SATIRE? Grimacing in the face of ‘GirlPower’

Good satire should blister. Not moisturise the status quo.

I’m an album release party late to this issue, but I had to let my thoughts on it settle.

At first — I was outraged.

But I’ve learned to write away my anger in works of fiction. My articles require me to be diplomatic; to disallow my feelings of rage or bitterness to influence my assessments. Otherwise I’d be writing a feminine rage journal instead of a collection of essays.

It’s why you shouldn’t go food shopping when you’re hungry.
And why you absolutely shouldn’t weigh in on a social issue when you’re horny.

Sabrina Carpenter’s studio album, Man’s Best Friend, took the internet by storm when the cover appeared to depict the pop star imitating…a dog? The cover art — Carpenter down on all fours, a faceless man gripping a fistful of her hair — was bold, unsettling, and instantly polarising. Pretty privilege in full display. God forbid the local furry tried that stunt.

The cover art divided the media immediately. Many women, and young girls, defended Sabrina, insisting that it was satire; she’s not really being submissive because it’s roleplay; and if it’s consensual roleplay, then there’s no real power imbalance — right?

It’s a valid take. As long as things in the bedroom are consensual — it’s only empowering for women to engage in pleasure in any way they please — and if that takes the form of submissiveness, cool. You do you, Becky.

But here’s the thing: satire is only powerful if it does what satire is meant to do — disturb the norm, hold the mirror up to power, mock the very structures it parodies. When Jonathan Swift wrote about eating Irish babies, he wasn’t just being grotesque for the sake of it. He was pressing on a wound, forcing the British elite to reckon with their cruelty by exaggerating it to the point of horror. Satire, at its best, is a scalpel. It cuts. It cauterises.

It begs its reader, its viewer, to question and criticise and challenge.

Good satire should blister. Burn. Not moisturise the status quo.

So I’m left wondering: What exactly is Man’s Best Friend satirising? What’s it saying?

Because I don’t hear a rallying cry. I hear a purr.                                                                 

In another world, the album cover might have worked. It might even have been funny. You know, if 2025 turned out the way the suffragettes at hoped and women were finally politically, professionally and socially equal.

And while it may be easier for Carpenter to feel the hope of that future washing over her — with her white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes and wads of cash — it’s just not a reality right now.

It’s dangerous to make such a mainstream attempt at political irony when you aren’t consciously accounting for how it will affect all women – all colours and histories and experiences with the abuse of gendered power dynamics.

The picture just doesn’t do what it should have.

Because Man’s Best Friend doesn’t cut. It plays. It dresses up the collar as empowerment but doesn’t actually interrogate why women still reach for collars in the first place. If the album wanted to function politically, it would have to situate itself against the backdrop we’re all choking in: Sydney Sweeney selling her bathwater and perfect jeans off the back of sexual objectification and actual white supremacy; a rapist elected as president while a highly qualified woman is reduced to her likability ratings. In this climate, satire can’t be flippant. It can’t be weightless.

And it has to sit appropriately within the times.

And this is what frustrated me most — Sabrina’s performance of satire doesn’t bear the weight of its context. It winks at an idea, but the wink is so flippant that its almost mocking. It’s surface rebellion, Instagrammable subversion, kink chic as commodity.

The political function of satire is not to let the powerful laugh along; it’s to make them sweat. It’s to turn the audience against them, to make the joke at their expense sting. Man’s Best Friend makes the audience laugh, sure — but the laugh is complicit. It soothes the very structures it could have unsettled. It fits the narrative that the patriarchy has moulded. That women are lesser. That they’re submissive, obedient. It also fits the violent narrative that porn has perpetuated; women as grabbable.

It just simply isn’t integrating men. And I just don’t think calling men ‘stupid’ on her Manchild record does enough to subvert it. Even if it is a certified bop.

Pop culture, when it chooses to be political, requires something sharper, heavier, angrier. Something that doesn’t just accessorise submission but actually dissects it. Something that lets the dog off the leash.

And if it just wants to be a Pop Princess’s new album, then it can absolutely do that. Not everything has to be political. Some things can simply be escapist. Art that doesn’t mediate upon the state of the world — it’s how we keep our sanity.

But we didn’t get a harmless pop album. And we didn’t get a ‘fuck you’ to the patriarchy, either.

Instead, what we got was a girl on all fours, sitting comfortably for her master within a harmful narrative that it tried, and failed, to criticise.