KNEELING on all fours, black mini-dress riding up, Sabrina Carpenter pouts for the camera – her trademark platinum hair in the grip of a man’s fist as her hand lingers suggestively on his leg.
So, little wonder the cover image from the US singer’s up-coming album Man’s Best Friend, which she teased yesterday on Instagram, has sparked outrage.
While the former Disney Channel star has been praised in the past for “owning” her sexuality in a feminist way, it seems this latest display has gone too far for many.
One fan on X labelled it “straight-up Pornhub fantasy”, while a domestic violence charity issued a statement saying: “Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover isn’t edgy, it’s regressive.”
The Espresso singer had already caused controversy earlier this year with her eye-popping legs-akimbo performance in red lingerie at the Brits, which prompted more than 900 Ofcom complaints from viewers who thought her scantily clad writhing wrong for a pre-watershed audience.
Now, with her latest racy shot on the album cover, 26-year-old Sabrina is determined to send out a message that she has shed her Disney past in favour of a sexually charged image.
Which is all well and good were it not for Sabrina’s army of pre-teen fans who have helped propel her so quickly to stratospheric stardom.
Her last album Short N’ Sweet spawned a string of No1 singles and her tour sold out in minutes — with many children of primary school age among the concert-goers.
Nicknamed Polly Pocket by fans because of her tiny 5ft stature, Sabrina’s saccharinely sexy stage outfits, which often comprise lacy, pastel underwear, stockings and vintage baby-doll nighties, have been branded Lolita-like in the past.
That comparison to Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel about a professor fixated on a 12-year-old girl is one the artist embraced in a shoot for W mag.
She recreated an image from Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Lolita where 14-year-old actress Sue Lyons gets soaked in a garden by water sprinklers.
A friend told me recently how she had treated her daughter to tickets to see Sabrina’s performance at the BST In Hyde Park concert in London next month as a present for doing well in her recent Year 6 SAT exams.
But given Sabrina’s latest imagery, I for one won’t be in a rush to sing along with my 11-year-old to lyrics such as, “I told that boy to sit me down on all fours/I told that boy go faster, now I’m all sore” — a tweaked version of the lyrics to Nonsense, which she sang to an audience in Singapore last year.
The star has even described herself as “vulgar” and “obnoxiously horny”.
On her recent Short N’ Sweet tour it became a fan-favourite segment for her to mime a surprise sex act, while giant confetti cannons erupted in a suggestive way.
Of course, such pornographic posturing is certainly nothing new in the world of pop.
Sabrina’s shocking shenanigans come straight from a playbook used by everyone from Madonna, who famously simulated pleasuring herself on stage, to Christina Aguilera writhing around in knickers and backless chaps in her 2002 Dirrty video.
Britney Spears’ first ever mag cover shot caused a storm when she posed for Rolling Stone in 1999 lying on a bed in a bra, in a teenager-style bedroom, while clutching a Teletubby toy.
But in an age when OnlyFans porn star Bonnie Blue, 26, has become world-famous for depraved stunts such as sleeping with 1,000 men in a day, the overt selling of sex to young girls takes on a more worrying aspect.
Indeed, recent figures estimate close to four per cent of young women aged 18 to 34 are selling content on X-rated platform Only-Fans.
Sure, most won’t be behaving like Blue, but it exposes a trend toward women feeling compelled to sell themselves on the internet.
There are, of course, many fans who praise Sabrina as a woman in control of her own music and performances.
They applaud her sexual frankness and witty lyrics.
‘ANTI-TAYLOR SWIFT’
One tweet from a fan, following a sold-out concert last year, went viral. It read: “Sabrina Carpenter is a genius for how she embraces her sexuality but still keeps women as her target audience.
“Like, how is she performing in lingerie and I still feel like it’s not for men at all?
“I can’t comprehend it, but I love it.”
But I worry Sabrina’s latest album cover, with its overtones of subjugation, has gone far too far.
Coupled with growing fears about young boys being radicalised by Andrew Tate-style misogynistic bile online, which promotes slapping, hitting and keeping women “in their place”, is this a helpful image to push to young girls?
Sabrina Carptenter's Rise to Fame
SABRINA Carpenter's first role was as the lead in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World. Between 2014 and 2017, she appeared in over 70 episodes.
She also signed with the Disney-owned Hollywood Records and released her debut single, Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying, in 2014.
After four albums, she moved to Island Records in 2021.
Her fifth album, Emails I Can’t Send (2022), had her hit singles Nonsense and Feather.
Around that time, Sabrina started to gain notoriety in the UK.
She opened for Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour in 2023 and then achieved wider commercial success with her sixth album Short n’ Sweet, which was released earlier this year.
Number one singles from the album include Espresso and Please Please Please.
In a sense, Sabrina is carving out a niche for herself as something of an anti-Taylor Swift.
During Taylor’s smash-hit Eras tour last summer, where Sabrina was the support act, young fans adored her in ever-bigger numbers — but for showing emotional, not sexual, vulnerability.
While Taylor puts on a jaw-dropping show and is no stranger to donning a glitzy corset, by her own admission she has never thought of herself as sexy.
She once said: “In my life I don’t gravitate towards being edgy, sexy or cool.
“I just naturally am not any of those things.
“I’m imaginative, I’m smart and I’m hard-working — and those things are not necessarily prioritised by pop culture.”
But while the two singers may be different, they are also good friends.
Very like Taylor, though, Sabrina has heavily mined her own life for musical inspiration.
Sabrina dated Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan and even writhed with him on screen in the video for her hit Please Please Please, which tellingly included the lyric: “Heartbreak is one thing/ My ego’s another/I beg you don’t embarrass me, motherf***er.”
The star, who also dated singer Shawn Mendes, even took aim at her own dad — the opening track of her album Emails I Can’t Send is penned as an open letter to her father David after she found out he had cheated on her mum Elizabeth.
The couple are still together but in the song Sabrina claims his behaviour has caused her to fear boyfriends will cheat on her — and indeed, it has been rumoured that her split with Keoghan was prompted by his infidelity.
Her father did, though, encourage Sabrina’s talent from a young age.
Growing up in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, she and her three sisters were all home-schooled.
Aged just ten, Sabrina began posting videos of herself singing along to Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube — and soon after that her dad built her a recording studio.
In 2009, she came third in a singing contest run by Miley Cyrus, but her big break came when she was cast in Disney series Girl Meets World in 2013.
Her aunt is Nancy Cartwright, the actress behind the voice of Bart Simpson — another famous on-screen rebel who doesn’t care what the world thinks.
But Sabrina’s latest attempt to shock may have finally backfired.
Her brand of performative sexuality might please, please some — but certainly not me, I’m afraid.
