The Trial of Sabrina Carpenter
She’s everyone’s favorite pop princess now, but she was once the mean girl of the industry. A very casual rant post about one of my all-time favorite artists.
During an especially slow morning at my internship, I excused myself from my regular human resources duties. Instead, I spent a full hour of company time attempting to get Sabrina Carpenter tickets. I had seen her the year before when she was touring for Emails I Can’t Send, her fifth album, including many songs detailing her mental state during the height of her hatemail. For $60 general admission tickets, it was worth every penny. Sabrina has charisma and confidence that you cannot teach, honed through years of growing up in front of a camera. Naturally, a year later, when joining the queue for her pre-sale tickets, I was kicked out, called a bot, and waited in a queue of over 16,000 people for 14,000 seats. Her career has unmistakably exploded due to her opening the eras tour, her total TikTok domination, and the virality of hits like Nonsense, Espresso, and Please Please Please. Despite being the It Girl right now, her career was almost canceled due to rumors, speculation, and literal teenage drama.
During the lockdown portion of the Covid-19 pandemic, celebrity drama devolved into a panopticon. Now, with limited social interaction, Hollywood relationships served as a welcome distraction, filling the hole of being overly invested in friends' boyfriends. When Olivia Rodrigo released her smash-hit single “Driver’s License” people were charmed by its brutal honesty and her amazing vocals. However, the famous line “probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt” spiraled the conversation far away from the artistry itself and instead made Olivia the center player in a story that many have experienced. Breakups are the worst, even worse when exes move on quickly. Many people who were well invested in Olivia and Joshua’s relationship/friendship, from High School Musical The Musical The Series, took this breakup as personally as they would a friend. Sitting in a room with a sniffling friend hunched over a tub of chocolate ice cream, talking about how she was always too good for him, and his new girl isn’t even that pretty, was quickly replaced by sending thousands of death threats to Joshua and Sabrina. When asked by Entertainment Weekly about how her life has changed since last year, Sabrina responded, “I cried every day then. I don’t cry every day now.” Looking back, it makes total sense. Sabrina was not the homewrecker; she was just the unlucky new girl who was the victim of an audience’s parasocial projection.
The greatest irony of the situation is that the original line that made Sabrina a target, was not the original line. When Olivia first teased the demo of “Driver’s License” in 2020, there was no blonde girl, rather the line detailed a brunette girl hanging around her ex. The switch-up was likely caused by someone on 17-year-old Rodrigo’s team in an attempt to drum up anticipation for the single’s release. A year later, Sabrina responded to the hate with her single “Skin.” She opens the song rawly, directly addressing Olivia.
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
The only rhyme
The fourth line addresses something Sabrina knows, as a long-time industry sweetheart. When celebrities storytell, they have to understand that their words take on a life of their own. Olivia, still, denies that the song was about Sabrina, and it probably was not. The song was written well before Sabrina and Joshua were an item. Unfortunately, the small change made to drum up streams stunted Sabrina’s career. Her album “Emails I Can’t Send” could have been her big break, but instead she was cancelled for the mere crime of liking a boy.
The unfortunate truth is that many women have had a Sabrina in their life. The beautiful, talented, and smart woman that you feel as if you cannot compare to. However, Sabrina managed to shed the mean girl image by reclaiming the mean girl persona that was projected. She released songs poking fun about being a “homewrecker” and a “slut.” Her merch had phrases like “I Heart Sluts'' and “I’m a Homewrecker.” Sabrina became a beacon for women who have felt like they were unjustly judged by others and ridiculed with sexist language – which is probably the majority. By putting the hate, she received on full display, it highlighted the utter absurdity of the claims set against her. By shattering other’s expectations for who she is and showing her personality on stage she managed to humanize herself in the eyes of audiences and enable her own audience to build a parasocial relationship with her. Her music has an intimacy that only really exists between friends or diaries. She sings with a conversational tone, as if she is telling a story to a close friend in a dimly lit living room.
When scrolling through TikTok, occasionally I’ll see someone talk about the tension between Olivia and Sabrina, and undoubtably someone comments “why are we still talking about this?” I still talk about it because it is a vital part of Sabrina’s career. In fact, her biggest album is based on this time of her life. Additionally, it is important to acknowledge how women are treated by other women in the name of defending someone they will never even meet. I believe many people want to sweep the situation under the rug, so they do not have to face the unfortunate truth that the level of hate she received did not exist in a vacuum. In many ways, her hate was due to a combination of parasocial relationships, jealousy, and misogyny. People know that now, but it’s a hard thing to confront. So, the next time a woman is villainized, grilled on a stick, and hated for the mistake of being a beautiful woman who loves someone remember that as quickly as people grow to hate, they also learn to love.