The Peter Pan Effect: Sabrina, Sex and Infantilisation

Let the record show that Sabrina Annlyn Carpenter is a grown woman, at the age of 25 years old. She may look small, “five feet to be exact”, but despite her size, Sabrina Carpenter is an adult who we can confidently assume lives an adult lifestyle. So why are people so disgusted that she is singing about said lifestyle?

Sabrina Carpenter has been in the music game for ten long years; and for at least the past five of those, she has been singing songs with explicit adult themes. Songs from her earlier sister albums Singular Act I (2018) and Singular Act II (2019), including ‘Almost Love’, ‘prfct’, and ‘Looking At Me’ can all be heralded as confident explorations of the female sexual experience. Safe to say, the themes of romance, mature relationships and more notably sex aren’t new for Carpenter. However, since her sudden boom in popularity this past year with playfully naughty smash hits ‘Nonsense’ and ‘Espresso’, the praising of her innuendo heavy lyricism and blunt lack of subtlety in these songs has correlated in a rise of criticism against the pop star. It has left many asking why she is performing such explicit songs to her young female audience.

This negativity reached its peak in the past few months, as Sabrina embarked on the tour for her sixth studio album ‘Short ‘N’ Sweet’, and attendees with young children were shocked at the overtly sexual nature of her performances. From wearing lingerie to perform in, to arresting an audience member with fuzzy handcuffs and acting out various sex positions during the bridge of her least subtle track ‘Juno’, many people, including parents and wider industry critics, have questioned whether Carpenter’s performances are suitable for her audience and whether she has taken it too far.

It is important to note that since the singer’s most recent chart toppers have gone viral on platforms like TikTok, Carpenter has gained younger fans than before and some of these can be as young as seven or eight; prior to this social media boom, Sabrina Carpenter listeners tended to be women aged between sixteen to twenty five, which is the age demographic that grew up watching her acting on the Disney Channel (more on that later). The question is though: is it up to Carpenter to change the themes of her self-expression and art in order to cater to younger audiences or is it inevitably up to the parents to audit concerts beforehand to ensure they are suitable for their children?

One of the most plaguing (and to me, the most ridiculous) reasons that people are horrified at Sabrina’s seemingly sudden embrace of sexuality is because of her childhood acting on the Disney Channel show, Girl Meets World. For the critics, they believe that she has a responsibility to cater to this Disney Channel audience, which would be young children between the ages of seven and eleven. This would be a rational argument, if Carpenter had been on Disney Channel recently and her appearance warranted her having this young fan base. But her Disney Channel career was ten years ago when I was a young child. I’m almost nineteen now and cannot fathom how people believe a relatively short (three years) Disney stint would cause Carpenter to be a perfect role model for children over a decade later. The children that watched Carpenter on television have now grown up and are the perfect target audience for Sabrina’s new music. Somehow, people believe that once a child star, means always a child star.

Sabrina, unfortunately, is not the only former child star that has been attacked for embracing all facets of being an adult. Olivia Rodrigo, another ex-Disney star, was constantly critiqued by parents on social media for what they were quick to call “excessive” swearing in her songs as well as acting out sexual behaviours in her song ‘obsessed’ during her most recent tour. When Miley Cyrus had her ‘Bangerz’ era, people freaked out, watching a former Disney golden child cut off all her hair and grind on Robin Thicke in live performances. Britney Spears, Dove Cameron, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato. The list is endless. Even artists like Taylor Swift, who wasn’t a traditional child star but did start her singing career at an incredibly young age with an infantilised image, have faced criticism for behaving too ‘sexual’ and ‘adult’. We seem to be obsessed with our female pop stars, especially when we feel we have known them since they were young, staying pure, innocent and never growing up. Simply put, we want Peter Pans.

Peter Pan Syndrome is a pop-psychology term that describes adults who are socially immature. Adults who reach the grown-up ages, but can’t cope or deal with adult sensations, emotions and responsibilities. In a way, we want our female pop stars to develop this state of mind; we want them to look adult and mature so we can sexualise them as and when we please, but they cannot have the emotional capability to sexualise themselves. We, as an audience, seem to desire a strange paradox that can never exist and wonder why women in the spotlight have public breakdowns when we demand this impossibility from them.

Sabrina Carpenter seems to be coping quite well with the pressure though, only doubling down on her overt sexuality. Hopefully, we don’t see a 2007 style Britney meltdown, or a Demi Lovato crash-and-burn or one of the many explosions when female pop stars are refused and denied their own freedom to express themselves. My only wish for Sabrina: she continues to climb all over that tour stage, doing whatever the hell she wants.

Words by Jessica Cooper