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The growing gender divide, three minutes at a time. Sabrina Carpenter tackles the exasperation of being young, female, straight, and single in 2024.
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- Title
- The Growing Gender Divide, Three Minutes at a Time
- Authors
- Spencer Kornhaber
- Published
- Aug 28 2024
- Word count
- 1003 words
"Was I overintellectualizing pop"? In this case, I think so, yes.
Short n Sweet is catchy, but even just listening to a few songs a couple times, I've been struck by how hypocritical some of the lyrics are:
On "Taste":
I understand Carpenter is using the word "taste" figuratively here, but the message is one very at odds with her "sex-positive" reputation. The whole song is a short skip from saying:
text hidden because it contains a vulgar sexual phrase
"enjoy my sloppy seconds"I'm by no means more sex positive than Carpenter claims to be, but the hypocrisy is galling.
If this were written by a man about a woman ("go ahead and be with her; I've been there, done that. And I left a permanent mark on her"), I can't imagine the lyricist being labelled "sex positive".
A line from "Dumb and Poetic" (bolded for emphasis) that also struck me as contradictory:
Carpenter spends much of the song appropriately lambasting this guy (likely Shawn Mendes) for speaking with all the vocabulary of positive masculinity while continuing to behave toxically... but then she uses "you'd make a great wife" as part of her takedown? Is that itself not fostering toxic masculinity?
I'm a man, but if someone told me I had the qualities of a great wife, I'd do my best to take it as a compliment: great wives are great people. Being told, "You'd make a great wife", shouldn't be considered an insult, regardless of gender (unless you're saying it to be transphobic, obviously).
I'll acknowledge the possibility that, because the first half of the line is sarcasm ("You're so empathetic"), Carpenter is being sarcastic in the second half as well. The line could be read as her saying that Mendes wouldn't make a great wife, and that he should feel badly because he should strive to be wife material...
But come on. We all know what she's saying.
Apologies if this is covered in the article, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't write her own music. (Which applies to the majority of high-profile pop artists.)
That obviously doesn't absolve her of whatever she's singing about, but it does share the blame with others.
But the article in praise of her is all about her as an individual, and attributing everything to her as an individual. If a public figure can be personally praised when they say the right things but the criticism gets distributed amongst their team when they say the wrong thing, what conversation can even be had about them as a person? We can always talk about their statements in a vacuum, but a statement doesn't fall out of a tree fully formed. Even if someone else wrote it, she stamped her imprimatur upon it by performing it.
We aren't in disagreement. I think praise should be distributed to everyone who participates as well. It unfortunately doesn't happen as often as it should.
My statement wasn't meant to say "she doesn't deserve criticism because she has a team behind her." My intent was "she deserves criticism, and we should also criticize the writers of these songs."
Definitely.
'sabrina carpenter' is the name of a cultural institution. to a first approximation, no one knows the woman personally; she might as well not exist (even if she did write everything herself, it would make no difference), and in any event is a distinct phenomenon. nothing anybody writes is really claiming to be about the person; the implication that it might be is a linguistic and cognitive sleight-of-hand
(this is a slight overcorrection—there is room for at least a bit of nuance the other way—but i think it is a much better starting point)
I think you proved the point of that line with your own words. You'd try "your best to take it as a compliment" because it's hard to. Because it isn't a compliment. We live in a world where throwing like a girl is still an insult. Heck, where doing anything like a girl is still an insult. I agree that it SHOULDN'T be an insult, but it is. It's sarcasm that still gets under men's skin. It shouldn't be on the oppressed to fix the language of the oppressor.
I think that's true by default, and will probably remain true as long as misgendering is taken as an insult. But context is everything. It's possible to imagine circumstances where "you'd make a great wife" might be considered praise, but probably from a friend where you know what they meant from other clues.
While there are very specific contexts where saying a man would make a great wife could be a compliment, I think they're very different from the ones that apply here. It's like calling someone "submissive and breedable" in a slightly less chronically-online way.
ಠ ل͟ ಠ
Making me see this with my eyeballs today.
I think you're right and that's how pervasive misogyny is. But also... Rude to make me see it
you're welcome lol
But even then the fact that we have a set of attributes that we think of when we say "you'd make a great wife" means that it will always be less than fully complimentary as it implies suitability for a role that the guy in question will never fill. (Barring gender performance reconsiderations.)
After having seen what appeared to be a group of the cool kids playing catch at a German pool, perhaps we could all agree to say "you throw like a German." You can even start with the "gir" sound if you're willing to say it weird or need to catch yourself in the middle of a slip up.
Also, having never consciously listened to a Sabrina Carpenter song (I assume I've heard them before, but every time I guess a song is by her, I'm wrong 🤷), could it be possible that she is saying that line to lampoon something the guy said? I always see Taylor Swift
conspiracy theoristsfans talking about how a certain line is definitely something that a particular ex said with...presumably no evidence.Different "g" sound, though, so not really. German starts with the soft g /dʒ/ sound, while "girl" starts with the hard g /g/ sound. Despite being written with the same letter, they're pretty different to the average English-speaker's ears.
Shame though, I'm always here for making fun of Germans.
Yeah...that's why I said if you're willing to say it weird...thanks for teaching me my own language though, I guess...?
There have been so many glowing articles about Carpenter from the press since summer when Espressor released. It all just feels so inauthentic and I’m not sure Carpenter has the actual musical chops to back up all of this praise.
You only need to read her Wikipedia page to get a handle on her talents and achievements. No guess work or supposition is necessary.
it is a cheap trick, but masterfully executed and not devoid of substance. you may not be the target audience
It's a very good album. I thought the lyrics were clever and I applaud the willingness to tackle the subject matter. Sex, etc. should be spoken about more. No need for it to be taboo.
I've noticed on social music review sites that it seems to be "cool" to dump on this artist in particular, leaving bad reviews with little reasoning.
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