Sabrina Carpenter: For the Girls or the Male Gaze?

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Sabrina Carpenter has been on one of the biggest runs in pop music history. But underneath the bows, the vintage pin-up aesthetic, and the explicit content is a question nobody seems to want to answer directly. Is she performing for the girls or for the gaze? And does it even matter which one if the image delivers the same thing to the culture either way? This video goes all the way back. The Disney era. The aesthetic shift. The W Magazine photoshoot and the 1997 film I watched specifically for this video. The Man's Best Friend album cover. And the visual language that has been circulating in pop culture long before Sabrina Carpenter picked up a microphone.

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