The Internet hates women—specifically, it hates happy women. People shunned Anne Hathaway for being annoying, Millie Bobby Brown was cyberbullied into a year of retreat from the public eye, for over a decade Britney Spears was quite literally discarded by fans while she suffered under a conservatorship that stripped her of her humanity. Though we always come back around, we never learn from our mistakes. Instead we repeat the toxic cycle: arbitrarily choose a woman who is a little too nice or a little too excited, put her through the wringer of Internet vitriol, force her into social exile, and one day simply decide to stop hating her—usually when it becomes clear that we can idolize her as a sex symbol instead. Apologies are issued and everyone seems to wake up from their reverie; why did we dislike her so much?
Rayne Fisher-Quann calls this process being “woman’d.” We find sadistic glee in crucifying women when they cannot meet the impossible standards we set for them, when they are inevitably proven to be human. The precursor to being cancelled is of course being adored, set up for failure by a culture that refuses women the right to be wrong. Every next move could be the wrong one.
Sabrina Carpenter is surely one of the most hated women in music right now, the collateral damage of Olivia Rodrigo’s meteoric rise to fame. Fans of SOUR (2021), and “drivers license” specifically, speculated that the “blonde girl” referenced was Carpenter, the rumored rebound of the song’s subject Joshua Bassett. For Sabrina’s part, she surely played into the drama with “Skin”:
Maybe we could've been friends
If I met you in another life
Maybe then we could pretend
There's no gravity in the words we write
Maybe you didn't mean it
Maybe blonde was the only rhyme
But the pettiness was far outsized by the bitter hate she received from Olivia Rodrigo’s rabid fanbase—a tasteless SNL skit, spam comments on her Instagram posts, some really terrible slander. The triangulation of drama was fun to follow, but obviously negatively affected its participants. Eventually—far too late in my opinion, but eventually—Olivia Rodrigo released a statement urging her fans to stop tearing down other women and things mostly blew over. The two have since been photographed together at events and are even rumored to be collaborating on a track on Rodrigo’s next album.
Carpenter attempted to transcend the drama with emails i can’t send (2022), her immaculate debut album. I think that this record is truly perfect, juicy and daring and chock full of hooks. It didn’t get nearly enough press or praise for its breadth; Carpenter explores basically all the current sub-genres of pop and eats up every single one of them. She embraced the looseness that currently pervades the genre and delivered a record that is exciting at every new turn.
None of the usual music journalism outlets even bothered to review the album. It’s doing numbers on streaming sites but has been largely ignored by critics. The headline tour she’s on now is sold out, but much of the Internet coverage I’ve seen has been negative, making fun of her for her coy stage demeanor and cutesy ad libs. I’ve found that people who generally like good pop music can’t take her seriously because of the drama or the tour outfits or the fact that she used to be on Disney channel. There are seemingly a thousand reasons to dislike Sabrina Carpenter, none of them really rooted in her music.
Where does this perverse desire to see women burn stem from? I’m not quite sure what moves me to participate in the witch hunt, knowing that as a woman I am not immune to the vindictive eye of public opinion. Sabrina Carpenter’s biggest sin seems to be that she dated the wrong man at the wrong time, or that she tries too hard to be funny. But who cares; her album is full of bangers!
Stream emails i can’t send with an open mind and let me know what you think. See you next week.
listened to emails i can’t send for the first time after seeing a few of her tracks on ur playlists !!
It’s sad when exterior bullshit gets in the way of good music.