Girly-Girls and Clutching Pearls

In Which the Prudes Try the T, and Find it Weak

**Parental Advisory—General Debauchery**

Recently, while plumbing the depths of my arid mind for a subject to write about, Effie suggested that I cover the Sabrina Carpenter/Sydney Sweeney drama. I did not know that there was Sabrina Carpenter/Sydney Sweeney drama, because until yesterday, I did not know that either of those people existed. I make it a point not to follow pop culture because, frankly, I don’t understand it anymore. I’m not that old, but whenever I see headlines about the current “It Girls,” I feel like I’m reading Sanskrit.

This wasn’t always the case. Pop culture used to make sense. It was dumb, but it had a narrative flow. I know this because from the ages of 14 to 18, I worked as a cashier at our corner grocery store, where, in my downtime, I religiously perused People Magazine, Star Magazine, US Weekly, InStyle, Good Housekeeping, and In Touch. I eschewed Cosmopolitan because it often had the word “sex” on the cover. (As you can imagine, this prudent restraint kept me safe from developing any unrealistic ideas about sexuality.)

My consumption of gossip magazines led to two inestimable benefits: I developed a trendy case of self-loathing that allowed me to commiserate with other girls my age, and I became a pop culture whiz. Anyone who knew me as a 14-year-old will understand the hilarious irony of this. I was a mega-nerd homeschooler who had never seen a movie made after 1963, yet without knowing who any of them were, I followed the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston/ Angelina Jolie drama with the intensity of a LAPD forensic detective. Did Brad still have feelings for Jennifer? Were he and Angelina headed for divorce? What was the “dark secret” of Brad’s past? What was the dark secret of Angelina’s past? Would it explain why she always looked like her lips had gotten stuck in a bendy straw?

Like I say, while I had no earthly idea who these people actually were, I quickly began to pick up on the general arc of celebrity relationships, and I found them fascinating and very tidy. It usually went as follows:

• Celebrity female meets celebrity male on movie-set. A source says they have “great chemistry.”

• “Sparks fly” and things “heat up.”

• Celebrity couple is photographed out and about in a variety of fictional locations—“Tribeca” and “Malibu.” They are usually in sunglasses and white t-shirts, holding hands and carrying bags of fresh produce. A source says they are “just having fun” and “seeing where this goes.” Because nothing says fun like fresh produce.

• Celebrity couple gets married and drops “exclusive photos.” People gets the shiny, hi-res ones, Star and US Weekly get the pixelated ones. The bride is usually wearing “Monique Lhuillier,” which is a fancy French way of saying, “a white strapless gown.”

• After a couple years, In Touch runs a cover of the female celebrity clutching a coffee and looking like she just escaped the Chateau d’if, with the headline “[Female Celebrity]’s Heartbreak! Blindsided by [Male Celebrity]’s Betrayal.” On the same day, People runs a blurb in which “a source” says there is “absolutely no truth to the rumors” and the couple “could not be happier.” Six months later, People—like the mature adult in the room of celebrity magazines that they are—will step in and break the story in a much classier fashion. Sources close to the couple confirm that they are separating, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The divorce coincides with a new project for one of the celebrities involved, in which they are working with a different, very attractive celebrity and developing “undeniable chemistry” on-set, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the divorce, and the couple has “nothing but love and respect” for one another, they just choose to display it in a non-traditional way.

But as I say, pop culture gossip does not have recognizable narrative flow anymore. Pop culture gossip doesn’t even have recognizable humans anymore. Fifty percent of celebrities are rappers now, and rappers do not have actual names—they go by titles like FizX Scree5, or Bta$$NasT. To complicate matters, they’re always dating Kardashian sisters, who don’t have any actual biological components left in their bodies, so following stories involving these relationships is less like celebrity gossip and more like science fiction, of which I’ve never been a fan.

Kourtney Kardashain (left) and Travis Barker (right) celebrated their third wedding anniversary in May of ‘25.

The other celebs, the ones that sing pop hits and star in the never-ending wasteland that is streaming television, aren’t having relationships that are in any way titillating or scandalous, because short of ax-murdering all their co-stars, there isn’t a whole lot they can do to be shocking anymore. The trail that was blazed in such sparkling style by Brangelina has come to its inevitable dead-end, and like all dead-ends, it’s sort of weedy and overgrown and depressing.

But when I heard that there was juicy drama involving Sabrina Carpenter and Sydney Sweeney, I felt a flicker of nostalgic excitement—two beautiful people who I did not know, maybe with “dark secrets,” that had been exclusively revealed to a mysterious “source” who did what mysterious sources inevitably do and sang like a canary to People magazine! I bought a pack of M&M’s for old time’s sake and prepared for a good cozy scandal. But no. No.

Here’s what today’s gossip magazines have dredged out of the arid deserts of their imaginations (which make mine look like the hanging gardens of Babylon), to keep little corner store cashiers entertained. Here’s the “hot scoop.” Here’s the “big story” that has the general public hyperventilating into Coach purses: Carpenter has been singing about sex and acting sexual acts out onstage, and Sweeney sold bar-soap made out of her bathwater. That’s right—the movement that gave us Madonna and Nicki Minaj and Janelle Monáe is now uncomfy with overt sexuality.

To be fair, this outrage is in the name of feminism. Carpenter and Sweeney are accused, by fans and TikTokers, of not being “girl’s girlies” because they are too “male centric.” Women are uncomfortable with this particular sexuality because it seems to be specifically geared towards garnering male approval, whereas Rita Ora appearing nude at the Met Gala, or [insert female pop singer name here] gyrating in a spandex bodysuit is sexual in an ambiguous sense, and therefore ok.

It’s this logic that leads to scintillating think-pieces like this one from Heather Schwedel of Slate, musing with furrowed brow on whether or not Carpenter’s sexually explicit lyrics and branding are acceptably provocative:

A lot of what Carpenter is doing with the character she’s playing when she’s performing is subtle and strangely difficult to articulate—what for another person might look like an elaborate play for male attention comes off differently when it’s something that tiny, silly-mannered Carpenter is enacting for an audience primarily of women.

Yes, manufactured complexity is “strangely difficult to articulate.” Carpenter herself sums up the situation with admirable bluntness:

It’s always so funny to me when people complain…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.

And she’s right. The general public has become very accustomed to having intimate images permanently branded on our subconscious, thanks to the tireless work of the men and women of the entertainment industry, and we are nothing but grateful for it. It is because of these heroes that I heard the lyric “your sex takes me to paradise” while in the car with my Driver’s Ed instructor. It is because of these brave girl-bosses that my seven-year-old niece can choose between Snickers, bubble gum or “5 Tips to Blow His Mind” while in the checkout line at Dollar General—we had to work to overcome our prudery and kill our puritanical, repressed consciences, and now you’re telling us to get squeamish about some innuendo in our bar soap?

I, for one, find the whole debate tedious. I came for scandal and instead found a bunch of pinch-faced feminists dissecting the degree to which debauchery ought to be displayed for public consumption. Carpenter understands what we Prudes have known all along—let your nudes be nudes and your prudes be prudes.

And for really hot takes, read the Nude Prudes.

—C.C.