Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation : Is Sabrina Carpenter's Brand of Sexy, Dangerous?

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Happy humpday! As always our first order of business is catching you up on all the important pop culture headlines. Kim Kardashian has a robot, another musician joins OnlyFans and a famous couple flee America after the election.And then onto our main topic: Sabrina Carpenter's brand of sexy and whether it's as dangerous as some claim. We share both our thoughts and yours.As always, thank you for listening and for being the excellent other half of the conversation! Let us know your thoughts on our new weekly venture- what are you loving about our bonus eps? Anything you want us to do differently? Our Instagram DMs are open @everythingiscontentpod.See you Friday!-----------Your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy by Jade Hurley Headlines:NME: Kate Nash defends her "Butts For Tour Buses" OF campaignCNN: Kim K interacts with Tesla BotCosmopolitan: Kim K reveals diamond belly button piercingPage Six: Anne Hathaway to star in VerityForbes: Ellen DeGeneres Flees U.S. For The U.K.ELLE: Yellowjackets Season 3 gets release dateUSA Today: Betty White honoured with new stampCoachella Lineup 2025BBC: Davina McCall home after brain surgeryDailymail: Skims x Dolce & GabbanaGrazia: Callum Turner Is Latest Louis Vuitton AmbassadorThe Guardian: Lord Prescott obituaryWSJ: Coca Cola AI Ad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth I'm Richera and I'm Anoni and this is everything in conversation this is a bonus episode we release every Wednesday where we give you an extra hot shot of content we'll update you on the biggest and juiciest pop culture stories from the week before diving a little deeper into a topic with you remember if you want to have your say in these extra episodes, just give us a follow on Instagram at everything is content pod and shoot us a DM over there. This week, is Sabrina Carpenter's brand of sexy dangerous? But first, the headlines from the EIC newsroom. Kate Nash has announced she's joined OnlyFans. She shared a pic of her derriere alongside a

buy a piece of my arse as part of her Butts for Tourbusses campaign. Kim Kardashian introduces a new addition to her enormous beige household, a $30,000 Tesla robot. Kim and the robot have been, and there's no other word for it, canoodling in a recent photo shoot. Kim Kardashian has also revealed she's got her belly button pierced. Anne Hathaway has signed up for the next Colleen Hoover film adaptation. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are moving to the UK

following the US election result. Yellow Jacket season three is now coming on Valentine's Day next year. The US Postal Service is releasing a stamp in honour of Betty White, who passed away in 2021, aged 99. Miss you, Betty. Coachella have released their 2025 line-up with Lady Gaga, Green Day, Charli XCX, Post Malone and Megan Thee Stallion taking top billing. Davina McCool has successfully had surgery to remove a rare benign brain tumour. More Kardashian news. Kim and Kourtney made reference to their viral scrap

in an Italian-inspired shoot for the new Skims collaboration with Dolce & Gabbana. Callum Turner, aka Nepo boyfriend of Dua Lipa, has officially been announced as Louis Vuitton's new brand ambassador. Rebecca Vardy is obsessively watching Colleen Rooney on I'm a Celeb and it's giving Stan. John Prescott, former Labour MP and British Deputy Prime Minister, has died aged 86.

The internet has been commemorating him via videos of him punching a protester who egged him in 2001. Coca-Cola have received backlash after releasing an AI-made promotional Christmas video. And that's all from the headlines this week. This week's topic is the mixed response to Sabrinarina carpenter's new addition to her short and sweet tour when she sings her song juno which is about the feeling of wanting someone so much that you

imagine them impregnating you she demonstrates in a not very explicit way a different sex position while asking the audience have you ever tried this one? Some of the positions so far include reverse cowgirl, standing doggy, one leg spoon, pillow princess, and in a show last week, oral sex on the microphone. Now most people seem to see the intent here, something fun, something that tracks with the sexiness and, well, horniness of her recent album, but other people have called it out as inappropriate. In a now infamous and much memed post on X, one user wrote, you guys are disgusting and weird for defending a literal weirdo. I'm 17 and afraid of Sabrina Carpenter when she's performing. Another attached a video of Sabrina performing on stage in a kind of curtained boudoir scene, utilising light,

shadow and a male performer to act out two people about to get it on. And they wrote, I cannot be the only person that finds her doing this in front of an audience full of children inappropriate. Now we asked you all on Instagram for your takes on this and you did not disappoint. But before we get into all of that and get chatting, let me ask Noni and Ruchira, what have you made of this discourse? So I am a Sabrina Carpenter apologist and that's going to be I think my take throughout all of this I am just absolutely baffled like why is everyone so fucking prudish like get a grip the 17 year old who's scared of Sabrina Carpenter like I saw way worse when I was 17 come on now I am afraid Made me laugh so much. I'm quite worried for this younger generation.

I'm the same as you. I really enjoy Sabrina Carpenter's music. I am such a fan of quite low-hanging fruit innuendo. And that is kind of my humor. So I'm all for it. I think I find it so interesting because, and we're going to talk about an amazing sub stack, which we all read about why her girlishness perhaps makes this more problematic. But I was just thinking about every single female pop star and they're few and far between

that aren't being really hyper sexy on stage. Dua Lipa has a bit where she kind of rides around and it looks like she's riding against a pole. Obviously we have WAP. We have a long history of women doing dances which very much allude to sexual positions so there is clearly a reason why people are getting offended but it's so interesting to me because this is nothing new the whole of the the pop star industry is built on women writhing around in very little clothes alluding to love making although probably not

love making it's it's giving like pure routine it's like I'm 17 and afraid and it has been mostly teenagers that I've seen coming out really against this and similar styles who are doing sexy moves who are talking openly about sex and who are for some reason assumed to be like on stage babysitters um i've seen a few people selling a hat that says i'm 17 and afraid of sabrina carpenter and i fear someone needs to take away my my credit card because i fear i might get it all on it i just i'm finding it very let's all wear them and go and see sabrina carpenter yeah so i'm finding it a little bit exhausting as the discourse cycle, because I just I don't understand the horror. It is a horny woman talking about being horny, like water is wet. Yes. And also, none of this is new, literally,

as you said, and only none of this is new. When I think about, you know, the pop stars we grew up with Britney Spears, who I think is a very good comparison for Sabrina Carpenter. It's just like I just I'm not seeing anything super different. The difference is, I guess, Sabrina feels like an amalgamation of different references throughout history. I even think of, you know, Ariana Grande. None of this is new. I don't get why the sticking point is her and now. We had a message in from Dina which said women can't win over sexualized but ridiculed for trying to enjoy our own sexuality I wonder if

this is where some of the rub comes from in that it's okay for young ish female pop stars to be sexualized by media by fans but when they are overtly taking that messaging imbuing it in their music in their performance suddenly people are really cross because she's the one going hey I'm this little horny woman and everyone's like wait a minute you're not supposed to be saying that we we want to say that and I think that that's exactly the point it's the Disney kids the Disney women seem to be expected to if they are a Disney kid as a child, to always uphold that, which is why we got like such a mad backlash to Miley Cyrus, who I think a lot of it is,

some of it's overcorrecting when you leave that, the confines of a very kind of twee, kiddy, puritanical thing. We talked about Jojo Siwa. That does happen, but some of it is just growing up and she's not Disney kid now. And I think maybe it's the idea that she's making money off her sexuality and we we historically absolutely hate that

megan made a really good point which i think is quite fascinating she wrote unsure of this but interesting how she's managed to keep her fan base largely female and i i think that's a really interesting point about sabrina i don't feel like her sexuality is being marketed to men i think that's a really interesting point about Sabrina I don't feel like her sexuality is being marketed to men I think it's being marketed to women and I don't know any men who listen to her music I also found a very dodgy site that I won't cite that said that her female fan base her Instagram following is 70-ish percent women and 30-ish percent men I'm not going to cite it dubious but I want to believe it and I think that kind of tracks from what I can see which is all my female friends are obsessed with her and

any single man that I speak to just like would not listen to her so I think in the conversation about her you know marketing herself as this kind of like sexy baby I think it is tracking with us as women I don't think it is designed with the male gaze in mind what do you think in the piece which we're definitely going to talk about which is on substat by Jade Hurley called your fave is selling a paedophilic fantasy which is a very astonishing headline she also points out because a lot of people's arguments around this is that she's being overtly sexy to a young audience. But in that piece, she actually points out that when she was performing for Taylor Swift and doing her Juno endings and her Nonsense endings, only 5% of people that went to that tour were under 18.

So whenever she's performing, overwhelmingly, it is to adults. So this kind of faux outrage that children shouldn't be exposed to this sexy performance, which, as we've already said, is synonymous with female pop stars. It's also I don't think children are going. And also, surely that's on the part of the parent anyway, if they deem the music as inappropriate. But I remember singing Charmaine by Plan B when I was like 12. Fucking hell. Like word for word. Charmaine, Charmaine de la Rosa.

Oh, that's, yeah, okay. And and also I knew the words to every single all songs are really about sex but you just don't know what they mean when you're a kid you're just singing them it's only when you're an adult and you realize that you were sat in the car with your dad like absolutely screaming at the top of your lungs these lyrics which then start to take form and make sense as you get into your 20s I just don't I I find it hard to find the outrage, and I don't think it's substantiated, but that substracted gave me a pause for thought. Yeah, I do want to talk more about that,

but just to focus on the idea that I think the pearl clutching is coming from people that maybe don't have kids and maybe have no idea whether kids are going or not. And I think we've seen the full pendulum swing on things like traditional values and trad culture and trad wives and I think it does it wouldn't be impossible for us to find ourselves back in a very puritanical very kind of virginity core purity ring society where virginity was prized where women were actually shamed again for enjoying sex where

people were encouraged to not have sex, not give it up. All of these things which we exhaustively waded through, got to the other side of. I wouldn't be surprised if this was an indicator that we're heading back that way, that people are clutching their pearls about very tame dry humping on stage by an adult woman who just wrote this year's horniest album I'm finding it a little bit like a canary in the coal mine about bigger cultural issues of our attitudes to sex and women and you know enjoyment and freedom I think I think the main sticking point for people is that she looks young and as somebody with quite a baby face themselves I find it really irritating because I think she's being synonymized with being a child who's putting out a sexy image no she's not a child she's an adult woman and whether she looks young or not she is an adult woman there is no kind of discussion around her being inappropriate

or giving off an impression of inappropriate sexuality I think you can't help if you have a young face I know I have a you know a stake in this because I feel like the conversation just makes me think about myself like am I inappropriate for being sexual because I look young I don't know I don't think that that makes sense I think it's weird I think it feels like a false outrage thing like you said Beth I agree with what both of you are saying Ruchira about the outrage about the baby face about the fact that like some of that is outside of her control and I also agree with what you were saying Beth about the puritanicalism of it but what I find so interesting

is this kind of blame that's landed on Sabrina's shoulders when there was this picture that got circulated on X earlier this month that I sent to both of you because I just was shocked and horrified and I'd forgotten that that was the landscape we lived in it was from US Weekly in 2006 and the little piece within the magazine was hot Hollywood in virgin territory and basically they interview different celebrities asking if they had sex and the headline is chastity may be a virtue but it's hard to come by in Hollywood who has made the effort they speak to Hilary Duff Jessica Simpson Britney Spears and Adriana Lima and they have like to tell whether or not they've had sex so Hilary Duff said the good girl confessed to Al that she's a virgin but it doesn't mean that I haven't thought about sex this isn't that long

ago that we were literally writing pieces about whether or not our favorite, quite young, 18-year-old stars were virgins. So then for a 25-year-old woman to come out and be like, actually, I am having sex. I'm enjoying it. And here's some, like, funny innuendos about it. For this to have caused a whole ferrari, I definitely think it's about the placement thing. It's about the power displacement. Sabrina being the one saying, I'm doing this, than people because it's, it's just unhinged. I remember reading bits like that. I don't know if you guys do as well, but I think a lot of young women who weren't around during the time, who were growing up on the internet were astounded that the media could hound her like that. It is just, it is honestly appalling and just baffling

that virginity and young women, young pop stars were in the same breath, and they were allowed to be harassed in such a horrific way. I think although things have changed now and you wouldn't get an interview like that, the fact that we're having this kind of conversation indicates that there's some kind of transition, but we're still kind of obsessed with the sexuality of these stars. Also, I do want to point out Sabrina Carpenter is 25. Megan Thee Stallion is around the same age. Megan Thee Stallion released WAP with Cardi B.

Although there was some furore about the song, there was no kind of furore about the fact that Megan Thee Stallion was, you know, whether she was a virgin or whether she was, you know, presenting a bad example to children. I think there is a difference between a white woman in this conversation and black women and the way we allow them to be sexualized in the media in a different way whereas Sabrina Carpenter maybe because of her young face maybe because of the fact that she is she's playing on being a sexy baby to a degree but I also think her whiteness plays into the fact that audiences feel as if there's something we need to protect

about that or we need to constrain and control in a way that we don't with black women that is such a good point and it's so true because we already automatically hypersexualize black women and especially like black women's bodies whereas Sabrina as you said because she is petite because she looks close to a traditional idea of purity and virginity and what society is deemed to be the ideal woman it's then like we must protect her and she that's what obviously why people also think she's appropriate for children literally by virtue of the fact that she looks quite childlike whereas I would imagine that maybe those same people are just assuming that younger people aren't going to see people like Megan Thee Stallion because of the very real reasons you've made.

And there's so many statistics to back this up as well, that young children of colour in schools, especially black boys, are treated as much older than their white peers. And it's such a bias and a racial bias towards how we allow young people and adults to be perceived and grown up and how we treat people of different races. I think that's a really pertinent point I do wonder also why we've entrusted Sabrina Carpenter with you know the ears of our our children and both Kate and Tosin made similar points in our DMs Kate said why do adult women have to be palatable children some things can just be for adults and that was echoed by Tosin who said why do people want celebs to parent their kids and i i really agree with that i think if this had been you know miss rachel or one of the cocoa melons i don't know what that is but i'd have kids you

know one of the the things that the telly tubbies that being beamed into kids eyes if they were sort of dry humping you'd go this is an outrage this is for children so reading carpenter is an adult and i think i do feel for children because it does feel like there aren't actually that many stars for that age of not being a baby not being a really young kid but also not being an adult or you know a later teenager like that adolescent time and I do think that there's a scarcity there we can see this a lot across the internet children don't have their own spaces but it's hardly miss Sabrina Carpenter's fault it just speaks to perhaps a gap in the industry totally there's definitely a dearth of like S Club Sevens I feel like they were the perfect bridging band where it was innocent enough they were really sweet but they

really it kind of was music for kids i suppose spice girls as much as children i actually remember my mom like not wanting me to listen to spice girls because she thought it was too spicy a tragedy literally and steps oh my god steps are also quite a good route that's what we need these big driving me crazy the maker racy maybe we need more mixed gender like seven person strong bands if this doesn't work out we'll start one oh such a good idea i can't sing guys that's okay i don't think most of the bands can sing charlie xx has made a whole career from not singing auto tuners shah also wrote in going i think we all need to stop caring about so much about sex it's not that deep i know this sounds so stupid but I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I was just thinking

about how like pretty much everyone at some point in their lives is either starts having sex or has a sexual encounter most people unless I guess you're like a test tube baby you came from sex sex is not this like newly invented crazy secretive thing the way that we have made sex to be this thing is kind of wild because it is one of the most universal experiences that everyone pretty much does in a very similar way in the same context for millennia it's probably the it's the oldest thing that humans have definitely been doing since the beginning of time so the even the idea that even if children do hear it that it's inappropriate obviously you don't want to sexualize children but you know teenagers are well aware of what sex is they have their own

sexual desires and drives and yes we don't want to force them into living a hyper-sexualized life too early but I think more of the problem is perhaps just us really trying to get rid of whatever these kind of like evangelical religious roots and Victorianist views towards sex, especially when it comes to women having sex. It is weird. It's so normal. Everyone does it. I don't know why we get so embarrassed.

I'm still embarrassed if a sex scene comes on with my family. I just have to pretend I'm not there. Why? Oh my God, I know. Last time I was home for Christmas, me and my mum were watching a film and there was like not even a sex scene, just like some kind of sexy scene. And she literally hit fast forward

and she'd never done that before. And I like literally like stopped breathing. That's so much worse. I know. You need to just, sometimes I will pretend to look at my phone or my mum might ask me, you just have to all pretend

that it's collectively not happening. But fast forwarding it. I would just, I lean into it and just once it's finished rewind and ask to watch it again we've got to be open you know what it's made me realize the way we talk about sex makes it feel like it was just discovered 10 years ago we have so many think pieces on you know the best ways to do it how to get the most out of it how to talk about it we're constantly talking about it as if it's novel how crazy is that like the oldest thing on this earth we still talk about in all these ways as if we're finding out new things and rediscovering things about it constantly but I think we have to do that because it's not okay

or it's not you know okay to just talk about sex publicly or openly or educate, for instance, like your children around like positive means of finding pleasure rather than them having a really weird experience behind a bike shed or something. and interviews and articles. And obviously when it comes to female sexuality, especially in the decades past, women probably weren't having the best time because they weren't able to advocate for themselves. And we know all of the horrible statistics around sexual abuse and sex not being consensual. But I think, yeah, the reason we talk about it so much is a direct response to the fact that we don't talk about it enough.

She was doing these nonsense outros for years, for years we've talked about which were like really horny and most of them were good fun although in jade's substack piece one point that she makes is that a few of these in the last couple of years did seem to suggest a link between her sexuality and her youthful appearance and i'll read the ones that she picks out. The first one was from this February. And she sings, I'm full grown, but I look like a ninja. Come put something big in my casita, Mexico. I think you're Bonita.

And then the other one of March of this year, gardens by the bay. I want to go there. Then I'll take you somewhere that has no hair. Singapore, you're so perfect. It's no fair. So, which surprised me because i'd never seen those ones and the ones that i'd heard her sing and the nonsense intros were different for

each show as i understand it and something that she kind of came up with and riffed on to make the audience laugh and to be a bit cheeky these ones and it's jade's criticism that jade writes she looks like a young girl her pussy is bald and she wants you to fuck her she isn't sharing this only because it's funny. For some audiences, these qualities grant her favour and capital, which does paint it in a more sinister light. Because I'm so for those sexy nonsense outros. I'm so for Sabrina Carpenter.

But that was perhaps a side of it I hadn't seen. And I am grappling with how I feel about that, that actual reference to childlikeness and smallness. And I just don't know definitely uncomfortable I felt the same reading those bits because I hadn't I hadn't heard those outros before that was the first time that I had seen a very overt link to sexuality and childlike appearance for sure I definitely think those are the ones that yeah they're they are definitely yucky and they're definitely like not for me that's like a step in the direction of like making Lolita feel aspirational and you know really leaning into that I am a child I am also sexual aesthetic

I will say I don't think anything that she's done recently feels as if it goes as far as that so I wonder I wonder if there's a reason why we haven't seen more of that I wonder if that even for her was probably just a bit much and I maybe there was feedback or something like that but I just I don't yeah I don't love that specifically there was in actually in September's issue of W magazine I don't know if you saw this this was maybe actually in the piece as well um she posed for a photo which was criticised as being really a mimicry of a scene in Lolita, the film where Humbert first sees Dolores, e.g. Lolita, lying in the garden on her front reading a book soaking wet from the sprinkler and there's a picture in W Magazine which looks like it's

double and that got a lot of critique for again leaning into this sexy baby aesthetic trying to capitalize on kind of that lolita reference which i mean she didn't obviously art direct the shoe and perhaps it is a reach i don't think so i just think the picture was maybe ill-judged but again i don't know if i'm reaching but it did seem to be and that's quite a recent one where she is tying some of her image into quite problematic themes. What I will say, we will link this piece in the show notes. It's a long subtext. We can't quote the whole thing and it's really well written.

And when I read it, I felt the same as both of you. I felt slightly uncomfortable. It made me question things. Then I started thinking specifically the lyric that you were referring to, Beth, when she talks about having like shaved her. I always want to say you don't shave your vagina, her vulva, because you can't actually shave the whole. I was just thinking about how, yes, this is a really good read. And yes, it is talking about the specific ways in which her branding feels childlike. But all of us as women, to an an extent are taught to make ourselves feel as close

to to have a really close proximity to childhood my generation of women most of my friends I know have lasered either all of their pubic hair or when they remove it they remove it all lots of people I know get Botox or are doing anti-aging steps thinness has always been in and a lot of the draw towards thinness is to look like prepubescent pretty much everything we do when it comes to beauty when it comes to women is actually to bring us closer to a childlike pure virginal state and so the reason I say that is because so much of this is subconsciously imbued in us that we are all without realizing often playing into these things the closer we are to that pure virginal perfect unwrinkled unstained

girl the more desirable we are in society it's a really uncomfortable thing to think about and in this piece because she puts it so clearly and so eloquently it feels really shocking but when I actually sat with it I was like a lot of us do this to to an extent and it's obviously amplified because she's five foot very petite has this cherub like face the outfit she wears are kind of like boudoir style 90s photo shoots that through a male gaze would make me feel really uncomfortable but because she's doing it I don't feel uncomfortable and because her fan base are all female I don't feel uncomfortable so I think it's a really interesting position I think the Lolita photo shoot is very strange I wonder if she even knew like that that was a direct reference because that is really shocking

I think that's the thing it's where it's coming from when it's coming from her there are so many women that will be thinking like that subconsciously anyway but when it's positioned and framed and viewed like that in such a direct manner then I'm like okay that's weird and I'd be interested to hear what you thought about in the piece which essentially drives towards this idea that Sabrina Carpenter's sexy baby aesthetic is dangerous because it not only kind of opens the floodgates for this kind of paedophilic dream fantasy for an audience which obviously I've discounted because I have said I'm very sure that Sabrina Carpenter's audience is mostly women and I would even put forward the argument it's millennial women anyway the other part of the piece suggests that it kind of opens the floodgates for

teenagers and young women to sexualize themselves looking up to her as an idol and yeah opens the floodgates for this like over over hypersexualized young girlhood. And she makes the point, which is very true, that when we're young, when we're young girls, we're often desperate to grow up. So in opposition of us, millennial women who are desperately trying to cling on to our girlhood, 13, 14, 15 year old girls are sexualizing themselves on the internet as a ticket to womanhood, as a way to kind of have control of their lives to feel free because being a teenage girl fucking sucks historically you feel awful you want to be a woman because you perceive it as a way into the world to be the

person you want to be I just think that issue has existed for millennia like I remember thinking that sexuality was a ticket to womanhood when I was a 13 year old girl. And it wasn't because Britney Spears was out there in the world. All of this, all of this kind of pop star media was a collage for me in building up that image. It was the TV I was consuming. It was the actors and actresses on Gossip Girl who were 20 year olds playing you know 16 year olds having sex on tv it wasn't individual bits and pieces or you know names that I could pull out so I think the piece the problem I had was all of this is placed on the

shoulders of somebody like Sabrina Carpenter but there is a media there's a history of media building all of these issues up that goes way beyond her and her aesthetic I totally agree and I was the same as you I also want to posit something else which I think this piece kind of fails to acknowledge which is that teenage girls and boys are inherently very sexual beings you're literally never more charged with hormones you do have desires you maybe might not understand the full extent of how to meet those desires but I think there's nothing this it's not bad to have a woman openly expressing the ways that she seeks and finds pleasure it is still very innocent even though

it is it's overtly sexual in what she's saying and in the performances it's not graphic it's not disgusting or shocking it's not pornographic it's no way near as bad as some of the stuff they're going to be finding just by going on google or x or any other social media platform so I think it's this push and pull of like is Sabrina the problem is the fact that Sabrina looks like this the reason that we're calling her the problem like it's something really specific about her that's causing a lot of interesting conversations, which I think are necessary conversations. But if I had to think about what I'd be worried about if I had teenage children,

it wouldn't be an artist like Sabrina Carpenter. It would be grown men taking advantage of young women or media outlets diminishing women in their print media or porn websites. Again, it's sort of like victim blaming the woman for expressing her own sexuality. If the fear in this piece as it expresses is that it's opening a window for men to have illicit sexual fantasies about younger women, again, surely the issue there is the perpetrator, a.k.a. aka the man who is seeking out underage girls rather than the woman who happens to look quite young playing into a trope which women are finding

funny and girlish and silly yeah she's she is for the girls and i think she's almost i think it's an argument to be made that it is good representation because she hasn't altered her face or body to appear as it is. She is a small-statured woman with a face, I mean, I'm not going to speculate on if she's had any tweakments, but with the face that she was born with, she's been in the public eye for, I think she was about 9 to 11. She was really young. And so that is what she looks like.

The way that she carries on is how she feels inside. And I think her messaging is really fun I think it is enjoy sex love sex seek your own pleasure threaten your boyfriend if he embarrasses you all messages that I fundamentally agree with and I think to say to try and skewer her as male gaze pornified poster girl I think it misses what she's doing it says a lot about the speaker and suggests that women one can't enjoy someone who's styled like she is I mean I think she's a feast of the eyes I love watching her I think she's so much fun and it really it kind of lights up the parts of my

brain that love girlishness and love like pink and love I guess that sort of mid-20s period where sex really is you're on that new frontier and you're like, I did this when I was a teenager. It was a bit weird, you know, whatever. I'm in my 20s now. I'm allowed to enjoy this. And two, suggests that you can't, suggests that a pop star like her couldn't possibly enjoy doing this.

It has to be for some kind of sinister end game of corrupting and profiting I just think it's really depressing this whole thing just really reminds me of the fact that what she's doing isn't anything new she's her whole the power of her is the nostalgia for every kind of aesthetic that she brings out it's you know touching on Marilyn Monroe it's touching on Britney Spears it's bringing in the 50s the 60s the 70s the bombshell era that kind of post-war like literally you know like cabaret-esque style there's nothing there's nothing new and there's nothing controversial about it it's all a collage of eras and people that we've seen before and I just wanted to draw attention to a piece that I think is so good on this kind of sexy baby concept which is On Vice it's by Emma Garland and Lauren O'Neill it's from 2018 so a bit of a throwback called Introducing the Concept of the Sexy Baby. In it they say the sexy

baby is someone who derives their power from being both sexy and babyish but crucially is not a baby we should remind people of that here Sabrina Carpcially is not a baby we should remind people of that here Sabrina Carpenter is not a baby in our foolish universe hot is largely still associated with powerful and cute with weak sexy babies then are disarming because they occupy both ends of the spectrum at once meaning they are simultaneously perceived as formidable and non-threatening this also lends them a sinister edge which they could murder you at any moment and get away with it and i think that is so sabrina carpenter all of her lines are talking about her having the power but she does it with this kind of girlish laugh and

this kind of like coquettishness and i think that's what's really fun about her she's just talking about laughing at her boyfriend for being a fucking mug whilst also kind of in the corner just like you know being cute and sweet in the corner I think that's such a good read of it I also I just keep thinking about that sub stack and I wanted to in the piece she says that basically what's happened obviously 2023 was year of the girl everyone was talking about girly being girl dinner we were all kind of regressing and she posits that this is really bad because the people that lose out are actually young girls and we're all sort of regressing into these childlike versions of ourselves but like you were saying Beth you love her aesthetic you love leaning into that teenageness and as you said Ritura when you're

a teenager you're desperate to be a woman I wonder if it is just part of the journey of life that you can't ever enjoy the stage that you're in when you're in a teenager your dress ups go up and also you can't necessarily enjoy your teenager-ness because you feel awkward you feel clunky you don't really understand your body youth is wasted on the young you don't really understand your power and how much fun you can have and so there's something lovely about leaning into the nostalgia of as an adult woman enjoying the girlishness that you never got to enjoy at the time because not only are you hyper-sexualized and over-sexualized as a young woman you don't really understand your own sexuality your own power so it almost feels a bit like you kind of have to enjoy it at a later stage with a bit of hindsight and a bit of space and Sabrina is giving that to us. I think she is just being

shamed for the sin of not feeling shame about sex and I think more power to her as Anna points out in our DMs we have plenty of successful female pop stars who aren't inherently sexual in their performance style or songwriting and then she mentions Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo. The idea that her being a little sexy on stage is her being forced into a box rather than being an artistic choice does such a disservice to her and feeds the idea that women are always operating under a male gaze when in reality she found her niche and is playing into it expertly. I think it is puritanical shaming I think. She will probably move on to another era and I think let's enjoy this one while it lasts.

We also had another great message from Emma as well which said it's so rare that we get the opportunity to enjoy this beauty and sexuality without having to be sexual for anyone else. She's being a hottie but for the girls it's the luck sleepover of our gossip girl dreams. Ah I love that ending what a perfect comment thanks Emma thank you so much for all of your comments and thoughts and for listening this week remember to follow us on instagram at everything is content pod and blue sky and tiktok we'll see you on friday as always bye