E-Paper
They’re sexy and they know it. Why we should stop shaming women
Why do we hate on artists who know they’ve got it? Sabrina Carpenter is just the latest bombshell facing the firing squad
Could 2024 have been Sabrina Carpenter’s year? The Disney star opened for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour. Her own, ongoing Short n’ Sweet world tour has 53 stops. She closed the year, age 25, with a net worth of $12 million.
And she’s worked hard. The theme of the Short n’ Sweet tour is boudoir-inspired. She performed in sparkly minidresses, big hair and chunky, glittery heels. And with every song, she’d cheekily unveil yet another risqué pose or a suggestive dance move. Her fans, mostly women, loved it.
You know what happens when women start enjoying themselves: Men crash the party and ruin it. In online comments and reviews, Carpenter’s act has been called slutty, low-class, and not fit for 12-year-old girls. (Who’s admitting kids into adult concerts, anyway?)
Olivia Rodrigo knows her pain. Last year, a public storm raged over whether her concerts were kid-friendly and whether her music was appropriate for younger listeners (They aren’t). It’s the kind of backlash Madonna received in the 1990s, with her cone bras and hip thrusts as she released her Erotica and Bedtime Stories albums. Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and nearly every other woman artist has been criticised for being a bad influence. Sexy women, it seems, are fine in art and in male fantasies. But when actual women take charge of their sexual expression, suddenly everyone has a problem.
All this while Adam Levine performs shirtless and Harry Styles licks his fingers and thrusts them suggestively towards the audience. Robbie Williams cavorted with a female audience member in a bed onstage at one of the shows on his Take The Crown tour in 2013. Everyone loved it. In the K-pop universe, male singers wear ripped shirts, showing off bare abs and backs, and are cheered as charismatic and confident. Women K-pop stars who dress the same are dismissed as smutty – a term almost exclusively reserved for women.
Here’s what we haven’t learnt in all these decades of strong women making great music: Being sexy isn’t a crime. And it certainly isn’t a short-cut – Carpenter is among the busiest artists at the moment; Madonna’s discography spans 14 studio albums. Neither is the facile, shallow, fickle individual that critics paint them out to be.
Here’s a useful distinction to keep in mind when the next troll rises against Carpenter: The sexiness isn’t the point. People don’t have a problem with a woman being sexy (there’s certainly enough porn and Bollywood item numbers as proof). They are triggered when a woman knows the power of her allure. Because it gives her control over her viewer; she ceases to be a pliant good girl, unaware of her gifts and easy to manipulate. It forces the viewer – male, female, fan, troll, whatever – to accept, belatedly, what she already knows. And most men still aren’t ready for that.
In the past, Madonna said her tours were for those with “open minds” only. Carpenter isn’t waiting around for social change either. She’s coolly addressed the backlash over her concerts by saying, “Don’t come to the show and that’s OK”. Essentially: Don’t like? Don’t watch. But don’t tell a woman to tone it down. Mic drop.
From HT Brunch, January 18, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
