I have to say I do not usually engage in celebrity gossip, but there was something about the Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan saga that had me roped in.
It is worth mentioning that I am a fan of Sabrina’s music, but what struck me about the news that Keoghan and Carpenter had broken up was the furore it arose and almost united opposition against Barry for rumourably cheating. As a subsequent statement from Keoghan which was posted across his social media revealed, this reaction clearly went too far over the line, and whilst I am vehemently abhorred by such behaviour by people online, this is not the subject of this article.
I am generalising a tad here, but so much of the reaction I saw online boiled down to, “I can’t believe Barry would cheat on someone as attractive as Sabrina!” This kind of response really irked me. Firstly, cheating is never okay, and I am unaware of a culture that finds cheating (or having sexual/romantic connections with another person without the consent of your partner/s) socially acceptable. Yet, it seems to me that people are only reacting so strongly to the ending of this relationship because Sabrina is deemed conventionally attractive. This to me speaks quite significantly of today’s society and how the general public view ‘beauty’.
Secondly, I also do think that the reactions of a lot of women in relationships with men to this news reveal deep insecurities that men will leave them because they no longer find them attractive and will move onto another woman. Again, this reveals another problem with today’s society, that too many people are trapped into thinking that relationships are purely based on the aesthetical or the sexual. This is not helped by programs like Love Island or social media sites like TikTok that push unrealistic body expectations on girls and women of all ages.
I recognise that I am generalising here, any news related to either Sabrina Carpenter or Barry Keoghan will promote a big response because they’re big celebrities and are both respected artists within their respective fields of music and acting. The reaction to their relationship ending will also be down to the fact that Sabrina’s smash hit song Please Please Please was literally about her hard-launching her relationship with Barry (and having him star in the video) and was about not wanting her insecurities to be proven right, which clearly they since have been. Regardless, Sabrina being proven right just shows what is wrong with today’s society in my opinion, and whilst that may mean great hits from her (sidenote I have recently discovered her2023 Christmas EP and it’s amazing) in future, I am still concerned about society’s views on relationships and cheating.
To wrap up, if indeed Barry did cheat on Sabrina, then that is totally wrong and idiotic. But not because Sabrina is famous or a conventionally attractive woman, cheating is wrong full stop. What this relationship and the reaction to its break-up reveals is yet another example of how present-day society promotes relationships based on purely shallow things like looks.