Taylor Swift is not bell hooks and Sabrina Carpenter is not Laura Mulvey and Chappell Roan is not Judith Butler. So why do we treat them like they are?

Swifties, put the pitchforks down! I went to The Eras Tour TWICE, I’ve followed Taylor on Instagram since the day I downloaded the app, and I have owned Debut (homophobic version) on CD since its release. I’M ONE OF YOU! I love a mainstream pop diva just as much as the next girl, I just also happen to have an academic background in cultural and gender studies.

Here’s the bottom line - I don’t need every pop star to host a lecture on gender politics. In fact, I’d probably prefer if they didn’t. I am happy that Sabrina Carpenter is confident and sexually evolved enough to be in on the joke. Good for her! But if one more person gets on God’s Green Internet and says the words “Male Gaze”, I’m revoking the entire general population’s privileges to the phrase

I don’t know Sabrina Carpenter. We’ve never met, but I doubt she personally is sitting in a board room and saying “I want to appear as sexual as possible to appeal to men”. However, I do think she, or the people around her, perfectly understand the ways to create conversation. And that, of course, is through controversy.

She is an excellent entertainer (I loved my time at the Short n’ Sweet Tour) but first and foremost, she is a business. She is a product that is being marketed and the primary approach is via sexualization, however tongue in cheek it might be. That is fundamentally opposed to most feminist academic ideology.

Not one of my gender studies professors would have stood in front of a classroom and said “Sabrina Carpenter’s overtly sexual public persona is rooted in feminist theory” and yet, she is inherently empowered. As a brand, Sabrina is making a name for herself as a horny man hater. She’ll let you know she loves sex and hates men all in one song. The lead single for her latest album is titled “Manchild”, a cute and catchy indictment of men’s utter stupidity. Yet the way The Internet talks about her, you would think the only way she is allowed to dress is in a burlap sack, otherwise, she’s giving men permission to objectify her or setting the feminist movement back or is consciously making a subversive critique of traditional heteronormative femininity and is actually a feminist revolutionary.

“Can woman have rights if hot?” It’s a tale as old as time, a tune as old as song…that I don’t want to sing anymore! I don’t care! I don’t want to wade into the deep and murky waters of “is it feminism to wear a mini skirt but in an empowering way?”. I think it’s finally time to be brave enough to admit that feminism and empowerment are maybe different things.

I can admit that:

1. Taylor Swift should be empowered enough to write as many songs about relationships as she wants

2. “She only writes songs about her exes” is misogyny masquerading as a “critique”

3. And also she is a billionaire and those shouldn’t exist!

Nuance!

My personal feminist ideology is opposed to billionaires as a concept and I think a lot of what Taylor Swift™️ does is evil capitalist parasocial manipulation but I also fall for it almost every time. (See above, The Eras Tour TWICE)

I am not interested in if a pop star, as a human being, is a bad feminist. I am interested in looking at the product they produce and critiquing it through a feminist lens.

I want to look at Chappell Roan dressed as a blow up sex doll on Drag Race and think about what inspired that decision, what statement is she making, is there a story she’s trying to tell? I don’t want to see Chappell Roan in a molded paper wig and pale pink latex outfit and immediate hurl vitriol at her across The Internet just because her art made me feel something, even if that something may be justified by my feminist ideology.

Taylor Swift is a business, Sabrina Carpenter is a business, and like it or not, Chappell Roan is a business. They have employees and shareholders and quotas and benchmarks. They are, ultimately, selling a product - and the product is them. The ways in which they sell that product may be more or less genuine than you or I would like, but that’s capitalism baby! A mini skirt here, an innuendo there, that’s just the cost of doing business.

Taylor Swift is not bell hooks and Sabrina Carpenter is not Laura Mulvey and Chappell Roan is not Judith Butler…and thank god for that.

phew, now that that’s off my chest I can go watch Sabrina’s Lollapalooza set and scream Manchild at the top of my lungs without stewing in rage all weekend

xoxo