Her First Update: Sabrina Carpenter & Man's Best Friend

Join Joanna solo as she unpacks the heated conversation surrounding Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover for “Man’s Best Friend.” Is it empowering, satirical, or setting women back? Joanna explores the double standards female artists face, why provocative content gets people talking, and how bold creative choices can fuel both controversy and visibility. Whether you agree or not, this episode challenges you to consider how your own brand can make an impact by sparking real conversation.

Time Stamps:
01:00 Sabrina Carpenter’s Brand Evolution
02:00 “Man’s Best Friend” Album Cover Controversy
03:00 Is It Empowerment, Satire, or a Step Back?
04:00 Double Standards for Female Artists
06:00 The Pressure to Be a Feminist Icon
07:00 Comedy, Satire, and Artistic Intent
08:00 The Power of Provocative Content
10:00 Risks and Rewards of Bold Branding
11:00 Why Real Art Gets People Talking
12:00 Lessons for Your Personal Brand

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Transcript

Her First Update: Sabrina Carpenter & Man's Best Friend

Joanna Newton: [00:00:00] Some of the criticism that she's facing is because people are saying that this image putting herself in a position to be for the male gaze is setting women back a hundred years. They're saying that in our current political climate with people trying to get women to, you know, have more children be in the house more and focus on conservative.

Traditional family values that this image supports that lifestyle. 

Joanna Newton: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Her First podcast. Today you just have me, um, I'm going to be sharing an update about Sabrina Carpenter and her journey as a brand. Now, a while back, we did an episode about Sabrina Carpenter, her personal brand, and some of the things that she did to.

Feel like she blew up overnight. She had a career for a very long time, was a child [00:01:00] star, released multiple albums, but her fame never really skyrocketed. She had fans, she was successful by some means, but not a world kind of renowned wide star. She made some updates and changes to her branding and then.

Really blew up with her last album. Short and Sweet, huge tour, big radio hits so much going on. Um, she won a bunch of Grammys in, or at least one Grammy in February, and then now is getting ready to release her next album. And this is why we're updating today because there's a lot of controversy surrounding this album.

Sabrina Carpenter recently released the first single for this album called Manchild. It's already number one on the billboard charts, and then shortly after she released the album cover for her new album that's coming out later this summer.

Now this album cover is her. On all fours, like a dog with someone, you kind of see most of a body. We assume [00:02:00] it's a man pulling her hair. this has sparked a lot of controversy on the internet. If you've heard the stories or been watching, you know that a lot of people aren't happy with this imagery and with this display.

Some of the criticism that she's facing is because people are saying that this image and. Basically putting herself in a position to be for the male gaze is setting women back a hundred years. They're saying that in our current political climate with people trying to get women to, you know, have more children be in the house more and focus on conservative.

Traditional family values that this image supports that lifestyle. So a lot of people are really upset, you know, saying that it's not good and that she shouldn't be promoting the sort of submissive sexual role. Now, on the flip side, there are plenty of other people supporting her and talking about why it's not a problem.

There's kind of a camp that's [00:03:00] saying like it's satire, that if you listen to her music, she's clearly sings often about issues with men and that this is satire based on some of those images of ads in the 1950s with men like spanking their wives or using them as a foot stool or things like that, which were real ads, you know, from the fifties and sixties, and people are saying this.

Satire for that. Other people are saying that this is empowering. Um, being able to show your sexuality and maybe what you like or what you enjoy sexually and publicly is empowering and freeing for women. So there's a. Big conversation going on right now, specifically about this album cover and how she is displaying her sexuality.

And as this conversation is going, people are really kind of digging into some of her choices and some of the things that she's done, and really debating whether or not this is good for women. Are we setting women back? Is the way she flaunts her sexuality and jokes about her sexuality? [00:04:00] And, does those things, is it actually problematic?

Now when watching this story unfold, of course I take it with my personal brand lens as well as my lens of like women out there in the workplace. one of the things that I think about in this situation is, again, we're going back to that double standard. That we see, you know, Sabrina Carpenter puts out an image and she's immediately criticized for being too sexual, that this is inappropriate.

That, you know, because she's a woman, she has this standard, she has to be a good representation for all women. This is not the same thing. A lot of times we see with male artists when they, flaunt their sexuality, if they're in photos that are. risque or inappropriate, so to say, I'll put inappropriate in quotes.

They don't really hit the same type of, backlash, and this is something we see over and over again When female artists make choices, they are under mass scrutiny for doing it or not [00:05:00] doing it. If her next album cover was her in a completely buttoned up outfit, prim and proper, and not sexual at all, people would be criticizing her for not being sexual enough for taking a turn from where she was, right?

So it's kind of one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't. Situations and we see that double standard come across here. Another thing that I think is so interesting about this situation is Sabrina Carpenter's being criticized for not like supporting feminism. Now, to my knowledge, she is an artist, has never said I'm a feminist. You should look to me for feminist ideology. You should follow what I do. Like I am the standard for a feminist woman in America today. I don't think she's ever asked for that role or put herself in that role, but it's a role that because she's so popular and so big that people are expecting her to film, they're expecting her to be this feminist icon that she's not really claiming to be.

Now we really don't [00:06:00] know, like is this supposed to be SA satire? Is it feminist satire? Is it just her, you know, sharing a piece of her sexuality with the internet? Was it just fun? Like we don't actually know the answer to that question. Now, from my perspective, I'm a big Sabrina Carpenter fan. I listen to her music, and all of that.

Uh, Sabrina in my mind, she's a big comedian from what I can tell. All of her music is very punny, very kind of cleverly comedic. So I don't necessarily see this as satire so much as like. Like a situational comedy moment, right? She sings about, you know, men being bad and, and she sings about it sucking that she likes men and it's sucking that she likes incompetent or, man, child like men, right?

She says this is kind of her curse, that she is stuck loving these type of men and it just. Blows up in her face time and time again. So I think it's meant to be kind of like a comedic picture of the life that she's [00:07:00] stuck in, that she doesn't want, right? It's part of her art. the lead single is about that concept.

The title man's best friend, like putting herself in the position of a dog like a man's best friend. Seems. To me like comical and seems to me like poking fun at this idea that a woman is meant to be a man's best friend. Now we'll see what the album content actually is, but that's my personal take on it.

I don't think it's so far as like. Highbrow political satire to make a change. I don't think that's what she's trying to do, but I think she is commenting on what it's like to be a woman who is in love with men and in love with men that aren't good for her. Right. That's what I think she's trying to do.

But at the end of the day, I don't think she ever sought out to be that feminist icon and, and pulling that role. So people are pretty critical of her for not filling a role that she never asked for and never wanted, which again, kind of just fits that narrative that we see time and time [00:08:00] again that women are just held to this high standard.

When you're very visible. When you're very popular, you just end up kind of being pushed into that role, whether you want it or not. The other thing that this topic just has me thinking about is that truly good content gets people talking, right? Like it or not, agree with what she's doing or not.

This one image. Sparked tons of social media debate, tons of social media commentary. Everybody is talking about this album. And how do you make money off an album? You have to have streams. You have to have people wanting to come to your concerts, right? And how do you get that to happen? People need to be talking about it.

I'm sure when she created this image, she knew it was going to be controversial. People test things, people do things right. She knew putting this out, there was gonna be lots of commentary and lots of conversation around it. And while all of this was happening, she had the number one song on the billboard charts.

So I'm sure this wasn't an accident, and I'm sure this was [00:09:00] all part of like her strategy to get people talking about her album and get people to listen to her album when it comes out. Now we'll see if that strategy worked. Her album comes out, I think it's August 29th. We'll see if that strategy actually works.

But she got people talking. The other thing is, is like good art, good content, it gets people talking. I think sometimes we are so afraid to really say what we think because we don't want that controversy. We don't want the negative comments. We don't want the debates. We don't want people to disagree with us.

We like being safe when we play it safe people. Don't pay attention. So when you look at this album cover, it got a reaction. Like different people had different reactions, but it got a reaction And for me, like what I think about my content and me as a business owner and how I advise people is we need to be creating things that are gonna get attention.

Now, do we have to make sexual like satire photos? Probably not. That might not be your niche, [00:10:00] but we have to be powerful and we have to say things and we have to speak our mind if we wanna be heard and if we want people to care. And if we want people to pay attention now, we will see. Down the road, if this was a good strategy, it's possible that there's too much negative backlash that people don't wanna listen to the album.

That it, that it hurts what happens for her future career, but it's also possible that this is her biggest album yet. When she tours for this album that it gets tons of ticket sales. Right. And that it goes down in history as an interesting album. It's also possible that it hurts her career.

We'll see what happens. But I think it's so interesting. the other thing that I kind of think is important with, with the move that she's making is it has women talking. It has women talking about women's roles In the world, it has women talking about it being okay to show what you're into, like sexually and talking about sexuality In [00:11:00] those ways, it has people really discussing some of the critical issues that women face whatever her reasoning was or the why behind what she's done.

People are talking and I think that's what really good art and really good content does. You know, most people know the musical West Side story, and it's a really powerful story about, prejudice and change and kind of getting over. Hatred and bias and how people can really come together if they, if they get rid of those preconceived notions that they have of other people.

Now, when that first show went to Broadway, people left at intermission. That show today is one of the most famous, popular musicals that, you know, just about everybody. Everybody knows or could name a moment from, but when it first came out, it got such a reaction that people left the theater. You can say, okay, people didn't like that.

I failed [00:12:00] as a playwright, as a musical writer. You could feel that way as people are walking out, or you could stand by your art and make something that actually makes an impact to not be so vanilla that it's just washed over, but that it actually has a historical impact. Now, I'm not saying Sabrina Carpenter's album Man's best friend is going to have some sort of major cultural impact, but I'm saying it could because it's sparked this type of.

Of debate. It sparked this type of conversation, I think for you, for your personal brand, as me, as I reflect on my personal brand and the content that I make, it really makes me think of like what I can do to make a bigger impact. Some of the things that I. Stand for are a little bit different than what most people recommend for marketing and business growth.

And by sharing that in a way and making sure to share that in a way that actually is provocative and does make, make people go, Hmm, and does get a [00:13:00] reaction, that's how I'm gonna be able to make an impact on the world. And if we really start leaning in and digging into our own creativity, we can do that.

So thank you for listening in on this super quick update about Sabrina Carpenter and where she's at with her personal brand and everything that's going on with, her new single male man child and her new album Man's Best Friend. I hope that you enjoyed this. If you have any thoughts about this controversy, we'd love to hear from you.

So make sure you join our Facebook group, the. Link is in the show notes so you can take a look, join the Facebook group and sound off about what you think about Sabrina Carpenter.