Sabrina Carpenter & The Power Of The Female Gaze

via @SabrinaCarpenter

Sabrina Carpenter is for the gals.

The singer (who is working late) has skyrocketed the past year. She’s everywhere, and rightly so.

Her music is catchy and fun, she is or isn’t dating our very own Barry Keoghan, and she seems like a genuinely lovely person.

She’s also unashamedly sexual, in a way that women can relate to and even more importantly, enjoy. Let me explain.

The male gaze is a concept coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in the ’70s. She proposed that media tends to present women through a lens most attractive to heterosexual men, stripping them of any agency and reducing them to mere sexual objects.

The female gaze, on the other hand, implies empowerment. It’s the lens in which women characters, directors, or writers view the world and the women in it; as people… who can be sexy, of course, but also have other attributes too.

 

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In the past, many pop girlies were created for men. They dressed and acted certain ways, whether they wanted to or not. There may have been largely female crowds at their shows, but it was the male gaze they attracted.

Think Britney Spears in the early 2000s. The star has spoken out consistently about the discomfort she felt in her early career, the way she was styled, the shoots she took part in.

Remember the Rolling Stone cover where she was lying on her bed in her underwear holding a Teletubbie? Yeah, that.

The female gaze doesn’t mean that women can’t be sexual. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. A lot of the time, female gaze media involves a lot more than the subject, but the entire creative process.

Female crew, female writers, stylists, and photographers – a whole group of people hired to represent a female experience that isn’t just focused on the body, but much more.

 

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Sabrina is hyper-sexual, but not in a way that pop culture is used to. She’s sexy but she’s funny. She’s dressed in lingerie but she styled herself. She’s not saying ‘I want to have sex with you.’ She’s saying ‘I want to have sex… and you’ll be there too.’

Her sexuality is loud, but there’s also a subtly to it – a cleverness. She has fun with her risque ‘nonsense’ outros, her lyrics are dominated by innuendo she wrote herself, she’s speaking to women as much as she is to men. It’s that me espresso, not that his espresso.

Her most recent album, Short n’ Sweet includes tracks like ‘Bed Chem’ and ‘Juno’, songs about having sex, thinking about having sex, and getting pregnant as a result of having some really good sex in various positions.

She’s also hyper-feminine. Her makeup is soft and pink, she wears glittery platforms, she pokes fun at herself being short without ever stumbling into ‘pick me’ territory.

@sabslyrics OH- 🧍🏻‍♀️ #sabrinacarpenter #juno #shortnsweet #ColumbusShortnSweet #shortnsweettour #fyp #viral #columbus @Sabrina Carpenter @Team Sabrina ♬ Juno – Sabrina Carpenter

She’s got her brand down, but it’s still a work in progress. Recently, she had to respond to criticism surrounding her attitude towards sex, both on and off the stage.

“My fans online are like, I can’t believe she’s bending over in front of her grandparents!” she said. “I’m like, girl, they are not paying attention to that. They’re just like, I can’t believe all these people are here.”

But if there are critics, it’s hard to hear them with all of the love. Take a trip to the TikTok comments from any of her US tour videos (new Juno position just dropped!) and you’ll be met with an abundance of adoration for her, her outfits, and her choreography… predominantly from women.

She’s for herself, and she’s for the gals – and that’s huge.

• Sabrina Carpenter