“Thank u, next” to racial identity: pop star Ariana Grande’s record of racebending

I asked 40 people: what race is Ariana Grande? The answers were inconclusive, with answers ranging from Latina, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern. The pop artist, known for her ponytail hairstyle and whistle tones, was at one point the most followed woman on Instagram and has been one of the biggest names in the music industry for the last decade. Although the confusion surrounding her racial background stems from her outward appearance, her genetics are of little influence.  

Grande is ethnically fully European-American, of Italian descent specifically, yet continually transforms herself to embody phenotypes that diverge from European features. From her beginnings as a Broadway performer and child actor in Nickelodeon’s Victorious (2010), Grande appeared in her natural, unevolved form–with pale skin and large, round eyes. Yet as her career in music expanded, so did her alleged ethnic background. While Grande doesn’t explicitly claim to be a member of any particular minority, her fashion, makeup, and vernacular suggest otherwise; she shapeshifts into whatever race seems ‘trendy’ at the time and allows people to believe that it’s her identity.

Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj perform at 2016 VMA Awards. Photo by Jeff Kravits, Getty Images

Blackfishing, a form of racebending, is a term coined by writer Wanna Thompson to describe the phenomenon of non-Black people who, through the use of make-up, tanning, and hairstyles, appear to be Black or mixed race. The problematic nature of blackfishing draws parallels to cultural appropriation, in which a majority group steals elements of a minority culture in an exploitative way. Considering Grande is a pop star who frequents the charts, with hundreds of awards and millions of fans, the profitability of her image is crucial to her success. Grande uses her image to make a profit, and when that includes blackfishing, it is at the expense of marginalized groups. Treating Blackness as a costume, Grande “dresses up” when her career may benefit from its aesthetic; she joins this disturbing trend alongside many white celebrities in history who profit from Black culture. 

To illustrate the extent of Grande’s blackfishing, we can look to the 2016 MTV VMA awards, where Ariana Grande performs “Side to Side” (2016) alongside popular female rapper Nicki Minaj. Photos taken of the performance reveal Grande’s self-tanned skin to appear darker than the complexion of Nicki Minaj, a Black woman. Beyond the excessive tanning, Ariana Grande has also been called out for sporting a ‘blaccent’, a term for non-Black individuals emulating African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Comparisons from the rather white, Floridian accent of her adolescence to some of her 2018 interviews are quite jarring. We also see her drop the use of AAVE in the 2020s–further proof that it was never natural to her, only an accessory–once she later embraces a K-pop influence.

Ariana Grande, photo by Katia Temkin via Instagram

Unfortunately, Grande’s notoriety of blackfishing is precedented by various offenses of racebending. In her acceptance speech for Billboard’s Woman of the Year award in 2018, Grande joked by thanking the audience for “coming to [her] quinceañera.” Considering her Italian descent, it’s unlikely she has any personal connection to the traditionally Latin American celebration. Grande’s hypothetical quinceañera is not without context, though, as she is often mistaken for being Latina due to her artificial tan, name of Italian origin, and comments like that in her acceptance speech. Her stage name of Ariana Grande could in itself be calculated, as her legal last name is Grande-Butera, with Grande being her mother’s maiden name. 

In recent years, alongside the rise of K-pop’s mainstream popularity, Grande has been called out for instances of racebending once again—this time, for asian-fishing. As a precursor to her insensitivities, in 2019, Grande posted her new tattoo in Japanese which was meant to read “7 rings” after her song of the same name, but her poorly researched Japanese actually translated to ‘bbq grill’—a blatant example of the consequences of exploiting cultures for aesthetics while putting little effort into understanding them.

In a viral photoshoot of last year, which Grande has since deleted from her Instagram, her makeup lacks the overly tanned and bronzed look she is known for—rather, she has pale skin, straight brows, and pink lipstick reminiscent of K-beauty trends. The area of most concern, though, is the use of makeup to change her eye shape. While this instance might be more subtle than her excessive tanning and use of AAVE, Grande undoubtedly changed her appearance in this photoshoot to be almost unrecognizable upon first glance, and it is especially concerning given her track record of blackfishing. Stealing elements of fashion, style, and even dialects are all part of cultural appropriation, and the intentional use of makeup, plastic surgery or other beauty products in order to appear as another race is known as ‘racebending,’ both of which are increasingly normalized in the music industry by artists like Grande.

While few artists get away with such behavior and maintain the platform that Grande does, she isn’t alone in the music industry when it comes to racebending. Bebe Rexha, Bhad Bhabie and Jesy Nelson are all singers who have been accused of blackfishing, typically for over tanning and appropriating Black hairstyles. In response to the racebending allegations, Nelson, a white British woman, released a statement; “I would never intentionally do anything to make myself look racially ambiguous, so that’s why I was initially shocked that the term [blackfishing] was directed at me.” For those accused of racebending, the default defense is insisting that the deliberate choices to alter their image were entirely unintentional. Echoing Nelson’s statement, Grande gave a non-apology as well, “it was never my intention to hurt anyone,” she commented on an Instagram post by The Shade Room. 

Jesy Nelson via Instagram @jesynelson

Eurocentric beauty standards—the standards of beauty in society revolving around proximity to whiteness and distance from ethnic features—have ruled in society for centuries, a lasting consequence of imperialism. However, recently in response to this norm, ethnic features and appearing ethnically ambiguous or mixed race, has become a trend in modern media. The recent surge in big-name artists racebending, like Grande, is inspired by the appeal of appearing ‘exotic’, a sentiment rooted in otherization and racialization. In the same vein that white artists have failed to give credit to Black artists who created entire genres like jazz and rock and roll, white artists imitate Black culture when it proves to be innovative and revolutionary to industry. Big-name mainstream artists form a white dominated space, and they embody different ethnic minorities when it serves as marketable and profitable. The hardships of being a minority, though, will never be experienced by white artists—they can and will shed the self-tan and ethnic features at a moment’s notice. 

Article and Design by Nadia Laswi

Ariana Grande at 2016 AMAs by Jeff Kravitz via Filmmagic, Ariana Grande at MTV VMAs by Anthony Harvey via Getty Images, Young Ariana Grande by Michael Tran via Getty Images, Ariana Grande photoshoot by Katia Temkin via Instagram