How I Learned to Love Sabrina Carpenter
And why it took so long
Sitting by the pool drink in hand, I turned to my friend and said “I don’t like Sabrina Carpenter. She comes off like she’d try to steal my man.”
Not only does this comment set feminism back a few decades, doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, and makes me sound incredibly old, but it’s not even true! I did the dance to “Espresso” just like everyone else. “Taste” is probably going to be my top played song of the year! So why am I sounding like my marriage could be wrecked with one playful outro of “Nonsense”? (I have watched every improvised outro of that song on her tour, and always say “so stupid” before watching the next one).
Something about Sabrina Carpenter has really gotten beneath my aging skin. When I was listening to Short n’Sweet, I was so put off by how different every song sounds. Every track is a hard turn into a new decade and genre. “Taste” and “Please Please Please” channel 90s Faith Hill and even shades of Dolly Parton. “Good Graces” and “Bed Chem” sound like 90s R&B (specifically “My Boo” by Ghost Town DJ's?) “Coincidence” is coming so hard for Joni Mitchell. Stevie Nicks drag makes appearances on “Sharpest Tool” and “Slim Pickins.” We have our Taylor Swift nod in "Lie to Girls” with a side of Phoebe Bridgers in “Don’t Smile.” “Juno” is kind of giving Chromeo?!
The safe and obvious answer I can give as to why this bothered me is that it means she has no distinct sound, and therefore can’t be picked out of a crowd. You can’t point to something and go “that’s so Sabrina” because she hasn’t given herself a moment to decide what that is. So, even if it’s catchy, it’s not definitive. It’s derivative. And yet, I can’t stop listening to it.
Sabrina Carpenter and this album encapsulate such a specific part of womanhood. Her first album came out nine years ago, when Sabrina was just 16. Six albums later, she’s dominated our algorithms with cheeky jokes, sexual innuendos and songs to fit the public’s needs. She’s been here for years, but most of us didn’t notice. Now that she’s arrived, her songs don’t fit into a specific genre other than “pleasing to the ear,” because that is the role of the ingenue. It’s not to make waves: it’s to fit the mold of what’s appealing. Why please just one lover of music, when you can please many at a time?
I’m nine years older than Sabrina, almost to the day. When I was 25, I was making overtly sexual jokes onstage that I blush at now. I flirted with men with reckless abandon. I had a woman confront me at work telling me that if I ever talked to her husband again, she would get me fired. She was referring to how her husband had drunkenly come up to me at a party and told me to “follow your dreams.” No man was snatched, just an innocent slurring of HomeGoods sign slogans. Yet, she wasn’t the first or last woman to tell me that “what you’re doing needs to stop.”
I was doing the same as the women before me. Sabrina is doing the same. Obligatory “patriarchy is a hell of a drug,” and it makes you shed all personality just in hopes of catching the male gaze for a little bit longer. To grasp at a little bit of power that’s never been offered before. To understand the games men were playing, I had to play along, too, for a while. For me to resent Sabrina for trying to please everyone is to hate a part of myself for doing the same at that age.
I think of everything I was doing at 25, and wonder “how did she have the time?” I guess when you have so many people to please and so many personalities to embody, you make that time, because it’s the only method you’ve seen work to get noticed as a person. I would never go back, but I also miss a little bit of the mystery ahead. There is a beautiful freedom in doing things simply because you don’t know the consequence. Even if it ends in horror, it’s a brand new shape of horror you’ve never seen. It’s admittedly captivating.
Now, I’ve seen many shapes of horror. I know the consequences of 95% of my actions. I am aware that 34 is not the age of Grandmother Willow, but it is the age when I have noticed things don’t look like they used to. I looked at a photo of myself at 25 (don’t do this) and wow, wouldn’t you know: I look different. The full cheeks I once wished to be smaller took my desire too far and have disappeared, leaving my skin a little saggier, eyes a bit more sunken. It’s these moments that have me looking at Sabrina Carpenter with a crow’s footed eye, thinking “what you’re doing needs to stop.”
But, it stops whether or not I bitch by the pool. My agency came with age. Though I’m not the PYT that I once was, I feel relief that I don’t have to play the games anymore. I like who I’ve become without all-out regret for who I’ve been. Besides, that 25-year-old girl had so much fun figuring out who she was. Why should I blame someone else for doing the same?
We are about to get into reality show season: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and The Golden Bachelorette (featuring a Reno guy named Guy!!!) are coming later this month and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say, so stay tuned for that hot goss. In the meantime…
SHOWS
PODCASTS
#1 Dad follows comedian Gary Vider as he reconnects with his conman dad. Great for people who like comedy, and have daddy issues, which has to be everyone, right?
SONGS