I’ll say it: A lot of you are way too comfortable calling Sabrina Carpenter a slut! And a lot of you are masking your misogynistic opinions about her Man’s Best Friend album cover with ~woke~ terms like “the male gaze” and “male-centered”! Girl, I thought we were living in 2025, not 1850. God forbid an empowered female artist poses on all fours, fully clothed, resting her hand on someone’s knee as they gently pull her hair. It’s almost as if the cover and title of Man’s Best Friend are tongue-in-cheek. Wild concept, I know… especially when we’re talking about a clever, deeply unserious, and low-key misandrist Gen Z woman. (Have we considered that this is a satirical commentary on how men treat Sabrina like a pet or how the public sees her?) I’m begging some of you to bring back critical thinking.

Based on the explosive outrage over Sabrina’s album cover, you’d think the “Manchild” singer was starring in a full-on porno or worse — twerking at the 2013 VMAs. (Gasp!) Upon seeing the photo, everyone on the internet was suddenly scandalized and aggressively accusing Sabrina of “catering to men” and “setting feminism back decades.” Weren’t you all drooling over her “Juno” poses and horny “Nonsense” outros like five minutes ago? It’s officially time to review the actual meaning of “the male gaze” and address this phenomenon of weaponizing buzzy feminist phrases to call women sluts.

Sabrina Carpenter Album Cover Controversy: Are People Using “Male Gaze” And “Male-Centered” To Call Her A Slut?

What Is “The Male Gaze”?

Image Credit: Getty

The “male gaze” is a concept from feminist film theory that describes how women are often portrayed in media through a straight male lens — objectified and positioned primarily as objects of male desire. According to The New Yorker, the term was popularized in 1973 by British film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” where she explained how the “male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.” Mulvey observed that women in film are frequently portrayed as passive or decorative rather than as fully realized characters who help drive the narrative. She had an admirable goal: to “expose how cinematic conventions reinforce patriarchal fantasy.”

I fear very few people casually tweeting about “the male gaze” are familiar with Mulvey’s work and original intentions. While the term started as a nuanced feminist framework for critiquing film, it’s carelessly thrown around these days, stripped of context, and misused in ways that dilute its meaning.

How Are People Weaponizing Terms Like “The Male Gaze” And “Male-Centered” Against Sabrina Carpenter?

Sometimes, you swing so far left, you end up on the right… a pattern for Gen Z-ers! (I’m Gen Z, so I’m legally allowed to roast us.) That seems to be exactly what’s happening with the way terms like “the male gaze” and “male-centered” are being misused and weaponized in the discourse around Sabrina’s album cover. There are distressing conservative undertones (not even undertones, TBH) in the tweets and TikToks declaring that she’s being too sexual and pandering to men. “I think sabrina carpenter is most certainly catering to the male gaze and it’s not satire anymore,” one person tweeted. Another troll on X added, “Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover is just eewww….why is being male centered an aesthetic now?” Sooo, what’s the message here? Women expressing their sexuality is only acceptable if it’s modest and tame? It’s giving purity culture.

“It just comes off a bit try-hard-y, a bit misogynistic even, especially with the political climate that we are in,” a TikToker weighed in. Right… because Sabrina‘s the one threatening women’s rights right now. When I think of misogyny, I definitely think about the girl who just released a single about men being slow, useless, and acting like children.

Mind you, Sabrina was called a whore and a slut all of 2021 after the “Driver’s License” scandal, so she’s already been traumatized by this gross rhetoric before. She has a whole song about it called “All Because I Liked a Boy.” If you’re unfamiliar, the chorus goes: “Now I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut / I get death threats fillin’ up semi trucks / Tell me who I am, Guess I don’t have a choice.” This is the “male-centered misogynist” everyone’s suddenly worried about? Please.

Fortunately, not everyone’s falling for this subtly calling women whores propaganda. “Maybe this is a bad take but i fear we have ‘stop doing things for the male gaze’d ourselves back into expecting women to be modest and shaming them otherwise, and it’s Strange,” one fan tweeted. Couldn’t have said it better myself. “You guys are all about female empowerment and women embracing their sexuality until they do it in a way that you don’t like,” a Sabrina defender pointed out on TikTok. Say it louder!! Another TikToker called the insane reaction to the album cover “classic conservative pearl clutching.” Yup.

Listen, I understand a lot of people hopped on the Sab train when “Nonsense” or “Espresso” came out, so you’re still painfully brand new here. As someone who’s been a huge fan since the mid-2010s, I know her well enough to know she’s a sharp, unapologetic feminist with an incredible sense of humor and an appreciation for provocative moments. And if anything, a girl for The Male Gays (and the girls, always), not the motherfucking male gaze! If you’re deeply offended by this album cover, don’t listen to the album and go get thicker skin. IDK what else to tell you. I’m just thrilled I won’t have to compete with you in the Ticketmaster queue.