Ariana Grande discusses her advocacy for female pop stars and her commitment to avoiding unnecessary drama.
Like all female pop stars entering adulthood these days, Ariana Grande’s under pressure to not only prove herself grown and 𝑠e𝑥y, but that she’s somehow lifting up herself and other women as she does…
But in Ariana Grande’s world, things are always a bit more complex — odder? — than they first seem. After delivering this little coming-of-age log line, for example, she points her big eyes up at the ceiling in search of a kicker and comes out with this: “And she has a black latex Super Bunny within!” (More on that in a moment.) Once Grande — a former Nickelodeon star and gifted comic actress who expertly impersonates other pop stars on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — warms up, the barely furnished house begins to feel less like a conference center and more like an acting studio. During our talk she dramatically bats her lashes and flashes an exaggerated grin, all with self-aware elan. She also does a perfectly mealy-mouthed impression of rapper Future and breaks into “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne. But the best is her Jurassic Park velociraptor: She curls her fingers into claws, hunches and does a Wookiee-like growl: “Hrrrrlll!”
As a matter of fact, Grande appears on the cover of Dangerous Woman in shiny black headgear with long ears. It looks like it was designed for American Horror Story by the cartoonists at Warner Bros. The Super Bunny “is my superhero, or supervillain — whatever I’m feeling on the day,” says Grande. “Whenever I doubt myself or question choices I know in my gut are right — because other people are telling me other things — I’m like, ‘What would that bad bitch Super Bunny do?’ She helps me call the shots.”
Whether owing to her gut, her team or her alter-egos, it has been a grand career for Grande so far. With her March hit “Dangerous Woman” — a sultry R&B track with a self-empowerment message and an arena-annihilating hook — Grande became the first artist in Billboard Hot 100 history to have the lead single of each of her first three albums debut in the top 10. She has sold 1.3 million albums in the United States, according to Nielsen Music; grossed $41.8 million on 2015’s Honeymoon Tour, according to Billboard Boxscore; claims 4 billion YouTube views; clocks in at fourth among all humans on Instagram (with 71.4 million followers) and 18th on Twitter (38.8 million); and will kick off her album release with a performance at the Billboard Music Awards on May 22. And, she says, “I feel like I’m still just getting started — a lot of people forget I’m only three years in.”
Grande’s challenge is with her quote unquote brand. Like all female pop stars entering adulthood these days, she’s under pressure to not only prove herself grown and 𝑠e𝑥y, but that she’s somehow lifting up herself and other women as she does it. And in her bid to be taken seriously, she has more to overcome than many of her peers. The world first met her as Cat Valentine, the adorably dopey character at the heart of two Nickelodeon teen sitcoms (the second, Sam & Cat, ended in 2014), and she hasn’t quite shaken off that childlike sheen. Her tiny stature (she’s just 5 feet tall), love of Harry Potter (she describes Super Bunny as “my patronus”) and all the animal-themed, Lolita-meets-S&M gear don’t exactly help. Neither did getting caught on a bakery security camera in 2015 licking pastries that weren’t hers while declaring, “I hate America.”
Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Grande, Sasheer Zamata, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer and Aidy Bryant in the “This Is Not a Feminist Song” SNL sketch in March.
Still, Grande’s feminism is clearly no put-on. “Do you want to see something I saved to my phone because it upset me so much?” she asks me. It’s a collection of tweets from a U.K. radio station with a salacious streak — two praise Justin Bieber and Zayn Malik for showing skin, and two scold Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian for the same. “If you’re going to rave about how 𝑠e𝑥y a male artist looks with his shirt off,” says Grande, “and a woman decides to get in her panties or show her boobies for a photo shoot, she needs to be treated with the same awe and admiration. I will say it until I’m an old-ass lady with my tits out at Whole Foods. I’ll be in the produce aisle, naked at 95, with a sensible ponytail, one strand of hair left on my head and a Chanel bow. Mark my words. See you there with my 95 dogs.”
In June, Grande tweeted a screen grab of an essay she wrote about her budding independence, capped with a 1971 Steinem quote: “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. She will need her sisterhood.”
