It’s always a very good idea to tell a woman what to wear, especially if you’re a man. Whether you think her skirt is too short or her top too low-cut, there are always adjustments to make and pigeonholes to squash her into. If she goes too far one way, you can call her a slut. Too far the other, and she’s a prude. It’s a very simple system that has formed the bedrock of misogyny for millennia and it’s still being rolled out in 2025.
This week, the target was Sabrina Carpenter, one of the most successful musicians working today. The 25-year-old Disney star turned pop sensation has broken records with her hit song, “Espresso”, while her latest album, Short’n’Sweet, has earned her six Grammy nominations. Her music dominated the charts last year. And yet, three older male juggernauts of the music industry have decided instead to focus on what she wears. How incredibly boring.
Pete Waterman is best known for being part of the Stock Aitken Waterman production and songwriting team, which was behind some of the UK’s biggest hit songs in the 1980s and 90s, by artists including Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, and Steps. Waterman is not a fan of Carpenter’s wardrobe, and told The Sun: “To see Sabrina Carpenter dressed as a little girl is quite offensive. She doesn’t need that. She’s got great talent, and yet the whole of the industry, these girls come out in as little as possible because they know they’re driving young boys to their websites.”
The “websites” reference tells you everything you need to know about how out of touch Waterman, 78, and his comrades are with the ebbs and flows of the modern music industry. His former working partner Mike Stock, 73, said: “They’ve won all of their freedoms and their rights, women. They fought for everything they’ve got, and now they’re throwing it away, is the way I would look at it.” Waterman added: “It’s just crazy. If you’re asking to be respected, don’t come on in a G-string.” The men went on to dismiss Carpenter’s lyrics as “lazy” and overly sexualised.
It’s difficult to know where to start with this. Most obvious is to point out the hypocrisy given these men worked with a roster of artists who were just as playful with their wardrobes, whether it was Kylie Minogue in a fishnet bodysuit or Sam Fox in stockings. Then there’s the hilarious irony and lack of self-awareness of men in their seventies claiming women have “all of their freedoms” while policing a young woman’s outfits.
And finally, there’s the trope their fatuous rhetoric taps into: that women can’t embrace their sexuality and be taken seriously at the same time. It’s a binary best exemplified by the Madonna-whore complex that Madonna herself tapped into to great effect during Stock Aiken Waterman’s peak (when, presumably, they weren’t paying attention to any music outside their own efforts). The idea stems from psychoanalytic literature that suggests men cannot sexually desire a female partner whom they also respect.
This is damaging for so many reasons. It flattens female autonomy as if, by sexualising us, we lose our economic and professional power. It also fosters a culture of shame around female sexuality that reduces women to either “good” or “bad”, in which to come across as sexual is “bad” and virginal is “good”.
Didn’t we get over all this a while ago? With Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Britney et al? Clearly not. When one of the most successful artists in the world is seen as somehow reduced because she sings about sex and dresses in a way that celebrates her body, well, there’s not much hope for the rest of us.
That said, I’m not sure any of us should be taking the words of Waterman and co to heart when all they do is signal their irrelevance. The much-garlanded Carpenter, with her awards and record-breaking industry achievements, is the one having the last laugh. In a few years, those accolades will still be there. And they’ll keep coming, irrespective of what she’s wearing.
