What Sabrina Carpenter and Sydney Sweeney Reveal About Feminism in 2025
- Sienna Jay
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
What happens when pop culture turns femininity into a product, and women play along? From Sabrina Carpenter’s risqué album art to Sydney Sweeney’s viral soap, two stars are showing us what sexual agency looks like in 2025. But not everyone is convinced.
When Sydney Sweeney turned her bathwater into bars of soap, I rolled my eyes. Then I clicked. Then I laughed. Then I paused. What started as an internet joke had sold out in minutes. Fans were reselling bars for up to $1,600. I couldn’t help but wonder: is this where we are now? Turning objectification into branding, mockery into merch?
And then there’s Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star whose rise this year has been impossible to ignore. On the cover of her upcoming album Man’s Best Friend, she appears on all fours, reaching toward the leg of a faceless man in a suit. The image is provocative by design, sharper, more self-aware, and unapologetically tongue-in-cheek.
Both women are in control, and that’s exactly what unsettles people. Their unapologetic embrace of sexuality reveals just how uncomfortable society still is with women owning their sexuality.
As a 21-year-old raised online, I grew up with “girlboss” feminism, power suits, boardrooms, and being ‘the one in charge’. Sexy was acceptable, but only if it conformed to masculine stereotypes. Women owning their sexuality makes people nervous. For me, watching Carpenter and Sweeney lean into their sexualities not as objects, but as agents, is a refreshing shift. What they’re doing isn’t regressive, it’s feminist. And they’re profiting from it, too.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Album Cover and the Power of Playing Along
Sabrina Carpenter knows exactly what she’s doing. The former Disney star turned pop provocateur has spent over a decade shaping her image, co-writing tracks like Espresso and Manchild with playful, razor-sharp lyricism. But it’s the cover of Man’s Best Friend, not the music itself, that’s sparked the most noise.
Shot by Bryce Anderson, the image shows Carpenter on all fours in a minidress, her hair held by the hand of a suited man. Within hours, backlash erupted. TikToks called it “dangerous,” Glasgow Women’s Aid labelled it “regressive,” and others said it played into misogynistic tropes of submission and control.
Heather Binning of Women’s Rights Network said such imagery: "Grooms girls to believe that it is a fun, casual, sexy thing to submit to men's sexual (sometimes sexually violent) desires.”
Carpenter hasn’t commented directly, but her response has been characteristically tongue-in-cheek. Releasing an alternate black-and-white cover weeks later, featuring her resting on a man’s shoulder, she captioned it: “Approved by God.” It’s a wink to the discourse, not a retreat.
Critics, including Professor Catherine Rottenberg at Goldsmiths, have pointed out that controversy itself can be a marketing tool. Rottenberg said:
"Debates around representation that this album has already generated will likely mean more sales, more popularity, and more traction."
But let’s not mistake provocation for passivity. Carpenter’s visuals, like her lyrics, are exaggerated, self-aware, and in on the joke. Whether she’s poking fun at traditional femininity or simply selling records, one thing is clear: she’s the one pulling the strings, and profiting from it.
Sydney Sweeney’s Soap and the Satire of Objectification
If Sabrina Carpenter is teasing the male gaze, Sydney Sweeney is packaging it, literally.
The Euphoria and Anyone But You star recently turned a long-running internet joke into a shrewd business move. After fans joked about buying her bathwater, Sweeney partnered with men’s personal care brand Dr. Squatch to launch Bathwater Bliss: a limited-edition soap bar made with her actual bathwater.
The product, infused with exfoliating sand, pine bark extract and a mix of “outdoorsy” scents, is absurd, yes. But beneath the gimmick is something razor-sharp. Sweeney isn’t just in on the joke. She owns it. As she states in a press release:
“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it, or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap.”
Just 5,000 bars were made, with only 100 given away for free through an Instagram contest before official sales began on 6 June. The move walks a tightrope between satire and self-branding, and reflects the intense sexualisation Sweeney’s experienced online. Sweeney said:
“People feel connected and free to be able to speak about me in whatever way they want, because they believe that I’ve signed my life away. That I’m not on a human level anymore, because I’m an actor. That these characters are for everybody else, but then me as Sydney is not for me anymore,”
Sweeney continued:
“It’s this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control or say over.”
Shira Tarrant, a women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor and author of The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know, said:
"Our culture polices women’s sexuality, profits off it at the same time and shames them for profiting from it themselves, especially when it comes to young, beautiful, talented stars like Sydney Sweeney."
In that context, Bathwater Bliss becomes more than just a novelty. It’s a power move. Sweeney takes the thing people mock her for, being objectified, and turns it into a punchline with a price tag. She’s not denying the gaze; she’s profiting from it on her own terms.
How It Feels to Watch This as a Young Woman
Watching these advertising techniques unfold as a young woman is…complicated. On one hand, I grew up absorbing media that commodified women’s bodies. On the other, I’m now seeing women like Sweeney and Carpenter flip that script.
There’s something quietly radical about refusing to take objectification seriously, and still winning. These women aren’t naïve; they’re playing with the very tropes that once disempowered them. They’re turning performance into profit, shame into satire. And whether you’re laughing, critiquing, or clicking “buy now,” they’ve already won.
Is It Empowerment, or Just Better Packaging?
But Carpenter on her knees? That doesn’t compute. Submission, even if it’s performative, still triggers something in us. It clashes with our conditioning.
And yet, what if this is power? Power that’s messy, flirty, deliberately unserious? Power that says: I can be soft and smart, sexy and subversive, all at once?
Leora Tanenbaum, author of Sexy Selfie Nation, warned of the dangers of confusing empowerment with performance, said:
“When you take ownership over your sexuality to meet the expectations of others, you actually lose your autonomy.”
But what if those expectations are the subject of satire? What if you’re parodying the entire system?
Because there’s a reason people are still talking about both of them. Sweeney sold out her soap. Carpenter might just have the album of the year. Neither is asking for permission.
Final Thoughts: Satire, Sex, and the Women Selling Both
Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are selling us something, yes. But it’s not what we think. Their femininity is a costume, a joke, a business strategy, and sometimes, a trap they’ve set for us.
Whether they’re crawling, cooing, or cashing in, one thing is clear: they’re not naïve. They know how the internet works. They know what gets attention. And they know how to twist it in their favour.
So before we panic about feminism “taking a step back,” maybe we should ask: whose rules are they breaking, and why were those rules there to begin with?