why am I jealous of sabrina carpenter?

on ownership, gatekeeping, and liking something "before it was popular!!!!!!"

Over the past few weeks, the mainstream has finally awoken to the musical talent and charisma of Miss Sabrina Carpenter as she has performed with Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, performed at Coachella, and achieved her very first Top 10 hit on the Spotify global chart with “Espresso.”

As a fan of Sabrina’s since high school when I first heard “Thumbs,” “I’m Fakin,” and “Your Love’s Like,” I’m thrilled that it looks like her days of intimate shows will soon be replaced with headline tours at Madison Square Garden, but I also find myself feeling… a little jealous? Let’s investigate.

As someone who has no real desire to pursue a career in music, this feeling seems a bit unwarranted and has caused some discomfort. Firstly, of course, I want to be happy for her. I really like Sabrina Carpenter. Here’s what I think. I think that “emails i can’t send” was one of the best albums released in 2022. I play it all the time. It’s the reason I went to see her in concert during my senior year of college. I think her voice is beautiful, I think she is stunning, I think she has a strong creative concept of herself and her music, I thought her live performance was full of stage presence and charm, her Christmas album was so good, I could go on.

But alas, I still feel this way. Maybe it’s because she’s young––not younger than me, but young in the grand scheme of things––and seeing someone so young achieve such gargantuan, unrealistic levels of success can evoke some ~interesting~ feelings. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to her for a while and now that she’s struck the mainstream gold I’m worried my Sabrina Carpenter will morph into someone else, or that her music will no longer feel like it’s mine. I’m not even sure how to properly describe this last feeling, but I’m hoping outlining the situation will do it for me.

You know when you find something or someone that you really like (say a YouTuber or an actor or whatever) and you really connect with their work? You laugh at it, you relate to it, you love it, and even better, you discovered them before they were popular.

When you tune into them, it feels like you belong to their little corner of the world. Sure, their audience grows over time, but it’s nothing too crazy and still intimate enough that you feel like they’re yours. And then one day they go viral and suddenly instead of having a community of 100,000 subscribers, they have a community of 1 million.

You’re happy for them, of course, because now they can make a better living for themselves, or quit their day job to fully pursue what they love, or they get brand deals and can collaborate with cool people now that they have a big audience. But you feel like this cool thing that was once yours is now everybody’s.

And then you start to worry if things will change. Will their content change because they have to market to the masses instead of a niche? Will their music become less authentic and cathartic for the sake of popularity and the “I can count on this charting” formula? Maybe. Maybe not.

All of those thoughts are running through my head right now. And part of me knows that’s not logical. She was never mine and neither was her music. It belonged to whoever it came across. That’s what art is all about. Once it’s released into the world, it’s no longer yours.

The cure is not to try and gatekeep. I hate when people make you feel ridiculous for not knowing this band/that song/that show/that person, and when you ask them about it, they don’t tell you. Or when you do some homework of your own, come to like said thing, and share it with them, they convince you that that’s not their real or best stuff and you aren’t a true fan. It’s obnoxious and annoying.

So I proclaim my love for Sabrina and allow others to do the same. I cheer and applaud with each milestone she achieves. I listen to her music because I love it, and I share that love with other fans or introduce her to people who haven’t been exposed yet.

The longer I sit with the question of why I’m jealous of Sabrina Carpenter, the more I realize that Sabrina Carpenter is simply the object on which I’m projecting all of this unease on. The unease of is betting on a creative career going to pan out for me, of will this person who seems to write about and understand things that I’ve gone through no longer be the same, of change and anxiety in general.

After reading a piece by Substack’s Eliza McLamb titled “The Socially-Conscious Mean Girl” a few months ago, I kept going back to this quote from it:

“And what if we stopped demonizing jealousy? What if it was okay to see a girl and be like, wow, I hate her for some reason I haven’t decided yet.”

Now every time I’m struck with a feeling that I’m uncomfortable with, like jealousy or some hatred that I can’t put my finger on, I’m compelled to slow down and think about why this thing or this person is making me feel jealous, and ask myself if I can learn from it. Usually, it’s telling me something about what I want for myself. I want success. I want creative fulfillment. I want a community of people who love my work and want to hear more. I want people rooting for me.

Channeling your jealousy into an internal exercise is way more fulfilling and healthy than turning it outwards and spewing hate or upset or jealousy back into the world. There’s enough success to go around. And it can be helpful to remember that jealousy is one of so many universal feelings. I’m sure Sabrina Carpenter has felt jealousy too (I mean, she’s written entire songs about the sentiment – “opposite” and “cindy lou who” are some of my favorites), because she’s human.

There’s a reason for these feelings to exist, and it’s not to send someone mean messages on Instagram or to publicly hate on them or even to stop listening to them. It’s to teach us something about ourselves and what we want. Because how are we supposed to know what we want if we never see it?

Luce note, we did a WHOLE episode of Culture Vulture about reframing your jealousy into discovering your quest, and if you loved this piece you’ll love this episode xx

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who wrote this?

Simone Toney is a writer based in New Jersey, USA. She loves to use her BA in psychology and cinema & media studies to analyze her favorite content. She writes about movies, TV, and the current zeitgeist on her Substack “pop culture junkie.” You can also find her on TikTok @simonedanielle01 and on X @simonetoney1

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