Sabrina Carpenter isn’t ‘Centering’ Men, You Are.

Your virtue signaling isn’t working tonight!

Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend came out last Friday, and since then, the internet has been in a frenzy over the content and context of the album. As someone who graduated high school before the rise of AI, I feel like both the context and content of the album is explicitly clear; but not everyone can grasp abstraction, read context clues, or set aside their biases

I feel like a hypocrite, really, because I wrote an article dragging Taylor Swift through the mud over the hollow grasp of the ShowGirl aesthetic while being an unethical billionaire. But when I compare the upcoming Life of A Showgirl to Man’s Best Friend, I feel like I’m comparing apples and tomatoes. Yes they’re both red, but the context in which they exist is entirely different. I don’t like Taylor for the active harm she’s contributing to the planet and the wealth gap, two real reasons that can personally impact someone’s quality of life. That’s some shit ketchup. When I try to find something nearly as similar to pin to Sabrina…I come up empty. 

So what about Man’s Best Friend is turning people’s heads away from the coffee starlet? 

Now, I come from a completely unbiased place, mainly because before Espresso; I was a Sabrina Carpenter agnostic. I didn’t think she was anything special nor did I ever predict her meteoric rise to fame. I’m glad I was wrong about her, because the Short n’ Sweet era was endearing and fun. In a time where there was so much uncertainty on a global scale, we all tuned in to that me Espresso, and everyone ate it up. Do you know how much of a cultural impact you have to have to make several lyrics from your song become household phrases; ever heard of ‘I’m working late, ‘cus I’m a singer’?

Because I was such a Sabringnostic, turned casual listener, I’m able to look at the Man’s Best Friend controversy through many different lenses, while utilizing my everlasting knowledge on pop culture. And after thinking deeply about everyone’s point of view, I’ve decided that… 

You guys are sexually repressed and not fun at parties. 

Yep, you heard that right, the friend that’s too woke about Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift does not care about any of the concerns brought up by other people. Shocker, I know. Every reason people have a problem with Sabrina is not backed by empirical evidence such as a history of leftist marketing or a carbon footprint. It’s flimsy at best and opinion based. Even the alleged ‘Lolita’ photoshoot was debunked from the horse’s mouth directly.

This cycle is all too familiar: a young female artist rises, gains cultural momentum, and then the public decides it’s time to knock her down a peg. The same people who cheered her ascension now call her problematic because it’s trendy to do so. Meanwhile, actual billionaires and politicians with real power to cause harm skate by; because people come online and cry about what feminism is but do not show up to the polls. Art gets blamed for being a mirror to society. It’s easier to declare that an album cover will “set women back years” than to face the politicians you failed to vote out.

Especially now that we have the full context of the album, it’s clear what the Man’s Best Friend cover is alluding to. To say it romanticizes trad-wife culture or domestic violence is a gross misread, rooted in bias against Carpenter and divorced from what she’s actually saying. Calling it conservative pandering is just as misleading, because it ignores the politics the art is truly engaged with. The cover is art, and art is inherently political, but not everything political maps onto Democrats vs. Republicans. Politics is about power, performance, and hierarchy, and those dynamics exist everywhere.

Sabrina is speaking to the politics of modern dating as a straight woman: the hierarchies of desire, ego, and expectation that shape how relationships play out with men. 

The songs are about her experiences, her feelings, her thoughts; she is the main character in the songs, and the main character in the album cover. Nobody’s Son is about her feelings after being treated horribly by another man, that she does not believe she’ll ever find the love she deserves. That no man alive can give that to her. My Man on Willpower is about her confusion with her boyfriend who is no longer interested in her, and she doesn’t know how to handle it. We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night is about her being in a toxic cycle with a man that is going nowhere. These aren’t male-centered narratives, they’re female-centered accounts of how men orbit Sabrina’s life and choices. Her reckoning with love as someone who happens to date men.

Tears is about feeling aroused when men do the bare minimum because in the current dating world, the bar is on the floor. Despite men giving so little, Sabrina grasps it as if she’s begging for treats. She is begging for any kind of reciprocation. Like...a dog. 

Too many of you have dated bums to believe that this album is positively centering men in a good light. Too many of you are currently dating bums and don’t even know it yet.

Once again, I’m completely shocked this has gone over so many people’s heads, because the ground work is laid out. Despite the lyrical content not being on the level of Emails I Can’t Send, it’s still chock full of tongue and cheek lyricism about the central theme of the album; dating modern men as a modern woman. 

And the whole ‘she’s pandering to conservatives’ idea? Yeah, ‘cus nothing says “I am 100% with MAGA”  like kissing Jenna Ortega and having Coleman Domingo in full drag for a Rocky Horror Picture Show themed music video. So male centered for having one die in every music video. Hey! Let’s all say Sabrina is the ‘Sydney Sweeney’ of music while Taylor Swift is actually pandering to MAGA through her engagement with Travis Kelce, and Chappell Roan is hiding her uncle, Darrin Chappell, who is a republican politician. Even though the most harmful thing Sabrina Carpenter has ever done was…I don’t know, like sex? 

A lot of people have confused disliking men as decentering them. Yet, any time the opportunity presents itself, they’re the same ones that can’t keep men out of their mouths. Letting your hatred for men live rent free in your head is not decentering men. Hating on women for just talking about their experiences with men is not decentering men. Having the space to hold a reaction against something related to men is valid, but it’s not decentering men. Misandry is male centered hate, even if it’s just a reaction to the patriarchy and the systems that hold women back. To truly de-center men, you must be indifferent to men and not have them be a reference point for your identity, choices, or emotional world at all.

Please don’t ever make me defend men because you’re too lazy to research the buzzwords other people throw around. 

Because Sabrina isn’t centering men, your obsession with them is.