Sabrina Carpenter Dips Into “Madonna Monroe’s” Archive Again

While the current and next generations may be (read: are) dumbly, hopelessly unaware of how far-reaching Madonna’s influence remains, Sabrina Carpenter is reminding people, yet again, just how much Ms. Ciccone’s oeuvre, both musically and sartorially, has endured. This achieved by way of her first cover for Vogue, photographed by none other than one of Madonna’s go-to collaborators, Steven Meisel (who also brought us the indelible images in the Sex book). 

In fact, it was Meisel who took the photos back in 1991 for Vogue Italia that Carpenter is so clearly emulating (particularly in the black-and-white pictures). This, it would seem, is Carpenter’s preferred Madonna era—if one is to go on the fact that she already recently paid homage to it by wearing a sample version of the form-fitting, white Bob Mackie gown that M wore to the Oscars in 1991. Yes, that year again…eight years before Ms. Espresso would even be born. 

Nonetheless, Carpenter imitated M’s 1991 Oscars look for her red carpet appearance at the 2024 VMAs (where she also saw fit to pay homage to the kiss between Britney and Madonna at the 2003 VMAs—except with an alien). But obviously, she wasn’t done dipping into that year of Madonna’s archive, which, in turn, had already dipped into Marilyn’s. Indeed, Madonna is the OG when it comes to “repurposing” Marilyn’s look and “blonde bombshell essence.” She started doing it long ago, most notably with 1985’s Mary Lambert-directed “Material Girl” video. It was within that context that Madonna established herself as the premier example of postmodernism in pop culture, taking on the Lorelei Lee role that Marilyn immortalized via “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Howard Hawks’ 1953 classic, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Satirizing the lyrics of “Material Girl” with her visual concept that riffed on this well-known scene of Monroe, Madonna was the blueprint for someone like Carpenter and her own “subversive humor.” Particularly when it comes to “camp-ifying” the sex symbol trope. Something that Marilyn herself did in her own studies of how to be an over-the-top “sex monster.” Except that, unfortunately, back then, it seemed people (namely, men) were incapable of interpreting her tongue-in-cheek approach to “sexy” as anything other than being “spank bank fodder.” Hence, Hugh Hefner making Marilyn his first Playboy centerfold (without her consent, naturally) in 1953—the very year that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released and transformed Monroe into a bona fide (or boner-fied) icon. 

The comedic timing and “little old me?” approach to her sexuality that was solidified in this film is of the sort that Carpenter has made part of her own brand. Yes, she’s raunchy, but she’s also not taking her sex appeal or sexual innuendos seriously. Madonna has exhibited the same flair in her work, though many have often accused her of taking herself too seriously, not seeming to apprehend the undercurrent of irony (e.g., her 1990 Rock the Vote ad for MTV, the majority of her “in between songs” dialogue throughout the Blond Ambition Tour, parodying burlesque acts in The Girlie Show, making fun of her sex symbol image in music videos like “Beautiful Stranger” and poking fun at male machismo with a strip club scene in “Music”—to name a few instances). 

But perhaps because Carpenter is deemed “cuter” (a “living doll,” if you will)/less political, she’s more easily viewed as “funny.” Whatever the reason for Carpenter getting a “pass” compared to Madonna, it’s been to the former’s benefit to be able to cull from the best of both “sexpots’” worlds, taking what she wants from Madonna and Marilyn. That Marilyn hails from a period in pop culture history that Carpenter has gravitated toward for her Short n’ Sweet phase is an additional part of why she’s all over this photoshoot. 

However, back when Madonna channeled Marilyn in Vogue Italia (with the cover story headline being “Madonna Come Marilyn” a.k.a. “Madonna Like Marilyn”), the actress was already a long-standing staple in Madonna’s wheelhouse. The “mood board” she would always return to for aesthetic guidance (doing so as recently as her V Magazine covers photographed by Steven Klein, which caused a stir due to Madonna loosely recreating Marilyn’s [supposed] overdose in one image). It appears that, for Carpenter, Madonna is becoming that constant to her—and Marilyn is just a byproduct of Madonna funneling said muse through her own lens, so to speak. 

And this is why it’s worth bringing up the film Heretic when talking about Carpenter’s homage. Specifically, when Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) goes on and on to the Mormon missionaries (who foolishly drop in to provide more [church-related] information) about “iterations.” Referencing the multitude of religions that have come out of, ultimately, one text, one narrative, Mr. Reed comments on the increasing dilution of an original as it keeps getting “revamped,” therefore mutated, over spans of time. Hence, Mr. Reed’s aphorisms, “These are all iterations of the same source material” and “Iterations. Over time. Diluting the message. Obscuring the original.”

That’s what the latest iteration of Monroe by way of Madonna by way of Carpenter has achieved yet again. It’s another dilution (including with regard to height—perhaps the more diluted, the shorter the girl, with Carpenter being five feet to Madonna’s approximate five-foot-four). And one that even Billie Eilish already turned to in 2021 with her own British Vogue cover (maybe it’s Vogue that’s running out of ideas more than anyone else). Then newly decked out in a corseted pinup look with blonde, curled hair (which was a big deal for Eilish considering that her “style” up to that point had been nothing but baggy clothes rounded out by black tresses topped by a puke green hairline). 

While Madonna might have ignored that similarity, the “tribute” Carpenter gave to her 1991 photoshoot wasn’t lost on M this time around (especially with Meisel as the photog), prompting her to comment on Carpenter’s Instagram post, “Is this a Valentine’s present to me?” In truth, of course, it’s a love letter to Marilyn, a woman whose vampy and campy sex appeal has transcended through the ages. Even though it makes the air of tragedy surrounding Marilyn all the more palpable when considering that her sexiness was taken far too literally by “consumers” of her era. And that’s part of what made her so greatly misunderstood. Even Madonna after her wasn’t (and isn’t) that understood. It’s, apparently, Carpenter who gets the luxury of being universally embraced for her blend of sex and humor.