Casey Gilfillan

             Adriana Smith lies still in a hospital bed in Georgia, hooked up to a ventilator after being declared brain dead in February. Her body waits there, disallowed its natural voyage to death and denied eternal rest for that it should be preserved for its faculties, to continue harvesting precious and exploitable life. By orders of the State, her body is locked into life and under the control of legislature, no longer at the will of own hand or those of her blood relatives. There is only one logical conclusion to be derived from these proceedings, and that is confirmation of what we have feared. These events as they have unfolded inform us that her body is worth more to the State than her personhood; her body is worth much more as a brain dead fetus-incubator than a home to whoever Adriana was; her body is to bend under the iron will of the State even after it would have naturally expired; her body is to boost a quota rather than be honored in whatever way she and her family would have chosen. Horrifying, huh?

             This is America in the post-Roe aftermath, unsteady in the wake of unchecked authoritarianism. As horrible and gut-wrenching and fear-inspiring and rage-inducing and misandry-igniting it is, this is what we anticipated. The degradation of the female down to what we know she is valued for, her physicality; the feminine body, that which men want to take things from and to put things in.

             While we may have been able to predict soulless actions by the State in regards to women’s autonomy, I would like to pivot to some popular culture events that seem unrelated, and perhaps comparatively superficial, but strike a similar messaging chord.

             Sabrina Carpenter is Man’s Best Friend? My bad, Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend. The title of this newly teased album is weird no matter how you lean into it. There’s nothing playful or cute or sexy about an album cover that features a woman on all fours, mouth ajar, hair being yanked messily upward by a male-presenting figure. It’s quite jarring and extremely distasteful considering the times in which we find ourselves, under the rule of Sexual Predator in Chief.

             I’m going to cut right to the center of it – I don’t care about the nuanced satire. I don’t care if this is a subversive message that will be redeemed by later-revealed lyrics set to an empowering tune. The execution was poor and the image is disgusting. Nothing can redeem it. As well as the accompanying title, which on its own is not as awful, but paired with this image and that photo of the dog collar and paw print emoji altogether is just downright dehumanizing. The damage this visual does cannot be undone, redeemed, weighed out and measured or debated and factored or philosophized. Sabrina Carpenter is not the feminist, pop, girl’s girl icon of our generation, she is yet another capitalist leech who has tapped a fresh source. She is yet another sell-out looking to capitalize on femininity to all gazes, from those that idolize and want to be her to those gazes that lust after and want to do unspeakably degrading things to her. Gazes that would do things to her like in the album cover photo, or like some of the poses during her Juno sets. She is willing to do this even if it is harmful to the greater picture of femininity and female sexuality, the very concepts she claims to empower and embolden. Her entire brand is based on promoting this hyper-sexualized image in the name of self-love and empowerment, embracing oneself and rejecting traditional feminine modesty. So, in the spirit of these themes and the notion of feminine sexuality first, why isn’t the man on the floor, bowing before her in a show of respect and submission. That would be the ultimate subversion of modest and passive female sexuality. And yet, she is the one crawling before him, tugging at his pants like a pathetic child, looking helpless and vulnerable, down in the position of a dog paired next to the image of a gold dog tag. Why? Because, it is not about the feminist message, the expression of sexuality, or any other deep philosophical theme. It’s about attention and money. And raunchy, derogatory depictions of the female body attract both, as it is a snake that perpetually eats itself. So please, remember this on August 29th. Sabrina Carpenter is not a feminist icon, or a feminist at all. In fact, she’s sending a message through the existence of this visual that this is okay and acceptable and desirable. She is setting a standard and they will respond; it does not matter if it truly is an attempt at satire, horny men won’t see it that way. 

             While she does not have the feminist claim that Sabrina Carpenter formerly did, Sydney Sweeney has endeavored into a sinister escalation of self commodification through her new line of body soap with Dr. Squatch. Sweeney launched a line of soap containing traces of her bath water – at $8 a bar, which is not nearly enough if you ask me – that allegedly sold out in seconds. Disgusting, horrid, so creepy, vomit-inducing. Bleh. Traces of her naked body bath water in the hands of whatever quick-acting customers were able to get their grubby paws on the coveted stock. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS. She is a successful, beautiful actress who has been cast in a lot of movies recently, so it’s not like she needed to do this. There’s no way she needed to, yet she commodified something so intimate to her physicality, putting a dollar sign on her physical essence and commercializing that part of her personal self for a brand partnership. She is not playing her typical over-sexualized character, she is herself, Sydney, and we are buying her bath water-laced soaps. She is not playing some ditzy character while she sits in that tub, this is Sydney calling us all “dirty little boys,” and this is Sydney asking us, “are you interested in my body….wash?” and then it is Sydney again who scolds us and tells us the soap is not for “boys, it’s for men” and to “quit being a dirty little boy.” It’s porn scripting at best and it’s demeaning for her as an actress, and maybe you’d feel bad if you didn’t remember how much thought and consent she had to conduct on her end, or if you didn’t think about how she is propagating this blatantly vile depiction of the female body as something to buy and obsess and lust over. A thing, not a being; a thing over which you can fetishize and commercialize and of which you can harness the essence for bottles and soaps and shelves.

             The last of these popular culture dystopian developments deserves the least of our time and attention but is still, unfortunately, necessary to mention. Bonnie Blue’s Petting Zoo, the now-cancelled event in which English porn-Star Bonnie Blue would be tied up in a glass box for 24 hours, at the complete and utter whim of whatever men dared to project their fantasies upon her. The event was advertised as “no limits” and open to the public. While one could argue that this could be some well thought out media-stunt (though it doesn’t really seem that way), Blue allegedly holds the record for sleeping with the most men in one day at 1,057 men. During the pursuit of this feat, there was a line of men trailing outside the bedroom door  – strangers of course, attracted by the promise of free sex from Blue’s promotional posts – all waiting their turn with the illustrious Bonnie. Dogs waiting for their treat, preparing their mediocre trick for the instantaneous reward – it’s too bad we don’t use prong collars on these ones. 

             I just don’t understand where the disconnect came, and when female empowerment became empowered subjugation; reclaiming something so intimately that it flatters the villain that weaponized it against you in the first place. Women are alienated from their personhood through objectification of their body, but “suffer a different form of estrangement by being too closely identified with it… [as] sexual objectification occurs when a woman’s…sexual functions are separated out from her person…regarded as if they were capable of representing her. To be dealt with in this way is to have one’s entire being identified with the body, a thing which in many religious and metaphysical systems…has been regarded as less intrinsically valuable, indeed, as less inherently human, than the mind or personality” (Sandra Lee Bartky, Narcissism, Femininity, and Alienation pp.35-36)

             The sex industry and the ethicality of self commodication is a separate and complex topic, one that I’m not prepared to discuss in the midst of this conversation. What I am prepared to discuss is the issue I have with wealthy and conventionally-attractive celebrities participating in activities that are derogatory to images of female empowerment and autonomy because of the ways in which they pander to  and enable patriarchal values. The Sabrinas and Sydneys of the world cause harm to the average woman through the social implications and consequences of these depictions, and further enable men to believe that some women support traditional and subservient  expressions of femininity and female sexuality. The Bonnies of the world render harm upon the average woman through the bastardization of sex culture, as the transformation of deviant sexual nightmares into attainable realities only fuels the sadistic will of exploitative desire. Those in charge are already telling us, they are screaming in our faces that we as women mean nothing to them, and that they are happy to prove so if given the chance. If given the means to allow us to perish in the guise of giving a fetus life, they will opt to do so, choosing to pursue the rearing of a malleable infant who they can manipulate, brainwash, and ultimately throw on the conveyor belt of life, labor, and death. They want our bodies, not us. Why would we do anything to reinforce that image, the notion that our bodies are something to be commodified and objectified, glorified and exalted, harnessed by and for the man? At his knees, in his shower, carrying his child? Absolutely the fuck not.