Sabrina Carpenter, who will for the first time this week be hosting NBC\u2019s Saturday Night Live, continues to be a cause of controversy. Over the summer, the five-foot, honey-voiced singer revealed the cover for her newly released album, Man\u2019s Best Friend. It shows her wearing a black minidress on her hands and knees, while a faceless man holds a handful of her hair. The image immediately stirred outrage online. Those who usually find themselves on the side of unfettered female sexual liberation called the cover regressive, degrading, and submissive toward the male gaze. Some fans defended the image, arguing that Carpenter was clearly satirizing incompetent and controlling men as well as her portrayal by the media as a \u201csex obsessed\u201d pop star.<\/p>\n
Both of these perspectives fail to give enough credit to Carpenter, who has done what few contemporary pop artists have managed to do. She has identified the true culprit behind the relationship miasma of the 21st century: she knows that the guilty party is, at least in part, herself.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s biggest female pop stars \u2013 such as Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo \u2013 certainly don\u2019t lack \u201chonesty\u201d in their lyrics. Any self-restraint that might have kept female singers from revealing their reasons for anger, fear and anxiety went out the door a long time ago. These performers regularly and loudly use their music to lament the dating scene in contemporary America and its effect on their lives. Honesty, however, is of little use without self-awareness.<\/p>\n
Carpenter seems to \u2013 at least on a personal level \u2013 deride her own role in her admittedly dismal love life. This process of admission is anything but sad. Like a good comedian, she chooses to be insightful by purposefully becoming the butt of the joke for the sake of others\u2019 amusement. Carpenter openly admits to the appetite for misery and self-destruction that has infected her generation and has chosen to serve as a self-deprecating mirror to the culture that surrounds her.<\/p>\n
Produced with Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, Man\u2019s Best Friend continues the musical journey of self-effacement that started with her previous album, Short n\u2019 Sweet, which shot her to stardom. That album included tracks such as \u201cPlease Please Please\u201d and \u201cSlim Pickins,\u201d in which she admits to her terrible taste in romantic partners. In Best Friend\u2019s track \u201cManchild\u201d she picks up this thread. She sings about incompetent and emotionally unstable manchildren not \u201clet[ing] an innocent woman be,\u201d before admitting sarcastically that she is anything but innocent herself: I swear they choose me, I\u2019m not choosing them.\u201d In \u201cMy Man on Willpower,\u201d she resents her boyfriend for embarking on a journey of self-improvement and discipline, which has resulted in her playing second fiddle as the object of his attentions. Who wants an accomplished man if his accomplishments impede his obsession with her?<\/p>\n
Throughout the album, Carpenter recognizes her tendency to delude herself. In \u201cTears,\u201d she portrays her arousal at a man\u2019s efforts to assemble a chair from IKEA \u2013 the bare minimum of male competency \u2013 and attempts to use this to justify her attraction to him. In the album\u2019s bonus track, \u201cSuch a Funny Way,\u201d Carpenter whitewashes her man\u2019s indifference and neglect as signs of affection: \u201cKeep me far from friends and family, baby, that\u2019s just one of your quirks \/ And if distance makes you fonder, I\u2019m flattered by the distance you seek.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carpenter is, admittedly, not only a victim, but a victimizer. Recently, the term \u201cAffective Responsibility\u201d has gained traction in modern dating discourse. In lieu of reliable social institutions that used to discourage men and women from playing fast and loose with their affections, the term addresses a need for people to acknowledge their ability to cause emotional pain to others. Unfortunately, it\u2019s mostly used as a cudgel against men, who have almost exclusively been accused of affective irresponsibility. In seeming contradiction to the norm, Carpenter recognizes her ability to inflict damage on the men she dates. As she warns her man in \u201cDon\u2019t Worry I\u2019ll Make You Worry\u201d: \u201cDamn sure I\u2019ll never let you know where you stand \/ . . . I\u2019ll make you feel like a shell of a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good court jesters and comedians play an essential role. They serve as a pressure valve for society. Unspeakable and uncomfortable truths come to the fore through their good humor. They also function as a consolation in hard times. How should we deal with dismal and dispiriting dating landscape of the 21st century? We can start with a smile and some self-awareness. As Carpenter states in \u201cGo Go Juice,\u201d \u201cSome good old-fashioned fun sure numbs the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabrina Carpenter, who will for the first time this week be hosting NBC\u2019s Saturday Night Live, continues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[26422,19219,1862,156,157,111,139,69,3875,4913,11218,479,65561,8804,45415],"class_list":{"0":"post-86379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-chappell-roan","9":"tag-charli-xcx","10":"tag-dating","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-olivia-rodrigo","17":"tag-pop","18":"tag-pop-music","19":"tag-relationships","20":"tag-sabrina-capenter","21":"tag-saturday-night-live","22":"tag-snl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}