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In recent years, Sabrina Carpenter has made the move that many big pop stars whose careers started on Disney Channel have attempted \u2013 to extricate themselves from their pixie-dusted persona and venture into the mainstream media by producing a burst of exceptionally explicit content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This move by the former “Girl Meets World” star has resulted in criticism as early fans and parents express feelings of betrayal and disappointment. But Carpenter’s most recent album has been met with unique levels of backlash \u2013 sparking an important conversation about the control an artist possesses over their own image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carpenter’s new album “Man’s Best Friend” was released on Aug. 29, but the cover image has been circulating for months. The image depicts Carpenter on hands-and-knees before a faceless man who is pulling her hair, mimicking images from vintage advertisements of domestic housewives being abused by their husbands for burning dinner or having bad breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cover seems decidedly misogynistic, with one early commenter saying it “sets (women) back about five decades,” and a nonprofit working to end domestic violence claiming it evokes “tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Without a cohesive alternative message, listeners are still stuck battling the implications of the album cover.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carpenter’s fans have fired back, convinced that the image must be part of some larger, heavily satirical scheme. After all, the lead single from the album is the belittling and diabolically catchy hit “Manchild.” But if Carpenter’s goal with this album was to create a misogynistic cover that would be undermined by songs that clearly assert female autonomy, she has done a terrible job maintaining that dichotomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The themes addressed in the album are eclectic, from the man-hating in “Nobody’s Son” to the desperate pleading with a former lover in “My Man on Willpower.” Without a cohesive alternative message, listeners are still stuck battling the implications of the album cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carpenter has been questioned extensively in interviews about her thought process in creating the cover, but most of her responses have been jabs at her criticizers: “Y’all need to get out more\u2026 (the album cover) is perfect for what it represents.” But what does she mean for it to represent?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with CBS, Carpenter explains that she sees the cover as being about control: “As a young woman, you’re just as aware of when you’re in control as when you’re not\u2026 For me, this whole album was about the humanity of allowing yourself to make those mistakes, knowing when you’re putting yourself in a situation that will probably end up poorly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, that is exactly the type of situation being created by this album. Whether her intention was genuinely to satirize old motifs of gender roles, or whether the album cover is just thinly veiled rage-bait, Carpenter has certainly not achieved any goals of female empowerment with her imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A further issue lies in the ways this new album will be used by individuals outside her diehard fanbase. Media can \u2013 and often is \u2013 interpreted in many ways, and an artist cannot wholly be held responsible for every interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But some forms of visual media must be held to an additional level of responsibility because of their more explicit ability to be misused. Since Carpenter’s imagery is objectifying women in such a targeted manner, it seems reasonable that she should continue to be pressed for a more thoughtful response to her choice of frontispiece of her new album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sabrina Carpenter and the limits of artistic control<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[99,16,26],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-anastasia-brown","tag-editorial-perspectives","tag-issue-2025-09-05"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",433,309,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",150,107,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",300,214,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",433,309,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",433,309,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",433,309,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-09-05-17-mans-best-friend-1-1.jpg",433,309,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Sabrina Carpenter and the limits of artistic control","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2028,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/2028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}