—Carpenter’s Short and Sweet tour features a myriad of playfully sexy elements: burlesque-style choreography, frothy boudoir-wear, and even a nightly “arrests” of crowd members with Carpenter’s signature pink fluffy hand-cuffs.
Sabrina Carpenter’s career has skyrocketed in the past year with her release of Short and Sweet, along with multiple viral hits like “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” She’s performed sold-out stadiums, won her first two Grammys, and landed on the cover of Vogue. She has cemented herself as a true pop princess—but more than that, an undeniable sexual icon who, beyond liberating sexual expression on stage, inspires her audiences to embrace their own sexuality with unprecedented ease and amusement.
Unfortunately, not everyone is on board with that.
Carpenter’s recent Paris performance got a slew of hate for her rendition of the iconic French landmark.
“Hard to say if she has any talent when all she does is contort herself into degrading sexual poses & rely on a 12 y/os creativity for cheap innuendos,” one X user commented, saying Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek performance is exactly “why I hate choice feminism.”
On March 1, Carpenter shocked the internet again at the BRIT Awards with her rendition of “Bed Chem,” which ended with the camera cutting to her lowering down in front of a stoic British guard, implying oral sex. Afterward, Carpenter’s performance received almost 1,000 critical complaints to Ofcom, a government-approved British regulatory authority for broadcasting.
While these moments are undeniably suggestive, even raunchy at times, in the grand scheme of pop, Carpenter is not hardly the most shocking. In fact, when comparing Carpenter’s sexual performance to other female artists who revolutionized sex in pop music, she falls on the tamer side. Madonna, for instance, blatantly flashed her undergarments on MTV, and quite literally sang a song about being touched “Like a Virgin.” And Miley Cyrus swung naked on a wrecking ball—far more of a statement than Carpenter dancing around in airy lingerie or simply bending forward to suggest the idea of sex.
Carpenter’s “sexual revolution” is not unprecedented; in fact, it has been paved for her. Yet, there is still something refreshing (and controversial) about her version of sexual expression: one that normalizes and embraces female sexuality through art. And perhaps it boils down to a simple truth: Carpenter is making it explicitly clear she enjoys sex, and she’s having fun with it.
Looking back at female pop stars who embraced artistic sexual expression, their sexuality focused more on making a statement of overt sexuality in order to cross boundaries. Madonna is the blueprint—someone who broke norms within and beyond sexuality in order to embrace it. In her article titled, “What Madonna Knows,” writer Sophie Gilbert cites cultural theorist John Fisk describing Madonna’s sexuality at the time as “a new caliber of threat”—“not the traditional and easily contained one of woman as whore, but the more radical one of woman as independent of masculinity.” Indeed, Madonna’s artistry focused on dismantling and therefore reclaiming female sexuality through subverting expectation: Gilbert cites an amusing photograph from Madonna’s coffee-table erotica collection titled Sex, in which she is stood, “by a window, facing outward, wearing just a white tank top, motorcycle boots, and no underwear, her buttocks exposed as she appears to scratch an imaginary pair of balls.”
Madonna was attempting to make a powerful statement with her sexual artistry, subverting the bounds of gender to express her sexual prowess. Similarly, artists like Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus went for more raw and intense expressions of sexuality: Spears iconically danced near naked with an albino snake performing “I’m a Slave 4 You,” and Cyrus brazenly twerked up on Robin Thicke at the MTV VMAs—both clear statements of these women claiming blunt agency over their sexuality. Both displays are epic. But Carpenter is aiming for something different.
If these women paved the way for female sexual expression in pop, Carpenter embraces a new, aspirational reality in which being open about sex as a woman no longer has to be a radical act or stunt—it can be amusing, flirty, exciting and genuinely fun.
Her performances are as much comedic as they are musical. She’s made a name for herself in making sex jokes, captioning her New Year’s resolution Instagram post, “No more dick jokes, it’s gonna be really hard.” Her lyrics are rife with fun and flirty innuendo— “Bed Chem’s” entire bridge is a master-work in sex jokes—all without feeling forced. You can tell she’s having fun with it. And it’s refreshing to see a woman talk candidly about sex amid a culture where misogynistic “locker-room talk” is so normalized amongst men that even the president gets a pass. Carpenter makes sex feel conversational and breezy, rather than a stunt. Even her nightly “Juno” pose is done casually, like she’s teasing an imaginary partner in bed.
Carpenter’s comedy goes beyond her lyrics, as her performances take on an almost “vaudeville” nature, making a bit out of “traditional” images of female sexuality. Her tour aesthetic pulls heavily from the ‘50s and ‘60s: baby doll silhouettes, Marilyn Monroe-inspired jumpsuits, and blonde bombshell curls. The tour even opens with Carpenter in a ‘50s-esque bath commercial. Carpenter takes the opportunity to poke fun at this older era of female sexuality, playing the ditzy, wide-eyed Betty Boop. Upon “arresting” her Juno love interest, she exclaims breathlessly, “Oh, my clothes are coming off!” and her skirt gets ripped away.
But even while satirizing these tropes, Carpenter embraces them as her own. They’ve become her brand of sexuality, proving that women don’t have to completely fight against all “norms” of sexual expression in order to have claim over it. They can wear pink, fluffy nightgowns and flirt playfully without buying into the male gaze. And they can express a genuine love for sex without feeling the need to defend it with hypersexual, extreme performance to prove what should be a very normal desire.
The right to sexual expression and autonomy has been a long fight for female pop artists, and frankly, Carpenter would not be able to profit nearly as much from her brand without the bold and at the time transgressive work of artists like Madonna or Spears. But with her Short and Sweet tour, Carpenter has ushered in a new era of sexual expression, one that gets to the ultimate point of art trying to push the boundaries of sexual and gender norms: creating a space where women feel secure enough in their desire and begin to actually enjoy expressing their sexuality.
Great Job Alex Lalli & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
