🕊️ Watchman’s Report: This Is Not Okay
All around me I see and hear pain—a longing to be seen and loved so powerful that it transcends cultural norms to the point that it begins to reshape them. This unfortunate reality is on blatant display in Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album cover.
The image shows her on all fours, pleased, with a man’s hand gripping a handful of her hair. She has one of her hand’s on his pant leg. The title? Man’s Best Friend.
As a survivor of domestic violence and a mother of a 12-year-old girl, I find this heartbreaking. I don’t believe Carpenter intends to glorify abuse. The set design, with its theatrical curtain backdrop, seems to imply satire—perhaps a clap back at her critics. But the damage done is not mitigated by intent.
She knows her fan base. She knows the weight her image carries. And even if she doesn’t want to be a role model, she is. That comes with responsibility. You can’t court influence and claim innocence when that influence takes root.
We live in a society where isolation, disconnection, and idol worship are rampant. People are desperate for love and connection, and media often sells them a warped version of both. So when someone with a platform of millions suggests that to be “man’s best friend” is to submit yourself in this way—there will be those who listen. Who mimic. Who believe.
🕯️ A Warning from the Past
In the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, a character is pitched a repulsive album cover:
A greased, naked woman on all fours, wearing a dog collar. A man’s hand holds the leash while shoving a black glove into her face.
The character finds it degrading. The audience laughs. The whole scene is a parody of how extreme and absurd the music industry could become.
But now, in 2025, that exact imagery is no longer satire. It’s real. And it’s being marketed to teens.
📖 What Does God Say?
This is not harmless art.
This is the normalization of domination, of subjugation, of the erasure of dignity.
And what makes it worse is the plausible deniability—“It’s a joke. People are too sensitive.”
But God’s word says something different.
“Then the Lord God made a woman… to be a helper suitable for him.” — Genesis 2:22
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” — Ephesians 5:25
Women were made to help, not to heel.
Love is meant to be sacrificial, not sadistic.
When culture embraces messages like this—unchallenged and unexamined—we risk raising a generation that confuses humiliation with intimacy, and control with love.
As a Watchman, I sound the alarm:
This is not okay.
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