Can any woman do feminism right?

What's missing from the discourse on Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams taking Substack by storm.

This past Sunday I published an article on the connection between Sabrina Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet, Lolita, and grown men wanting to date teenage girls.

To understand the full depth and context of the conversation we’re about to have, I’d recommend reading either my article, or this one by Jade Hurley on the pedophilic fantasy Sabrina sells, this one by Emma Oxnevad about Sabrina and the voyeuristic male gaze, and this one by Celeste Davis from the perspective of a mom worried less about Sabrina than she is about Gracie Abrams. We all took different approaches, and I think people should take in multiple perspectives (including checking out the comments on these posts) to get a sense of where people agree and where they diverge. One person cannot by themselves accurately and without bias present all the nuances and perspectives on such a complex conversation as this, so getting a well-rounded idea of the discourse that seems to have taken Substack by storm in recent weeks and months is important.

For those who don’t really feel like reading any of those, essentially the discussion taking over Substack is whether or not Sabrina Carpenter or, less commonly but still sometimes, Gracie Abrams or Lana del Rey are good influences for their audiences, which are primarily young and impressionable women.

Some people think Sabrina is too sexual and they take issue with her owning her sexuality, expressing hyper-feminity, wearing lingerie, and appealing to the “male gaze” – this take, to me, is Puritanical and reads as conservative. I think some people assume all of us who have taken part in the discussion and have dared to critcize Sabrina at all fall into this category, and our actual arguments are written off as slut-shaming based on that (incorrect) assumption.

Also, I don’t want to get into who’s right and who’s wrong here, but in my opinion women should be allowed to be feminine if it brings them joy and makes them feel good even if the beauty standard and most feminine ideals can be traced back to patriarchy. We can’t acknowledge that a force as restrictive as patriarchy has taken over the world and plays a direct role in how women are treated on a day to day basis, and then get mad at women for trying to meet the standards imposed by it. Really, women can’t win.

Others think Gracie Abrams, though less provocative, is more of a threat to young minds because many of her songs are about desperately wanting a man’s validation at whatever personal cost it takes. As Davis puts it as she describes attending one of her concerts, “a maternal urge came over me to protect my girl, the thousands of young girls in attendance and Abrams herself from the I-am-not-ok-unless-a-man-loves me messages in just about every song. Where Carpenter wears her sexuality on her baby-girl-ruffled sleeves, Gracie bottles hers up, stores it in the space behind her ear where she coyly exposes it to the boy of her choosing.

Once chosen, she asks nicely if she can please sit quietly in the corner taking up as little of his time, space and energy as possible. Oh too much? She can be smaller. Too loud? She can be quieter. She’ll be cool, she’ll be chill, just whatever you do, please don’t leave her.”

Others criticize Sabrina’s catering to pedophilic ideals via referring to herself as a “niña” who wants you to put something big in her “casita” (vagina) and for her controversial Lolita-inspired photoshoot for W Magazine. This avenue is what my article was about, though plenty of men and people who I can only assume did not read a word I said chose to misinterpret it, or lump it into other articles on a similar topic but with a different argument. I’m going to share some of their responses. I had a YouTube video I posted 4 years ago on the internal male gaze amass a hundred thousand views and I know that with traction comes a lot of women agreeing with you, a lot of very angry men, and a lot of people who seem like they got lost at the mall of content where you read their comment and go, “What are you talking about?”

I also saw a note on Substack that I can’t find again (if you know who wrote it, please tell me and I’ll credit them) pointing out that some of the people berating Sabrina Carpenter are also huge fans of Lana del Rey, whose melancholy and cinematic music has been criticized as glorifying abuse, being seen as a Lolita figure, and toxic relationships with significantly older men.

Now that we’ve gotten the backstory out of the way, you might be wondering the following: Is it really all that serious?

Yes and no.

On one hand, discourse can be engaging and can be fodder for changing your and others’ perspectives on a topic, though a lot of people on the internet are not interested in nuanced conversations, only on being right. That’s just one of the pitfalls of having these discussions in this environment.

On the other hand, can’t women just enjoy things and express themselves however they want without constantly wondering and evaluating if they’re doing womanhood and feminism right?

I find myself at a crossroads here. I do think artists are responsible for the narratives they represent and we can absolutely criticize them without viewing them as bad people, bad feminists, or bad women. Being a celebrity trying to “do feminism right” while also expressing their authentic views, experiences, and style, all of which are directly influenced by a patriarchal system they neither created nor willingly chose to participate in, is impossible. It just is. A woman can try to do everything right, or just be who she is, and she will still be told she is somehow doing it wrong.

I listen to Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, and Lana del Rey and I thoroughly enjoy all of their work and relate to it in different ways. I have felt sexy and powerful like Sabrina. I have felt devastated and boy crazy like Gracie. I have been in horrible relationships and struggled with my mental health like Lana. There is a place for everyone at the table and just because a woman sings about something doesn’t mean that’s who she is. Is she responsible for the influence? Yes, in the same way a Disney star is responsible for never showing themselves drinking, partying, or doing drugs: they’re responsible for the image they sell, but ultimately they are human and it’s possible we are asking too much of them by expecting them to be perfect in ways we ourselves are not.

Do all of these artists have the potential to do harm to the consumers? Yes. But I also think we need to cut both female artists and female consumers some slack rather than write them off for how they choose to exist as women because as I said, no woman can exist or perform in a way that will be universally seen as right. We can call out women’s behavior that is potentially harmful without writing that woman off entirely and failing to view her as a complex, nuanced person with an identity informed by the same patriarchal and misogynistic cultures all women are victim to and internalize in their own ways. No one – not Sabrina, not Gracie, not Lana – is doing womanhood wrong, even if you disagree with some of their views or topics they sing about; the two ideas can, contrary to popular belief, be held at the same time.

Okay, I had 30 minutes to write and I just had to get these thoughts out and into the world while my original Sabrina post is still gaining traction, because I think it’s also important to remember that while all of these artists are human, so is every woman writing about them. No one is perfect, and no one is going to get the discourse exactly “right,” but I believe we should be able to have civilized conversations without being so scared of saying the wrong thing we say nothing at all.