Lynn, QC, PH.
I edit and proofread academic papers and books. I write here and elsewhere. I also talk way too much about P-pop and beauty pageants over at Pop and Pageantry.
Get in touch if there’s a project you think we can work on together.
I have tons of good memories associated with taho: having it for a snack while walking around the UP Academic Oval, heading out with my mother and carrying insulated tumblers to buy taho from the guy just outside our village, enjoying a cup or two after a fun run, warm glasses of taho on cold mornings in Baguio—I could go on and on about it. Today brought another nice memory: My boyfriend bringing a cup of taho for me while I’m working.
That’s one way for you to know that a millennial is writing this—things like “that’s my jam,” “this is how I roll,” “I rock (insert any object here).”
Now that that’s out of the way, I thought Sabrina Carpenter was cool since I first saw her in Tall Girl. She played the tall girl’s big sister with bad allergies and was extremely charismatic and funny in her role. (I did find it unrealistic that she was a pageant girl; pageant girls typically have to be tall.) I watched the Tall Girl sequel just for her as well as Work It and my opinion didn’t change, though I wondered why she wasn’t a bigger star.
Well, look at her now. Music was the way forward for her, as well as a cute pinup girl aesthetic.
She’s enthusiastically leaned into her image, and her music and even her commercials tend to be more than a little suggestive.
And so, there’s been a lot of discourse about the cover of her latest album Man’s Best Friend and how it’s actually degrading to women and inviting the male gaze. I’m not about to join the fray. I just want to say that I think the song “Go Go Juice” is a lot of fun. It sounds like a summer day with an impossibly brilliant blue sky, but there’s sadness behind it; Sabrina sings about missing an ex and getting drunk and maybe hooking up with another ex to numb the pain. I’m enjoying the song purely because it’s such a playful tune; it sounds like something that the brokenhearted can scream–cry–laugh–sing to while driving down a highway. I also appreciate the vulnerability behind it, and no doubt someone out there will find this song cathartic.
Just so I can say that I did some research for this hastily written blog post, I found a thread of people saying the song is disrespectful to the current girlfriend of a guy whose name she references along with other exes who can be identified based on the rhyming names in the lyrics. I feel like people might need to remember than not everything an artist does is autobiographical, and that maybe the song is purely theater and maybe she doesn’t really intend to hook up with an ex in real life and that a song can be just a song. Also, maybe I really should avoid snark pages.
Anyway, people who look at Sabrina and her work and say “oh boy, here she goes again, being short and horny” are missing out on music that’s a fun, cheeky exploration of relationships and feelings—though if she just wanted to sing about how hot she is, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that either.