The Talk Hosts Debate Sabrina Carpenter’s Suggestive Dances on Tour

Sabrina Carpenter leaves quite an impression on stage, but not all of them have been positive to parents.

Throughout the U.S. leg of her Short ’N Sweet Tour that wrapped last weekend, Carpenter, 25, made waves for her risqué outfits — including bedazzled lingerie — and suggestive lyrics and choreography. While singing “Juno,” Carpenter even pantomimes a sex position at one point.

Carpenter, a former Disney Channel starlet, has a number of young fans who are eager to attend the shows but it turns out that many of their parents are often shocked by certain moves. Jenna Dewan, for example, recently shared Instagram footage of herself covering 11-year-old daughter Everly’s eyes during “Juno” at one of the Los Angeles shows.

The online criticism reached The Talk in a Thursday, November 21, clip, in which the panelists disagreed on whether Carpenter should have tempered her moves to accommodate younger audiences.

“Sabrina Carpenter is 25 years old [and] I think at 25 years old, she’s giving a concert, she is old enough to give the concert that she wants to give,” Amanda Kloots said. “I think that if there are young people that love her music, you can listen to her music. It’s up to the parents [who] are buying those tickets to decide if they should take their kids to that concert.”

While some of Kloots’ fellow Talk hosts concurred, Akbar Gbajabiamila took an opposing point of view.

“You know, my kids just hit me up and said, ‘Hey Dad, I want to go to this concert and can we go together?’ Oh, yeah, sure, and then they send me all the dates, and I start looking at it and it was, like, Tyler the Creator and Lil Yachty,” Gbajabiamila, 45, recalled. “I’m like, ‘Who the heck is that?’ No disrespect to them, but I don’t know Tyler the Creator and Lil Yachty.”

Gbajabiamila further pointed out that he is busy raising his family — he shares four kids with wife Chrystal — to “look up what type” of concert every artist performs to gauge levels of appropriateness based on a child’s age.

“No parent is recalling Googling what the artist is or who the artist is and what’s in their show,” the NFL alum explained. “I think there’s a responsibility, especially if you know your audience. It’d be like us coming on this show and knowing that we have a certain demo and yet we’re saying something totally different from what our demo is looking for.”

He added, “We do have a responsibility to know as entertainers to know your audience, right? You know, like, I’m not gonna drop a Lil Yachty reference [on The Talk] if our viewers are older, but I might drop a Bill Withers or something like that.”

Carpenter has not publicly addressed the backlash to her suggestive Short ’N Sweet performances, but previously cited her songwriting as “authentic.”

“When I was younger, I think I’d almost feel pressure to write about mature subject matter because of the people around you being like, ‘This is something that is cool and what works,’” the Grammy nominee told Rolling Stone in a profile published in June. “I didn’t do it until I felt like it was actually authentic to me.”

She added, “Those real moments where I’m just a 25-year-old girl who’s super horny are as real as when I’m going through a heartbreak and I’m miserable and I don’t feel like a person.”