Sabrina Carpenter’s new album, Man’s Best Friend, comes out August 29. A new billboard showed up yesterday and… the internet has a theory. 

 

I was made aware of this at our morning meeting today by some of our younger even-more-extremely-online colleagues whose feeds are dominated by the western pop girlies. But first, a brief refresher about the album cover and its controversy. Sarah addressed it a few weeks ago: the initial reaction to the image of Sabrina on all fours beneath a man who had her hair in his grasp. 

 

As Sarah posited in her post, those who were outraged by the image may be missing the whole point of Sabrina, who has consistently flirted with a subversion that’s only been magnified by her ascent to this current level of fame. Sabrina’s intentional and self-constructed image of coquettishness is meant to disguise her intelligence. But she remains firmly in control. I have a hard time believing that she would have had no idea that the shot of her in “submission” would elicit a certain response – she may even have been courting it, smartly choosing not to engage with the noise and patiently sitting on her mysteries until she’s ready to reveal them. 

 

After all, there is nothing about Sabrina’s music and lyrics so far that suggest that she’s ever been at the mercy of a man. She just doesn’t perform girl boss feminism. So people are expecting that album will be more than meets the eye. 

And now the latest, the new billboard…

 

... has kicked of speculation about who the man might be. And some people are saying it’s… Pedro Pascal?! They are convinced that’s his back, they are studying the silhouette, lol. Of course it helps that he was just in a movie in which he wore the sh-t out of a black suit.

 

Sabrina and Pedro aren’t strangers. They were on SNL50 together, in the same sketch, with Pedro playing “Ronaldo”. 

@teamsabrina

wait what even is this song? sophie x domingo x ronaldo on #SNL50 #sabrinacarpenter #pedropascal

♬ original sound - Team Sabrina
 

And they were standing together during the farewell – clock him briefly touching her arm. There’s affection between them, they hung out at the afterparty for sure. 

@rand0mfamous

#pedropascal and #sabrinacarpenter

♬ original sound - ✰

As one of our team members said in our meeting this morning, if it actually is Pedro, this would change the discourse about whatever stereotypes Sabrina may or may not be advancing in Man’s Best Friend. Because, of course, Pedro isn’t trash. Pedro would never. Would never what? F-cksh-t, that’s what. Pedro would never f-cksh-t. 

I’m not leaning one way or the other or whether or not it’s him. But I do feel like Sabrina is playing with some interesting ideas in the visuals, and likely in her music. “Manchild”, after all, is not exactly flattering, not exactly a tradwife theme song. If Pedro really is involved, somehow, we could be adding several other layers here. 

So, what do you think? Is it Pedro? Head over to The Squawk and let’s debate this! (App link here)

Photo credits: X

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