Sabrina Carpenter to Taylor Swift: Why female pop stars embracing sex is still controversial in 2025

With new album Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina Carpenter has sparked controversy that is reminiscent of the outrage over Madonna. Thirty years on, has anything changed for female pop stars?

In 2022, 30 years on from the release of her infamous Sex book and album Erotica, Madonna, posting on Instagram, reflected on a period where she “wrote about my sexual fantasies and shared my point of view about sexuality in an ironic way”. Remembering the “narrow-minded people” who tried to shame her, she celebrated paving the way for a succession of female pop stars to be open about sex. “Now Cardi B can sing about her WAP… Miley Cyrus can come in like a wrecking ball. You’re welcome…”

So, job done then? Female pop stars expressing their sexuality isn’t new. And yet, in 2025, on the eve of its release, Sabrina Carpenter felt the need to warn people that her new album Man’s Best Friend wasn’t “for pearl clutchers”. It comes as the singer has faced pushback for her sexual imagery and lyrics, from controversy over her album cover to complaints over her raunchy TV performances.

Carpenter’s breakthrough came last year with the song of the summer, Espresso, and her Grammy-nominated album – amazingly, her sixth – Short n’ Sweet. By then she’d long shed her Disney roots and embraced a coquettish, 50s bombshell look and overtly sexy persona. “I’m so [expletive] horny,” she sang on Short n’ Sweet’s Juno. She made an eyebrow-raising play on the word “camaraderie” on Bed Chem. Things got even filthier when she toured the album, acting out sex positions and simulating sex with a male dancer. Outraged parents have decried her as a bad influence on their daughters.

A blonde bombshell pop star causing moral outrage with her overt sexuality? It all felt quite familiar. Carpenter certainly isn’t shy about her love of Madonna, paying homage to the singer’s Blonde Ambition era on a Vogue cover (shot by Steven Meisel, the same photographer behind Madonna’s book) and wearing the star’s 1991 Bob Mackie Oscars dress to last year’s VMAs.

Whereas Madonna’s overt sexuality felt radical, Carpenter’s has a more tongue-in-cheek feel – to the point where some have questioned whether it’s a marketing ploy. Criticism intensified in June when she unveiled the cover for Man’s Best Friend, featuring the singer on her knees as a man grabs her hair. It drew ire from several quarters – some feminists, women’s charities and fans thought it was degrading to women. Conservatives thought it was overtly sexual. Others defended the singer, calling the reaction puritanical and suggesting the image was satire. Carpenter later revealed an alternative “approved by God” cover – and this week said the original image was about deciding “when you want to be in control”.

It all ramped up anticipation for the album’s release, fuelling speculation on whether this might be Sabrina’s Erotica, a daring and subversive, sex-positive album. In fact, the album has turned out to be, as one critic for The Times described, “surprisingly vanilla”. Despite the provocation prompted by the cover – and nine out of the 12 tracks being labelled as explicit – there is nothing especially radical in either the music (perfectly pleasant, occasionally great ’90s-and-Abba-inspired pop, with no hooks to quite rival Espresso) or the lyrics. Sure, there are plenty of lines that would make your grandmother blush, but Carpenter’s album doesn’t reveal anything that shocking – just a young woman exploring her sexuality and writing smart, funny and sometimes smutty lyrics about the realities of modern dating. So why all the fuss?

In October, she will appear as a guest star on her friend Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl. When Swift revealed the various covers for the record – including shots of her in a barely-there diamanté bodysuit – some seemed disappointed. “This isn’t what fans come to Swift for,” said one writer, suggesting the star’s “sultry new era is out of sync with everything Swift has told us about who she is”.

Such criticisms seem blind to the fact that the cover of her last album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, featured Swift writhing around on a bed in her underwear, while the album track Guilty as Sin? had references to masturbation. Or that, for a 35-year-old woman who has had several high-profile relationships – including an engagement that this week broke the internet – and frequently mines her private life for inspiration, it’s actually weirder that she hasn’t written more about sex. As for the “girl next door” tag… even your wholesome neighbour has sex sometimes. That pop stars still need to choose between expressing their sexuality or being “relatable” only seems to perpetuate the age old “Madonna/whore” dichotomy.

Admittedly, Swift herself did once say: “I’m just not generally a sexy person.” But that was back when she was still feeling the pressure not to do anything to alienate her young fanbase – including speaking up on politics. She was allowed to change her mind on that, so why can’t she embrace her sexuality, too?

Sabrina’s hypersexual persona and Taylor’s racy photoshoots are nothing new or particularly outrageous – Madonna once posed as a completely nude hitchhiker. Perhaps what’s really different is the climate that pop is currently existing in – one where younger generations are having less sex, millions of US women are experiencing restrictions on their reproductive rights and the tradwife movement is thriving. Many are not living in an especially sex-positive moment, so when stars like Sabrina Carpenter are open about enjoying sex, it perhaps seems more subversive than it really is. “It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” Carpenter told Rolling Stone. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly, you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.” As the discourse and pearl clutching continues, it seems she’s got a point.