Sabrina Carpenter’s performance at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, which included drag performers and onstage protest signs advocating for trans rights, split viewers on Sunday night, drawing both praise from supporters and criticism that the presentation fetishized the trans community.
Carpenter, 26, performed a rendition of her single “Tears” at the UBS Arena in New York that included a choreographed dance break in artificial rain and background dancers carrying placards reading messages such as “In trans we trust,” “Support drag” and “Protect trans rights.” The set featured drag performers including Honey Balenciaga, Symone, Dashaun Wesley and Richie Shazam. The song opens with explicit lyrics — “I get wet at the thought of you / Being a responsible guy / Treating me like you're supposed to do / Tears run down my thighs” — that some viewers cited when criticizing the staging.
Comments on social media and in online forums were sharply divided. Some viewers called the performance a forceful, visible expression of support for trans rights. Others said the sexualized presentation and use of drag performers risked reducing transgender identity to spectacle. One critic wrote on social media that the staging had a “weird fetishizing aspect,” while another accused the performance of being “performative” activism rather than substantive support. A separate commentator referenced a recent school shooting in Minneapolis and said the timing felt insensitive.
Carpenter returned later in the broadcast to accept the Moon Person for Best Album for Short N Sweet, one of three awards she won during the ceremony. In her acceptance speech she thanked “my queens on stage” and told the audience she was grateful to make music that can “bring you light, make you smile, make you dance.” She also referenced the prevalence of “criticism and discrimination and negativity,” words some viewers interpreted as a political remark aimed at the current administration.
Supporters of the performance defended Carpenter’s choices, arguing that high-profile stages are appropriate venues to show solidarity with marginalized communities. “Defending trans rights” and visible allyship were cited by several commenters as reasons to applaud the set.
The VMAs, broadcast annually by MTV, have long mixed entertainment with statements on social and political issues. This year’s ceremony awarded top honors across a broad field that included Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny and others. Earlier in the evening, Carpenter arrived on the red carpet in a glittering red lace gown and later performed in a sparkly fringe outfit she removed to reveal a bra-and-tights look during the rain-soaked choreography.
Critics who described the performance as fetishizing pointed to the combination of hyper-feminine imagery, sexualized lyrics and the prominence of drag performers as elements that, in their view, risked reducing gender expression to an eroticized costume. Defenders responded that the presence of drag artists and visible pro-trans messaging signaled allyship at a time when transgender rights remain a contentious issue in U.S. politics and media.
MTV and Carpenter’s representatives did not immediately issue extended statements addressing the backlash. The discourse around the performance echoed wider debates over celebrity activism, the responsibility of entertainers to support causes materially as well as symbolically, and where the line lies between artistic expression and exploitation.
The 2025 VMAs also featured tributes and awards throughout the night: Ariana Grande won Video of the Year for Brighter Days Ahead, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars took Best Collaboration, and Mariah Carey received the Video Vanguard Award. Carpenter’s Best Album win placed her among the ceremony’s most awarded artists of the evening.
As the conversation continued online, advocates and critics alike used the moment to press competing views about how public figures should engage with political and social issues onstage. The incident underscored the tensions that can arise when entertainment intersects with activism in widely broadcast forums.