Sabrina Carpenter and the Embarrassing Truth of Dating Men

What's it like to date a man? Ask Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean, or your friends, and you might hear it's a struggle. Today we’re bringing you an episode of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luse and NPR Music Editor Hazel Cills break down a phenomenon called “heteropessimism.” See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:20Stephen Thompson?

  What's it like to date a man? Ask pop stars or your friends, and you might hear it's a struggle. I'm Stephen Thompson, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are bringing you an episode of It's Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luce and NPR Music Editor Hazel Sills break down a phenomenon called hetero-pessimism. Here's Hazel and Brittany.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  We are in a moment for pop music right now where there are so many young women making music that reflects how women are talking about dating these days, which is quite pessimistic. I think that the reception to some of the "I love my man so much" elements of the Taylor Swift album is evidence-

• 1:06Speaker 03

  You know, I'm glad you brought up Taylor Swift.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  You're glad? I was like, I regretted that. No, go ahead. Sorry.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  If there's one thing you might take away from listening to some of the top songs on the charts lately, it's that the pop girlies are sick of men. And NPR Music Editor Hazel Sills told me that this trend has a name: hetero-pessimism.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Hetero-pessimism is basically the phenomenon of, like, expressing embarrassment or fatigue about being a heterosexual. It was also coined in 2019 by the writer Asa Saracen in an article for The New Inquiry. It often comes up, at least I see, in conversations from straight women around, you know, their feelings about being in a heterosexual relationship.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Is your most listened list in 2025 full of the pain that comes from dealing with dudes? Well, buckle up, y'all, because whether you're straight, queer, or anything in between, we are here to complain with you.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  If you're an avid listener of this show, you know that we've been covering a range of stories about love, dating and sex for a while now. From redefining womanhood and questioning gender roles, to unpacking masculinity and steamy hockey TV show hookups, a lot of culture in 2025 has been about how we love, who we love, and how we talk about it. And today, I want to dig into another trend that's been playing out on the pop music charts. Here's a snippet from Sabrina Carpenter's "Man Child."

• 3:09Speaker 03

  And here's Olivia Dean's "Man I Need."

• 3:23Speaker 03

  OK, different vibes, but you could argue that these ideas, ranging from "men are trash and men need to do better" to "please come through for me, please step up," are cut from a similar cloth. And these different approaches coincide with a pretty significant shift in women's mindsets when it comes to romantic love. For instance, earlier this year, I saw so much chatter about a Wall Street Journal article titled, "Are Women Giving Up on Marriage?" We even discussed it on this very show. It was basically about how more women are choosing to be single. So I had to know, how has this strain of heteropessimism made its way into the top 40? And what does it say about where heterosexual women

• 4:08Speaker 03

  are broadly with romance? Editor for NPR Music, Hazel Sills-

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  -is here to break it all down for us.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  I wonder what makes this moment different from sort of previous iterations of Men Are Trash? Even just thinking one example off the top of my head, like, not to sound like a really annoying millennial and rather like hyperbolic about it, but like, there are specific Destiny's Child lyrics that are burned into my brain.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, yeah. No, it's interesting. So you bring up Destiny's Child. I think that this moment is sort of similar to the past, but also different. So when I hear this group of young women singing about relationships, I am reminded of that like late 90s, early 2000s era of R and B when we got like, we got like Say My Name, we got No Scrubs, we got It's Not Right But It's Okay, we got like,

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Oh, he wasn't man enough.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Sorry, I'm like screaming.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  No. That's the type of reaction to that song.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I'm like, yes. And because there was kind of that like girl power streak, you know, in the late 90s, where you had these women who were, you know, writing these just amazingly brutal kiss off songs to these guys who were just like cheating on them or they were broke and, you know, they weren't, they weren't quality. They weren't stepping up. But I do think that this moment is different to me because when I hear these songs, I don't hear you're dead to me because you cheated on me. You're, you're not cool because you're broke. Like, I hear women who are writing very specifically about like inequality in their relationships.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  So there's another song that came out this year by the R and B artist Summer Walker called No. And I think this is a very, very highly underrated song, no matter what you feel about her album Finally Over It. I think this song is, is really good. But in the song, she's basically like, I'm not going to slave over, you know, the stove to make dinner for you and I'm not going to deprioritize myself in this relationship. Like, you need to get used to hearing the word no. Like, That is not a song where she's like, we're breaking up. That is a song where she's like, things need, Boundaries. Yeah, things need to change. And I, so I think that this moment is different because I think,

• 6:38Speaker 02

  you know, we're in this moment right now where women are more aware than ever of those inequities in their relationships, like you guys did an episode earlier this year about, you know, women not getting married. Why aren't they getting married? And it's because, you know, women are more educated these days, like sometimes they're more financially well off than their marital partners in the dating pool. And so I think we're in this moment where women are, you know, more choosier about their partners and are sort of becoming radicalized to what a healthy relationship looks like. It feels like a moment in pop music where women have really internalized all of this rhetoric

• 7:23Speaker 02

  and conversation about, you know, what gender roles should be in a heterosexual relationship and what labor should be emotional or otherwise. And yeah, it's, it's, it's making its way up the charts. It's like in our pop hits.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Coming up. To me, it really does feel like a turning point in this trend and into a like, well, here is what I need. More with Hazel after the break.

• 7:51Speaker 04

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• 8:55Speaker 03

  I'm glad you brought up that song "No" by Summer Walker because it's, if I'm not mistaken, either samples or it has an interpolation of

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  "Yes" by Beyonce, which the song was like, "First time I said no," is like, "I never said yes," is how the lyric goes in that song. It's a much more traditional song. I think it's more about like not wanting to move forward physically in a relationship, which when you talk about "No" by Summer Walker, it feels like it really does feel like not just a, there's not just a thematic sort of building upon that previous moment of girl power and sort of like, you know, pushing back on the men from like 25 years ago. But it also is like a very like literal, it's like building upon it musically, very literally.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, who doesn't love, you know, a great song about how boys are trash? Like, it's a classic. But I think a lot of these women, they're almost writing like mini think pieces in a way in these songs. Like, I just, I think that they are very aware of the online discourse. You know, Sabrina Carpenter is very savvy at this as well, where it's like, if we're talking about, you know, this kind of trend online and in, in culture are, you know, complaining about how their boyfriend is so annoying, then it is in their best interest, right? To record a song, you know, that women can then, you know, pick up kind of like as their own anthem

• 10:24Speaker 02

  and like overlay it on their TikTok videos.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I do think these women are, you know, writing from their own experiences and they're having fun with it. But I do think that there is, um, you know, a benefit to kind of like cashing in on this trend. Like, it's like, it feels like a response to what women are talking about and what they care about right now.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  In an article for NPR Music, you actually compare the pop musings of starlets like Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo with Olivia Dean.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Who, just to keep things straight, because I know we introduced two Olivas to you all. Olivia Dean is a Afro-Caribbean British songstress, who we actually have had on this show before, thank you very much. And she kind of makes sort of pop that feels a little upbeat and nice and easy and is very much about love. And Olivia Rodrigo, who makes, who's like a bit younger, American and makes music that is so reminiscent for me of like the sort of stuff that I liked when, the kind of pop punk that was really popular when I was in middle school or high school. But yeah, what makes Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo's sort of shade of heteropessimism different or kind of related to Olivia Dean's?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think like, you know, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo, they're sort of operating from the stance of like, boys can kick rocks. Like, it's very like, it's very like, Sabrina Carpenter is especially really good at this. Whether you love her or hate her, she is always kind of skewering men in her music and telling them how stupid they are, how they're not living up to her expectations. She has a huge hit this year called Man Child, which is basically, you know, the message of it is like, she's telling a guy, why can you not do anything yourself? Like, why do I have to do everything for you? Why do I have to always pick up after you?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Olivia Dean's song is really fascinating to me because especially coming out in the same year as a song like Man Child, they're kind of expressing at their core the same request, which is like, can you step up to the plate? Like, can you be the man that I need you to be? And Olivia Dean is doing it with this real kind of earnesty and like sweetness and she-

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's real sincerity.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's, she's like, can you please like, open up to me? Like, can you please be, you know, the person that I need in a relationship? And so it really is, like, those two songs for me this year are like two very fascinating sides of the same coin.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  We hear a lot about what these singers don't like, right? Or what they feel like their partners are lacking, to put it a little bit more softly, as some songwriters have been doing. What have they said that they do like in their partners?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  When Sabrina Carpenter sings in Man Child about how, you know, a guy can't do anything right for her. She also has a line in that song where she's like, I like my men all incompetent, which kind of complicates that song, right?

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  You know, I think Olivia Rodrigo's song from a few years ago, Get Him Back, that's a song about all the things she doesn't like about a guy. But it's also kind of like, she kind of does like a little bit of it.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's like that to the title. It's like, does she want to get him back as in like, give him his just desserts? Or does she want to get him back as in like, get him back into her life? Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think like the Olivia Dean song, Man I Need, is probably, you know, to me, it really does feel like a turning point in this trend and into a like, well, here is what I need. And she needs her partner to open up to her. She needs intimacy. She is saying the things that she needs.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Hmm. One last question. How do you see this trend continuing? Or, or do you see it letting up in any way?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  I, I don't see it letting up. I feel like it's going to continue. But I think it's going-

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Until conditions improve?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Well, you're, yeah, to answer your question, whenever men get better, uh, this trend will end. No, I think it'll continue, but I think it will continue to transform. I think that maybe it's going to change and be a little bit softer. You know, because the thing about so much of these songs, it's like, it's not like, I want to be single forever. It's like, I really want to make this work. Like, I want love. I want a relationship, but I have to do it in this weird world with these options. And so I see it continuing because, you know, as you said, heterosexual relationships, still not perfect.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Still a lot of work to be done outside of music. And so as long as that's the reality, like, I think that this music is going to be relevant.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Well, Hazel, I learned so much in this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and talking with us about this. This has been a joy. Thank you for having me.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  That was NPR Music Editor Hazel Sills. Her article, "While the Pop Girl Skewer Boys: Olivia Dean's Man I Need Has Hope", is on the NPR website right now. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Alexis Williams. This episode was edited by Aaron Edwards. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our executive producer is Verilyn Williams. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sanghweni. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.

• 16:08Speaker 04

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