Sabrina Carpenter’s concerts have become infamous for her “Juno” poses: after singing the sultry lyric, “Have you ever tried this one?”, she demonstrates a position that her listeners might want to bring into the bedroom. Somehow, they always seem to spark controversy — in Paris, she aptly showed off an Eiffel Tower pose with two of her dancers, feeding the internet with a week’s worth of discourse. On April Fools’ Day, she skipped doing a pose at all, and somehow, folks weren’t happy with that choice, either.
Now, at her latest concert in Stockholm, Sweden, Carpenter again incited discourse with her “Juno” pose — and this time, things got gay. Carpenter got on her knees, put her hands in front of her face, then swished her head back and forth while trilling her lips. That’s right: she appeared to be motorboating a woman’s chest.
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Carpenter’s queer fans instantly knew the kind of discourse her move would inspire. Of course, acting out something gay doesn’t necessarily mean Carpenter is gay herself — it’s akin to straight actors playing gay roles, and concerts are performances, after all. Still, watching homophobes do mental backflips to interpret the pose as something other than what it obviously is, all to avoid the idea that Carpenter could ever do something gay, is amusing.
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“Cross-dressing goes back so far, and they always have a problem with it when it’s the gay people,” she pointed out in a viral clip.
Those mental backflips, it turns out, include saying that Carpenter is pretending to be a man motorboating a woman, and suggesting that she’s not motorboating at all, but instead putting her face where the sun doesn’t shine. “I’m not even particularly interested in proving Sabrina is queer or not,” one user remarked. “I just find the complete intellectual dishonesty of homophobes fascinating.”
It’s not Carpenter’s first foray into sapphic “Juno” poses. Last fall, she held her microphone in a way that fans interpreted as a strap-on, earning her the nickname “Strap-brina.” And beyond that one song, who could forget her makeout sesh with a femme alien at the VMAs, inspired by her music video kiss with Jenna Ortega?
One user wondered if Carpenter had finally achieved the goal that was parodied on Saturday Night Live earlier this year: sparking gay allegations. In a Weekend Update skit, cast member Jane Wickline sang . Congratulations, Sabrina — you’ve officially done something indisputably gay.
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