Amanda Petrusich at The New Yorker:
The cover of “Man’s Best Friend” features a photo of Carpenter wearing heels and a black cocktail dress, on her hands and knees, before a faceless man who clutches a fistful of her hair. The image consciously hints at porn (the set includes beige wall-to-wall carpeting and heavy white drapes, as if Carpenter were crawling through a Motel 6) and sexual submission, particularly when paired with the album’s title. Reactions were swift and high-pitched. People tend to find the union of sex and violence—or sex and willing subjugation—either fun and titillating or gruesome and catastrophically sinful.
Predictably, the hubbub surrounding the photo was eventually framed as a war between uptight virgins and godless heathens, with a quieter contingent astounded only by the fact that this kind of marketing could still be so effective. (I would also argue that there are enough heartbreak songs on the album to suggest the opposite subtext: that the title is a biting play on the various ways women are dehumanized, politically or otherwise.) Eventually, Carpenter released another cover, in which she is standing on two legs and leaning against a guy in a suit. “Here is a new alternate cover approved by God,” she wrote, on Instagram. (I laughed.)
more here.
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