The many controversies of Ariana Grande, from cultural appropriation to unhealthy body image

This week, Wicked hits the cinemas after a colossal multi-million-dollar marketing campaign. Photo / Getty Images

Wicked star Ariana Grande has overcome the trauma of a terrorist attack, intense grief, divorce and wild global fame. But now some fans appear to have turned against her, with online comments the latest in a long string of criticism.

Ariana Grande should be having the best year of her life.

Despite staying out of the spotlight since 2020, her latest album Eternal Sunshine debuted at Number 1 in both the United Kingdom and United States in March, receiving 58.1 million streams on Spotify on its release day Alone.

This week, Wicked – in which Grande, 31, stars as one of the main characters, Glinda – hits the cinemas after a colossal multi-million-dollar marketing campaign. It is already predicted to become one of the biggest box office hits of 2024.

Yet suddenly, no one is talking about Grande’s acting. Instead, her recent red carpet appearances to promote the film have triggered a rush of online comments about her apparent weight loss as her already-petite frame appears thinner than ever.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande co-star in Wicked, one of the year's biggest films.

Shockingly, many fans have openly questioned whether the star could be suffering from an eating disorder, and even speculating as to whether Grande and co-star Cynthia Erivo – who has also, according to fans, lost a significant amount of weight – are competing in a disturbing “skinny off”.

More judgemental fans have accused Grande, who last year defended her weight loss on an Instagram Live video, saying she has never been healthier, of promoting harmful body image standards to the young audience rushing to watch the PG-rated Wicked.

She has, after all, twice been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

It’s the latest in a long line of controversies that have dogged Grande’s career since she found fame on the tween Nickelodeon series Victorious after first appearing on Broadway at 15 and obliterated the girl-next-door image she cultivated on kids’ TV.

After becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 21st century, she was branded a “diva”: rumoured to be difficult to deal with, to have a list of banned interview questions, even to demand she was only photographed from her left side.

Grande has denied it all, yet questions over her lack of judgment have remained.

Most famously in 2015, she was filmed at a bakery licking a doughnut, putting it back on the shelf and declaring, “I hate America”.

She issued an apology, but still lost out on a potential performance at the White House.

Two years later, Grande had just finished a concert in Manchester Arena when a terrorist bomb exploded, killing 22 people.

Despite later revealing she sought therapy to deal with her own PTSD after the event, she was widely praised for returning to the city two months later for a charity concert that raised more than £7 million ($15.06m) for the victims’ families.

She was made an honorary citizen of Manchester and seemed to have won the hearts of the British public for good.

However, by the time she released her fifth studio album Thank U, Next in early 2019, accusations against her became hard to ignore.

Rapper Princess Nokia pointed out the similarities between Grande’s single 7 Rings and her own track Mine, a song about Black women’s hair, tweeting “Sounds about white”.

In a hugely misguided Instagram story, Grande only made it worse, writing “White women talking about their weaves is how we’re gonna solve racism.”

Online, fans criticised Italian-American Grande for “blackfishing”, specifically by appearing to change her voice and even tanning so deeply that many had long assumed she was Black or Latino.

Her music videos, ever-more RnB sound and even her ‘blaccent’ have since all been held up as evidence Grande had appropriated Black culture as a marketing tool.

Especially now she has chosen to promote Wicked around the world dressed almost identically to her character Glinda, with bleached blonde hair, sugar-pink ballgowns and ghostly pale skin.

Like almost every other female star, it’s Grande’s love life that comes under the most intense scrutiny. Having become famous in the age of social media, her relationships have been endlessly dissected online.

Most have seemed messy at best. None have done her already-chequered reputation much good.

In 2013, Australian singer and YouTuber Jai Brooks publicly accused Grande of cheating on him with The Wanted boyband star Nathan Sykes.

Once again, Grande refused to stay silent and let the story blow over, ultimately only drawing more attention to it. In a series of tweets refuting Brooks’s claims, she clapped back that she “will never be any man’s press opportunity”, but did go on to date Sykes for three months, conveniently coinciding with the release of their duet, Almost Is Never Enough.

She moved on to a relationship with rapper Big Sean, who had called off his engagement to Glee actress Naya Rivera a matter of months before. Rivera later wrote in her autobiography that she had found Grande in her fiancé’s home then later found out their wedding was cancelled on the internet.

Other relationships have attracted criticism for other reasons, albeit unfairly. After Grande split with rapper Mac Miller in 2018, he tragically died of a presumed accidental drug overdose four months later, causing some to cruelly blame his ex.

Some cruelly blamed Grande for Miller's demise. Photo / Getty Images

Later, her highly-public 155-day relationship with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson was dismissed by many as little more than an elaborate PR stunt.

To Vogue, however, Grande described the relationship as “an amazing distraction… It was frivolous and fun and insane and highly unrealistic, and I loved him, and I didn’t know him.”

More recently, the ongoing controversy over Grande’s personal life has risked derailing Wicked’s unstoppable marketing juggernaut. Within two years of her surprise low-key wedding to luxury estate agent Dalton Gomez in 2021, Grande had moved on with her Wicked co-star and current partner, Ethan Slater.

Around the same time, Slater filed for divorce from his wife, Lilly Jay, with whom he had recently had his first child. Grande appeared unfazed by the apparently questionable timeline, although releasing a single titled The Boy Is Mine (“Promise you I’m not usually like this… but I can’t ignore my heart”) in June seemed thoughtless.

“Not a girl’s girl,” Jay later said of Grande. “My family is just collateral damage.”

When speaking to Vanity Fair last year, Grande dismissed the “bullsh-t tabloids” as “rewriting” the narrative, saying that “the most disappointing part was to see so many people believe the worst version of it”.

Within two years of her wedding to Dalton Gomez, Grande had moved on with her Wicked co-star and current partner, Ethan Slater. Photo / Instagram

With Wicked now in cinemas and potential Oscar nominations due in January, Grande is unlikely to answer back this time.

She will want attention focused firmly on the film, rather than her relationship or body, and is even likely to continue dressing like her character off-screen to keep all eyes on her for the right reasons.

Grande has already overcome the damaging effects of child stardom, dealt with the unimaginable trauma of a terrorist attack and weathered death, divorce and intense global fame. It will take more than the odd controversy (or three) to hold her back.