Glasgow Women’s Aid, a Scotland-based advocacy organization for women experiencing domestic abuse, slammed Carpenter in a post on Instagram on Thursday calling the album cover “regressive,” and stating it evokes “tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.” A column in The Telegraph Thursday complained in a headline that Carpenter’s “over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,” and the writer Poppie Platt noted Carpenter has many young fans and said her marketing is “troubling,” comparing it to TikTok trends like the “trad-wife” aesthetic that promote subservience to men. Some of the most-liked comments on Carpenter’s Instagram post of the album cover were critical. “Is this a humiliation ritual? WTH is this cover,” one comment, which garnered 8,000 likes says, while another commenter stated: “Explain to me again how this isn’t centering men? How this isn’t catering to the male gaze?”
I know next to nothing about Sabrina Carpenter, but why can't the artist express whatever she wants? It would be cool if she did champion a cause and fight the good fight, but if she's a slop merchant then why stop her from making slop?
