Sabrina Carpenter is the latest victim of the same old complaint-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro

A video of the moment was shared on X and hit over 20 million views in 48 hours (Picture: Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

If you looked at social media this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d gone back in time. 

Back to the bad old days when we were supposed to believe that children have been led astray by ‘the devil’s music’.

Sabrina Carpenter, 25, the singer behind international megahits Espresso and Please Please Please, is currently touring America.

And at a recent Los Angeles show, Sabrina knelt down on stage, tied her hair back, and ‘simulated oral sex’ with her microphone. A video of the moment was shared on X and hit over 20 million views in 48 hours.

Of course, it’s up for debate whether Sabrina ‘simulated oral sex’ or not, but her action occurs as she sings ‘Wanna try out some freaky positions, have you ever tried this one?’ That suggests some intent. 

Inevitably, the clip has inspired a slew of social media comments referring to Sabrina as ‘vulgar’ and ‘a porn actress’. She’s been ordered to ‘stop sexualising herself’, accused by all and sundry of ‘corrupting’ any children who might have been watching.

But let’s say Sabrina did ‘simulate oral sex’. That she did do all that ‘sexualisation’ she was accused of. 

Well, so what? She’s a full grown woman who makes her own choices and controls her creative output. 

Anyone going to a Sabrina Carpenter concert expecting child-free content quite literally hasn’t been listening – her lyrics contain swearing and several allusions to sex.

‘Wanna try out my fuzzy pink handcuffs?’ is a lyric from the same song, titled Juno. 

A parent who takes their child to see Sabrina is surely already aware of her 16+ content.

It’s a tale as old as time (Picture: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for AEG)

Of course, Sabrina won’t lose her career over this, but conservatives who walk among us are keen to bend the narrative against her and cast aspersions on her character based on a short clip. 

It’s a tale as old as time. 

The overwhelming, depressing feeling that comes from sifting through the litres of bile that have been chucked up over this incident is that we’ve been here before: Miley Cyrus was called a ‘twerking whore’ (among other insults) for posing naked in her 2013 Wrecking Ball music video.

Her live shows were accused of ‘manipulating children into watching adult content’. Her public persona was ‘dangerous’. Miley had transformed into a ‘sex toy’ and was a Trojan horse for sneaking malicious, sexual content into children’s entertainment. 

It didn’t seem to matter that, by then, Miley was 21 by then and appealed to an older audience than her Disney fans.

Miley Cyrus was called a ‘twerking whore’ (among other insults) for posing naked in her 2013 Wrecking Ball music video (Picture: RCA Records / YouTube)

Before Miley, in 2004, there was Janet Jackson – effectively blacklisted after ‘Nipplegate’ despite being completely innocent in the whole palaver. Britney Spears spent years battling conservative backlash. Madonna’s Like a Prayer video was banned on TV and she was criticised by the Pope himself. 

While female artists inevitably endure the majority of these moral panics, we’ve been here dozens of times with men, too. George Michael and Frankie Goes to Hollywood had their music censored throughout the 1980s, while the US government simultaneously tried to suppress rap music. 

Even at pop’s 1950s origin point, Elvis Presley was heavily policed over his ‘sinful gyrations’ which his own mother-in-law warned could ‘arouse [teenagers] to sexual indulgence and perversion’. 

Disheartening as these panics and outrages already were, what’s further dispiriting is how readily Britain has imported them into our own culture wars – and how easy some people find it to weaponise innocence and trauma for their own gain.

There was Janet Jackson – effectively blacklisted after ‘Nipplegate’ despite being completely innocent in the whole palaver (Picture: Donald Miralle/Getty Images)

It used to feel like we Brits were able to laugh at this collective hysteria, because what these moral panics almost always lead back to are the anxieties of devout traditionalists unable to cope with a changing, secular world.

Since the advent of social media, however, we too often find ourselves joining in. 

Take the reaction to Sam Smith coming out as non-binary in 2019 and their subsequent rebrand for the 2020s. A grown-up pop artist who had literally never made music for children, even at the beginning of their career, was suddenly a ‘demonic, Satanic’ danger to under 16s.

As a result, their music videos, singles, and media output were all heavily scrutinised by conservative figures on social media and lumped in with the ongoing dispute over gender and LGBT rights. 

Sam was accused of being on a mission to corrupt British teenagers by filling their heads with dark thoughts of sex and immoral questions over their gender. I thought they were just making pop music.

And gender is a key factor in the ire directed towards Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus, Janet Jackson, and Madonna – it is often part of a larger effort to control womens’ behaviour.

And what’s doubly concerning about this latest backlash against is the troubling backdrop it’s playing out in front of, as right-wing traditionalists control the levers of power once again. 

Time and again, no matter who the target is, the real issue is just sad old men who want to lash out and women and LGBT+ people. 

They take aim at the Miley Cyruses and Sam Smiths and Sabrina Carpenters of the world in a bid to silence the ordinary people who might feel inspired by them, leaving millions of people worse off in the process.

But hey, at least they’ve never ‘simulated oral sex’ with a microphone.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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