your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy
sabrina carpenter doesn't mind being your "sexy baby"
Iām going to allow you to read the title of this essay, take a deep breath, then join me in the discourse.1
Ardent defenders of white, blonde popstars: You can do this.
Let me start here: I am a dedicated fan of pop music, especially that written by women. I would describe myself as a casual consumer-to-fan of Sabrina Carpenter. My summer was spent with the constant backdrop of āMe Espresso.ā A friend and I dramatically scream-sang the lyrics to āPlease, Please, Pleaseā to our boyfriends in the middle of my post-grad dive bar. āFeatherā is a vital feature on my poolside playlist. Following the commercial release of her newest album, Short nā Sweet, Sabrinaācan I call her Sabrina?āand performers of her class are ushering in a Gen-Z-girl-pop renaissance: one chock-full with themes of girlhood, glitz, and lots and lots of yearning.
Considering weāre fresh off the āYear of the Girlā in 2023, Sabrinaās bubblegummy, crooning record fits neatly into the culture. If the constant churn of near-identical Substack essays about girlhoodāwritten, of course, by twentysomething womenāsignal anything larger about women consumers, itās that weāre, well, regressing.
By my most generous analyses, years of lockdown and collective trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic have women my age clawing back our precious youth. We need the coddling spirit of Barbie (2023) in our movie theaters, the tangible comfort of Sonny Angels in our tiny purses, and the abstract end-goal of a good crush to keep us afloat. We want a teenhood, again: Short nā Sweet offers a short-term trip back to that mentality.
Tongue-in-cheek from its title to its final notes, Short nā Sweet doesnāt take itself too seriously. Sabrina makes the record her world: She reinvents grammar, plays with innuendos and double-entendres, and hints at the superstar suitors lying in her wait. For lack of a better word, the album is hot: assumedly the perfect TikTok backtrack for the summerās It Girls (or perhaps theyāre called "Bratsā now).
Quinn Moreland articulated it best for Pitchfork:
"In a pop landscape recently plagued by self-seriousness and a tiresome obsession with authenticity, Short nā Sweet is a refreshing glass of escapism.ā2
By my read, Short nā Sweet is a soft girlās album; a post-pandemic return to simple music about boysānot boys who abuse, not boys who manipulate, rape, and lie, but boys who are just inherently stupid. She begs Barry Keoghan to behave in the same tone weāve all used for a shitty boyfriend, or a dog. Itās assumed that they donāt know betterātheyāre barely house trainedāand we girls can laugh along as we collaboratively teach full-grown men how to act. Short nā Sweet has a politic ending at āgirls rule, boys drool;ā this simple message and expert pop production has kept the album at Billboardās #1 for two weeks in a row.
Hereās where Sabrina and my politic diverge.
As Iāve written previously, I see the character of the āsoft girlāāparticularly when donned by white womenāas a first step on a girls-only alt-right pipeline. For a demographic of women which, historically, have not raised their own children, have not performed the majority of domestic labor, and have been kept out of the public sphere, itās logical to meet the overwhelm of modern, feminist life with a desire for return.
The boredom and plight of their ancestors has been rebranded into a life of leisure; of paid-for pilates, almond Gel X nails, and endless highlight touch-ups. A life of tortured silence now appears peaceful in contrast to the financial, social, political, and emotional struggle of being a working woman in 2024āa double-bind BIPOC and working-class women have been navigating for centuries. To achieve this false sense of stability, white women have two choices; find a man willing to time-travel, or do it yourself. And in modern dating, where 50/50 bill splits are commonplace, itās more likely that āsoft girlsā will be solo-traveling to their own simpler time: Childhood.
Stay with me, here. The impact of the āYear of the Girlā couldnāt end at media and aestheticsāwe both know that. 2023, while a celebration of girlhood, also brought with it the return of heroine-chic, the normalization of cosmetic injectables, the buccal fat removal craze, and an obsession with luxury beauty rearing its head in Gen Alpha. Weāre swapping facial moisturizerāand in the worst of cases, the numbers on our scalesāwith literal 14-year-olds. Youth and innocence, especially post-pandemic, provide adult women social status while endangering the youth we emulate. The line between āgirlā and āwomanā is being blurred, and itās women, not girls, who benefit from the exchange.
In fact, itās also Sabrina.
āHe pins you down on the carpet
Makes paintings with his tongueā
āMove it up, down, left, right, oh
Switch it up like Nintendoā
āCome right on me, I mean camaraderieā
āAnd I bet we'd both arrive at the same time
And I bet the thermostat's set at six-nineā
āHold me and explore me
I'm so fuckin' hornyā
The lyrics above are unquestionably adult: they should be, theyāre performed by a 25-year-old. The sexual innuendos and comedic references to female desire are part of what sets Sabrina apart from her peers in the pop scene; while stars her senior have been taught to shy away from explicit content, Sabrina makes talking about sex fun!
From her lyrics on Short nā Sweet to her infamous āNonsenseā outros, which made their rounds on TikTok throughout her 2022-2023 Emails I Canāt Send Tour and her stint opening for the Eras Tour this year, Sabrina consistently uses sex in her lyricism. While these outros3 have always been dirty, theyāve slowly become more explicit:
āThis crowd is giving me all the endorphins/ I wish someone would rearrange my organs/ Philly is the city I was born in!ā (October 2022)
āI've got a dirty mind but I am so pure/ Call me Dora, his body I explore/ Fort Lauderdale, you're kicking off the whole tour!ā (March 2023)
āTurn that dick to stone, call me Medusa/ Choking on him need Heimlich maneuver/ Sorry I don't date lollapalooz-ersā (August 2023)
āD-I-C-K I am good at spelling/ Tastes so good, I need a second helping/ Arenāt you glad I know how to say Melbourne?ā (February 2024)
āTold that boy to sit me down on all fours/ I told that boy go faster, now Iām all sore/ You hit a little different here, Singapore!ā (March 2024)
āBBC said I should keep it PG/ BBC I wish I had it in me/ There's a double meaning if you dig deepā (May 2024)
As a Creative Writing student, I'd love to have this woman in my poetry class. As a marketing professional, the slow build and consistent fan return on these outros are a dream for any social media manager. The crudeness of the āNonsenseā outrosāwhat is often new fansā introduction to Sabrinaāis smart music marketing. Sex sells, especially when itās auctioned off by a beautiful, witty, white woman. Thereās also something to say about a young woman explicitly narrating her own sexuality on a public stageāsomething unavailable to women like her just decades ago.
Hereās the rub: While her content is maturing, Sabrina Carpenterās packaging is regressing. Her music is made for women, but her branding intentionally communicates a particular version of Girl. Unfortunately, Iām not talking about Substack-essay-girlhood-type emotional regression; the Sabrina Carpenter machine is using a ā90s-era, hyper-sexualized girlhood as the core aesthetic for an adult singer. And, intentional or not, this branding decision offers audiences the choice of pedophilic fantasy. Knowing American culture, by and large, they will take it.
The above is the penultimate photo in Sabrinaās latest feature for W Magazine,4 a piece including details on her Disney career, the writing process for āEspresso,ā and a fashion shoot heavily inspired by ā50s and ā60s aesthetics. The Lolita (1997) reference was striking, especially considering the obvious inspiration wasnāt mentioned at all in copy. W Magazine and the Sabrina Carpenter machine cleanly folded Nabokovās controversial storyā about an adult manās obsession with a 12-year-old girlāinto a feature about an adult womanās child stardom.
This reference is political, and not for any analysis on pedophilic culture. Without reference to or condemnation of its source material, this doesnāt challenge equivocations of a small-statured, former child star to an actual child. In fact, it reads more like an invitation.
Letās go back to the āNonsenseā outros. The following were performed in the international leg of the Eras Tour this year. Despite public opinion on Taylor Swiftās fanbase, only 5% of Eras Tour attendees were under the age of 18, meaning Sabrina was mostly performing to an audience of her peersāor older. Hereās where things get interesting:
āIām full grown but I look like a niƱa/ Come put something big in my casita/ Mexico, I think you are bonita!ā (February 2024)
āGardens by the Bay, I wanna go there / Then, Iāll take you somewhere that has no hair / Singapore youāre so perfect, itās no fair!ā (March 2024)
Iāll allow you to digest, here.
These two particular outros left a nasty taste in my mouth. Not only does Sabrina fall into the trope of āTiny Sexy Girlāā with a side of āBorn Yesterday Sexyāāshe is explicitly comparing herself to a pre-pubescent child. She looks like a young girl, her pussy is bald, and she wants you to fuck her. She isnāt sharing this only because itās funny; for some audiences, these qualities grant her favor and capital.
Speaking of capital, Sabrinaās pop-girl status also granted her a Skims campaign this past spring, earning her the same Kardashian endorsement as Charli XCX, Lana Del Rey, Ice Spice, and PinkPantheress.
According to Carolyn Twersky of W Magazine:5
āGetting a Skims campaign is the modern-day equivalent of earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.ā
While this take might be a tad exaggerated for my taste, Sabrinaās Skims campaign solidified her as one of the cultureās new sex symbols. The rub here is what Sabrina, her team, and Skims chose to do with this newest platform. While Skims has branched out from their nude bodysuit beginningsānow offering camo lingerie, heart-printed baby PJs, even menās intimatesāSabrinaās campaign felt like a stark departure from their usual MO.
Skims, regardless of your feelings about Kimberly, is a brand built by adult women, for adult women. Modern shapewearāhosiery, spandex, and leotardsāremains highly influenced by the working women of the ā80s and ā90s, who donned their skin-tight shorts after a long day of workplace sexism, and worked it out to a Jane Fonda cassette. Skims is selling to their modern-day equivalents: their customer base is overwhelmingly Millennial, with 36.24% of website traffic driven by 25-34 year olds, followed closely by 35-44 year olds at 17.94%.
The selection of Sabrina as Skimsā spring muse, according to Kardashian herself, is due to āan āItā factor that really resonates with the next generation.ā The target audience for this campaign is Gen Z, made all the more obvious by coquette details like lacy babydolls, vintage-inspired boy shorts, and rosette accents. The pieces themselves, while trending younger than Skimsā usual, donāt ring too many alarm bells. Itās the staging where the fantasy continues:
āHer campaign, shot by photographer Jack Bridgeland, fits perfectly into the nostalgia-fueled, high-feminine aesthetic Carpenter has cultivated over the past few years. āI felt like I was a young girl again, playing in my bedroom,ā the singer says of the cinematic setā¦ā
The ānineties nostalgiaā the campaign boastsāusing, of course, a ā99 baby as its museāinstead translates to a particular, late ā90s-early ā2000s childhood. The PrettyPink CD Radio Boombox, the Sony Walkman (attached, of course, to Apple earphones), the celebrity posters, the (apparently, fake) novel in her hand, whose cover is straight out of 2004? The scene is more specific than ānostalgiaā: by Sabrinaās own admission, itās a young girlās bedroom.
Juxtaposition is key in editorial fashion, and shock-factor, as Sabrina purports to enjoy, can only add to a celebrity marketing campaign. Seeing a small woman, in a childhood bedroom, decked out in full lingerie brings up all sorts of cultural touch points: American Beauty, Cruel Intentions, The Virgin Suicides, and yes, Lolita. The Skims and Sabrina Carpenter machines are selling our own obsession with youth sexuality back to us, and telling us itās empoweringāin fact, itās just āfeminineā!
See below two quotes from Sabrina on her Skims experience:
āI loved the femininity of the whole creative.ā
āIt is precious to see women feel like women, and in a way that feels very unapologetically feminine, and I think [the Lana and Ice Spice] campaigns did that really well.ā
Allow me the chance to tell two personal stories here.
Thereās a woman Iāve known my entire life who, in the last eight years, has clearly gone off the alt-right deep end. I watched through the screen of my phone as the fashion lover, Francophile, and unapologetically dramatic girl I looked up to as a child get engaged at the Trump White House Christmas Party, become a Fox News correspondent, and hear whispers of her outspoken transphobia. She introduced herself to a friend of mine as āporcelain-American,ā and in the years following the Capitol Insurrection, her and her husband have never missed a Republican National Convention. Her Instagram bio reads, āChristian, wife, unapologetically feminine.ā
In the final year of my Bachelorās degreeāa period of acute depression and stress-induced cystic acneāI held focus groups to research my honors thesis in Womenās, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. I aimed to study how feminists felt about cis-menās presence in the movement, a Herculean task requiring the near-constant academic backup of bell hooks. One quote, shared by a fellow campus organizer in 2019, still echoes in my head sometimes:
āI think that masculinity in these movements can be really threatening. I genuinely donāt support masculine identities within the feminist movement, because I view so much of the feminist movement as promoting femininity. If youāre someone who identifies as masculine, and youāre masculine presenting, I donāt think you can really, genuinely be involved in the movement if you donāt have those types of experiences.6
These two individuals, to this day, exist on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they both felt an inherent defensiveness toward the amorphous āfemininity"āit is discussed like something endangered, constantly at risk of tainting. (And, yes, they both are exactly what youāre thinking.)
Sabrinaāin addition to these two women, and plenty othersāworships at the altar of the divine feminine. On one hand, this could promote an empowering, nurturing, intuitive spirit, which supposedly exists within all women. But more realistically, the type of femininity Sabrina, Kim, and Rolling Stone are talking about is one that looks more like herāitās highly manicured, itās bubblegum pink, and itās waif-thin white.
Western āfemininityā has been synonymous with whiteness since European colonizers first reached Africa in the 15th century. Willfully ignoring African understandings of gender, sexuality, and society, Portuguese, French, British, and Spanish colonizers sent lewd pamphlets home, depicting exaggerated tales of African sexuality.
According to researcher Caren M. Holmes of the College of Wooster:
āPrior to the British journey to the New World, epic tales of imperialist travelers probed the minds of Europeans regarding the nature of African people. African men were said to have gigantic penises, and it was rumored that African women engaged in sex with apes (McLinktok, 2001). These tales likely reflected the subconscious fears and Freudian sexual confusion of Europeans. However, these dramatized stories were interpreted as factual, and they informed some of the first European perceptions of African peopleā¦ The perception of black people as hyper-sexualized and uncivilized paved the road for the dehumanization and sexual exploitation imposed upon black men and women brought to the New World.ā7
Often containing caricatured drawings of African womenās naked bodies, these pamphlets and stories stoked both power and envy in European women. Power in that their physical bodies could protect them: not only from religious damnation, but from the physical work of chattel slavery. Being white, clothed, small, and relatively weak ensured safety for European women compared to their African counterparts. But envy pervaded, still: just as their husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends talked of the land they were pillaging in feminine terms, they recognized the sense of eroticism colonizers felt toward the African women they documented. More from Holmes:
āThe feminization and sexualization of the European imperialist narrative encouraged the sexual exploitation of black women who were perceived as byproducts of manifest destiny.ā
And this colonial-era thought persists today. According to the Black Future Fund:
āHistorically, in the Western imagination, Black women have been either masculinized beasts of burden, desexualized mammys, or hypersexualized jezebels. These seemingly contradictory stereotypes work together in denying and perverting the humanity of Black women, and seek to cast Black women as perpetual others whose value lies in their labor or sexual availability.ā8
The anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity within Western definitions of femininity havenāt gone away. Aside from the deep-running trans- and homophobia in American culture, much of the current conversation around womenās sports has been dominated by Western gender essentialism. I think of Algerian Imane Khalif, South African Caster Semenya, Namibians Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi; all Olympians from the African continent whose womanhood was questionedā¦after beating white competitors.
I actually wrote about this a few years back:
āWhile the governing bodies of elite sports expect Black women to turn out viewership and funnel money into sports, they remain the descendants of the same colonizers who saw Black womenāsĀ bodies as inherently āother.ā They took that mentality of fear and control and ran with it for generations; the harm caused to Black women and communities is far from ancient history.ā9
Women of color are masculinized by white definitions of femininity, which can range in consequence in a gender-obsessed society. āFemininity" is a tricky tight ropeāand it can be revoked just as quickly as itās offered.
It can exist next to labor, sure, as long as itās domesticāand done with a smile. It can exist next to sexuality, sure, as long as itās neither too much nor too little. It can exist next to effort, sure, as long as itās put into looking modest (ish), manicured, and ideal for male consumption. The Western Feminine, at its core, is unthreatening to the Western Masculine: white women are expected to be non-confrontational, effortless, and, yes, demure. It all leads back to patriarchal control: the younger, smaller, and more naive you are, all the easier for men to force their ideals onto you.
Now, letās be fair for a minute. The entirety of postcolonial beauty standards and gender essentialism cannot be placed squarely on one popstarās shoulders.
Sabrina is a relatively short, skinny white woman with a cherubic face. She canāt help the way she looks, and both the narrow definition of femininity and the tropes sheās playing into are, most likely, subconscious. Like most white women, the examples of femininity presented to her generally follow the guidelines of the Western Feminine: Taylor Swift, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, young Dolly Partonāall of which Sabrina has cited as inspirations. While men invent patriarchy, itās women who perpetuate it; she is inheriting these patterns, not creating them.
I also believe Sabrinaās stature adds a unique layer to all this. Like I mentioned earlier, Sabrinaās size is routinely mentionedāby her, her team, her interviewers, and her fansāin her core brand. In fact, Short nā Sweet is meant to be a cheeky reference to her being only 5ā. Her smallness only adds to her allure as the Western Feminine, and puts fire behind the pedophilic fantasy her team is selling. But thereās reason for this beyond adherence to American beauty standardsāshort, white girls gain favor with men because of their smallness.
See below for a myriad of takes in r/AskMen, answering why men go for short and tiny girls:
So, itās about sex, control, and seeing women as petsāvery cool.
Paternalism and dehumanization aside, itās clear these men see smaller women as more precious, more delicate, moreādare I say itāfeminine. Smaller, white women give 21st-century men a taste of the Western Masculine: one where they are the only thing standing between their little lady and a big, horrifying world. Itās power theyāre after, therefore itās power Sabrina wields when using her smallness to market herself.
Pleasing men is strategic under patriarchy, and I can usually find it within myself to understand another womanās method of survival. I understand why Sabrina feels the need to play with the controlling, semi-pedophilic urges men experience when they see someone like herāespecially in a setting which emulates Lolita or Priscilla. In a way, it could be considered powerful for her to articulate this connection for herself, then shit on it by reminding us sheās an adult woman, dammit! Mouse ears, begone: this child star is a big girl, now!
Perhaps thatās the intention behind the juxtaposition of hyper-sexual lyrics with markers of prepubescent girlhood. Reclaiming and expanding upon the label of āhorniest girl aliveā might feel genuinely empowering to her. Thatās fair.
Itās the impact beyond Sabrina thatās dangerous.
What does our sex-obsessed culture do with young peopleāespecially young women? I suggest combing through your own historyāthat first memory of being sexualized without consent or understanding. Personally, I learned that ākitty catā meant āpussyā far too soon.
1 in 10 American girls have been catcalled before their 11th birthday. 1 in 6 American girls in elementary and secondary school have experienced sexual harassment. Four in 5 Americans begin having sex before age 20, but 70% of girls age 13 or under report having had sex forced on them. 1 in 9 girls under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault, with girls between 16 and 19 being four times more likely than the general population to experience sexual violence. Teens aged 13 to 19 account for 8% of abortion-seekers in the United States, while burdensome laws requiring parental notification prevent many youth from accessing the abortions they need. Teen girlhood today, while the subject of media fascination and romance, is an existence rife with danger.
The digital world can prove even more dangerous: 1 in 5 preteens report having an online sexual interaction with someone they believed to be an adult. 1 in 7 youths report being solicited for sex online. The number of child sexual abuseĀ material producers sentenced increased by 422% between 2005 and 2019, and in 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Childrenās CyberTipline received 36.2 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation onlineāincluding more than 105 million images, videos and other files. They also saw an explosion in reports of online enticement: an increase of more than 300% between 2021 ā 2023.
This is not a global trend. The US hosts more child sexual abuse content online than any other country in the world, accounting for 30% of the global total of child sexual abuse material as of March 2022. For a country built on Puritan sensibilities, pedophilia runs rampant in our culture. Itās not just the movies, the books, the albums, and the photoshoots. Fascination with prepubescent sexuality has tangible consequences, most of which harm the girls that adult women, like Sabrina, emulate.
Girlhood, by my read, is constraint. Girlhood sits in the audience, watching the world ogle and adore an idea of herāthis is the best time of your life, your youth goes so quick, youāll never be as young and beautiful as you are nowāthen exits the theater to a world without options. You canāt have free will or personal autonomyāyouāre a girl. What you say canāt be brilliantāitās said like a girl. You canāt skateboard, your soccer team doesnāt have the funding to travel to Nationals, the idiot on your debate team will represent the school, despite the fact that youāve done most of the work. Itās always the concluding sentence on the other side of disappointment: Youāre a girl, youāre a girl, youāre a girl.
Naturally, the promise of womanhood is romanticized for girls growing up under patriarchy, just as the memory of girlhood is for working women. The adult characters of āGirlboss,ā āIt Girl,ā or āBratā invite a reverence that true girlhood never enjoys; growing up is the opportunity to be taken seriously, to be listened to, to be regarded as something more than a girl. The contemporary rush for young girls to grow up isnāt due to Gen Alpha being more mature; itās an escape. The hope is: The sooner we become women, the more human we become.
Unfortunately, in a country with abysmal sex education and a foundation of Puritanism, girls see hyper-sexuality as a one-way ticket to womanhood. Experts have noted, along with the exponential rise in requests for online child pornography, that 78% of all web pages actioned during 2022 contained āself-generatedā imagery. Most frequently, it is girls aged 11-13 who are self-producing sexual content, usually the result of grooming and coercion by an abuser.
But with the influence of TikTokāa platform well-known for trends meant to demonstrate sexual acuityāaccess to and the creation of āsoftā child pornography is even easier. As adult TikTok users have pointed out, itās often that the child producing content doesnāt recognize the potential dangers of adults on their account. Reminders to be careful are met with accusations of internalized misogyny or ageism: āItās just for fun!ā āStop slut-shaming me!ā āYouāre so narrow-minded!ā In their attempt to escape girlhood, youth today are graciously accepting their own exploitationā¦as long as it comes in feminist packaging.
Itās easier for girls to sexualize themselves when superstars like Sabrina, despite being a decade older, play the role of āsexy baby.ā Itās easier to see your prepubescence as a sexual commodity when Lolita, Priscilla, Angela, and the Lisbon sisters inspire male obsession and fantasies. And thatās what all of this is about, right? As Margaret Atwood tells us:
āMale fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.ā10
If we want to talk capital, then investing in male fantasy will produce the best-possible return. With a current fanbase of 94.9 million peopleāmajority womenāSabrinaās superstardom is only rising, as is her influence and capital gain. Her and her teamās use of pedophilic fantasy in Sabrinaās core brandāwhile unfortunately, a smart business decisionāwill have ramifications on the self-imagination of her fansā¦and beyond.
Her brand is trapped in the ouroboros of feminist sexuality. Balancing the desires of self, hypothetical fans, real relationships, business strategists, and the music industry at large is a Kobiyashi Maru; you canāt wināyouāre just eaten. While weāll likely watch Sabrina get āwomanādā soon, just like peers Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, but I wonder if her proximity to Girl will keep her safer. More precious to all of us.
I wonder if that is the point.
Much of the theorizing here began with my dear friend, Emily, whose dedicated viewing of and musings on Sabrinaās āNonsenseā outros inspired this piece. I love you, Emily! No one is more generative than you.
Quinn Moreland, āShort nā Sweet: Sabrina Carpenterā (Pitchfork, 2024)
Genius Lists, āList of Sabrina Carpenter āNonsenseā Outrosā (Genius, 2024)
Lynn Hirschberg, āSabrina Carpenter Knows She Has You Hookedā (W, 2024)
Carolyn Twersky, āSabrina Carpenter Wants to Shock Youā (W, 2024)
Jade Hurley, āMen in the Feminist Movement: How College-Aged Activists Approach Cis-Menās Antiviolence Involvementā (George Washington University, 2019)
Caren M. Holmes, āThe Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Womenā (Black & Gold, 2016)
Black Future Fund, āAināt I a Woman?: Blackness and Expansive Notions of Femininityā (Black Future Fund, 2024)
Awo Eni & Jade Hurley, āThe IOC Violated Olympiansā Reproductive Rightsā¦and Didnāt Want You to Know About Itā (National Womenās Law Center, 2021)
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993)
Really great insight!!
Any grown person's commitment to pedobait under the guise of the "harmless" coquette aesthetic is very "you either die lolita or live long enough to see yourself become the humbert."
Jade this was incredible ā also got me thinking (and lots of caveats here bc we donāt need to pit women against each other etc etc ā but also I think pop stars are partially products offered into the cultural market and represent larger forces so some comparison is justified, idk) about the Olivia v Sabrina thing and how, at this point, we seem to have collectively āchosenā Sabrinaās version of young womanhood (overtly femme, cheekily sexual, cute and unthreatening) over Oliviaās (dramatic, painfully honest, aggressive, rougher around the edges). Kind of mirrors the Jagged Little Pill -> Britney and co. trajectory of the late ā90s/early aughts. And obviously yes both of these are versions of an overtly white womanhood and both are enacted by wealthy thin women so truly the distance between them is not THAT far, but Oliviaās brief dominance 2ish yrs ago did represent a slight departure from femininity in the most traditional sense being marketed to young girls ā and her āreplacementā by Sabrina (again caveat caveat caveat) seems like a collective choice to be like lol nope, we want our women docile and manageable again!