Back in January, drama erupted when Sabrina put out "Skin," which seemed to be a direct response to Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License." It all began when Olivia included a lyric stating "I bet you're with that blonde girl, who always made me doubt." It was clear from the lyrics that Olivia was referring to her ex-boyfriend, Joshua Bassett, who was currently dating Sabrina.
The celebrity news and gossip sites couldn't get enough of this. There were articles upon articles about Sabrina starting a fight with Olivia through the release of "Skin." Granted, it makes sense that they would latch onto this. At the time, we had no knowledge of what Sabrina was going through, so it seemed like she was just lashing out for no particular reason.
On Friday, August 6, Sabrina finally broke her long silence on the matter through sharing her first song from the fifth album, "Intro." The heartbreaking confessional reveals that Sabrina's father left her mother for another woman that he was in love with, and completely ditched his old family for this new person without saying anything. Sabrina specifically mentions "October 13 at 10:15" in her song, which given her parents were still together as of last year, would mean that Sabrina was going through this at the same time as "Skin." While it doesn't fully justify Sabrina's aggressive pettiness towards Olivia through her diss track, it does explain why she would act that way. When she was struggling with the issue with her father, having to deal with people coming at her for ruining Olivia's relationship with Joshua likely caused her to become afraid she was doing the same thing her father was. A line in her song corroborates this: "Thanks to you I can't love right/I get nice guys and demonize them/Reading their texts like they're having sex right now." Though the hate she received for "Skin" was likely damaging to her self-esteem, it is something that us fans have to live with, as there's no way we could have known Sabrina was going through this at the time.
When Sabrina released this song detailing her father's harmful, destructive actions, interestingly, no news site picked it up, except one cringey article that seemed to try too hard to relate to teens with "cool" wording. It's both shocking and frustrating that we are so quick to dwell on the silly, meaningless drama between women, yet when they most need our support, they are rarely given it by the media. Just look at the Taylor Swift and Katy Perry feud. Celebrity news sites milked this for as long as they could, yet when the two women made up, there was barely any coverage of it. I suppose you could argue that the news sites are giving Sabrina her privacy, which is a good thing. However, after they tore Sabrina down so quickly from the Olivia drama, I feel it's their duty to report on the clear reason behind why Sabrina chose to act this way and started their "beef." The media is so quick to capitalize on "ooh, catfight!" type stories, but when the reason behind one or both party's actions is explained, they rarely touch it.
Even as recent as a week ago, there were still articles talking about the Sabrina/Olivia/Joshua love triangle. One even went so far as to question Olivia on Joshua's sexuality based on her intimate experience with him, due to a vague comment Joshua made once about thinking Harry Styles was "hot" in a music video. This seems like a gigantic stretch to me, and the fact that they wouldn't cover the reasoning behind Sabrina's outburst with Olivia (which was more than reasonable given the circumstance with Sabrina's father) given they created an article speculating Joshua's sexuality is even more infuriating. Why is our society so drama-focused that news sites don't even think people would want to know the reason behind people's actions, especially when there's a very good one?
The drama that's covered about young women is usually over a boy. Sadly, because of Sabrina's outburst with "Skin," she will probably now be remembered for stealing Joshua away from Olivia for the rest of her career. Even a simple search of "Sabrina Carpenter" on Google Images brings up a picture of Joshua Bassett as the third image. It seems society's favorite type of drama is when women fight over a man. I would argue that it's because somewhere deep in society, there's still this notion that women cannot have independent thoughts outside of thinking about boys. Most of these drama articles would not pass the third rule of the Bechdel-Wallace Test for films (which is that women have to think or talk about something other than men).
The Sabrina/Olivia drama is a particularly interesting case, because neither woman actually ever publicly admitted to disliking each other. Olivia never said anything, and Sabrina's only action to fuel the drama was "Skin." In hindsight, Sabrina may not have hated Olivia - she was likely just frustrated with her that she chose to release this at such an emotional time for her, or perhaps even felt worried that she was turning into her father from the online backlash she received about being a "homewrecker" who destroyed Olivia and Joshua's relationship.
The continued lack of support for Sabrina now that she is revealed what she is going through is both shocking and frustrating, considering how quick the media was to capitalize on her drama with Olivia. I argue that we need to support young women and not just capitalize on them fighting. I understand that some people just like "the juicy gossip," and that's fine, but there's a clear problem when we selectively choose to only cover drama, and ignore anything that could be positive or rationally explaining the reason for a person's actions. Women's actions are not simply for the entertainment of patriarchal society, but by only talking about their drama, we are essentially saying we only care as a society when women tear each other down. We need to support women in cases like this, and not cover drama if there's no intention of understanding the reason behind why one or both parties might be acting this way. To conclude this article, I'd like to share a quote from Joshua Bassett regarding this situation, which I feel perfectly illustrates the situation here (which you can find by simply searching "Sabrina Carpenter" because apparently as a woman she's inextricably tied to him now that she's dated him, even though they're not dating anymore):
"Why don’t we focus on these women for who they are? Let’s focus on the art that they’re making and how great they are instead of their relationship to a boy.”
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