When it comes to controversy, the heir apparent to "Queen of Pop" Madonna couldn't be clearer: Sabrina Carpenter.
Carpenter has repeatedly been at the center of the exact same angry debates we had four decades ago about Madonna: When a woman is overtly sexual in her work, is she liberating women or shackling them?
The question itself is sexist—it would never be, and never has been, asked of a man, for starters—but that hasn't stopped today's discourse from hurling Puritanical invective at Carpenter every few months anyway.
This tired debate has reignited once again with Carpenter's overtly sexual video for her new single "House Tour," and a lot of her fans are not having the criticism.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
In the song, the "house" in question is clearly Carpenter's own body, with lyrics like:
"I can take you to the first, second, third floor..."
"I just want you to come inside, but never enter through the back door.”
The video, which takes as part of its inspiration the 2013 film The Bling Ring, features Margaret Qualley and Madelyn Cline as Carpenter's cleaning service colleagues.
Or so it would seem: They actually become her accomplices in destroying their client's mansion in the sexiest and most scantily clad way possible, after indulging in all of its finery.
They take their panties off to sword fight, dance around in lingerie, read to each other in the bathtub—you get the picture—before leaving a thank you note and fleeing the scene.
It's the latest chapter in the overall theme of Carpenter's latest album Man's Best Friend, in which overt female sexuality is leveraged as a way to manipulate and mock men.
Never underestimate the internet's propensity to miss the point, though. Many have reacted to Carpenter's video by saying that the very fact of its sexual imagery and Carpenter's scantily clad coquettishness means it is inherently for "the male gaze."
Which carries with it a number of ridiculous assumptions, namely among them that a woman's sexuality is inherently for consumption and not for her own enjoyment, regardless of her intent.
That's right ladies: Be on notice that you can only be a feminist if you are sexually repulsive to men!
Women can only be liberated by being nuns, or dressing like butch lesbians, or whatever else is not alluring to men—especially since it is apparently WOMEN'S responsibility to manage men's sexuality.
It's hard to think of a more retrograde take on Carpenter's work, except for perhaps those who just went full-tilt quiet-part-out-loud and said the video doesn't work because she's just a "bimbo."
Either way, these arguments are ridiculous on their face, especially since they completely ignore Carpenter's agency over not just her own sexuality, but her own self-objectification in service of a joke that men are the butt of.
Which is the exact same debate we had about Madonna decades ago in the '80s and '90s.
So much so that she actually went on TV to set the record straight, telling ABC's Forrest Sawyer that the accusation she was "degrading" women by appearing chained to a bed in her 1989 "Express Yourself" video was reliant on a willful misrepresentation of the metaphor that actually happened onscreen:
Back then, Madonna explained:
"No! I chained myself! No man put chains on me. I was chained to my desires."
No wonder Carpenter has spoken so openly about the influence Madonna has had on her work. The throughline is obvious to anyone old enough to remember—which Carpenter's core fanbase isn't, of course.
But they were quick to make a similar point for her: The uproar over Carpenter's video is vastly more misogynistic than what they are accusing Carpenter of.
Like so many other things from 40 years ago, being shocked and disgusted by female sexuality seems to be in vogue again.
Thank God we have artists like Sabrina Carpenter who flatly refuse to be hemmed in by that retrograde nonsense. As the "Queen of Pop" she emulates once sang it herself, "you're the one with the problem."
