Ariana Grande posed for the cover of Vogue and she was missing things from her signature look. She wore a huge black sun hat over her notorious ponytail. However, that is not why the singer looks so different, she is also not wearing her thick black eyeliner. Who knew the cat eyes make such a difference, but on her they do.
I almost didn’t recognize her. But that is Annie Leibovitz thing. She finds a way to make her subjects shine, and that is definitely what she did here. The iconic photographer also turned the camera on Grande’s best friend. Grande had this to say about the shoot, “my favorite part of all of this is how much Annie loved shooting Toulouse and wanted him in the shot… i was like ‘am i doing this right? i’m not a model at all, is this okay?’ and she was like ‘omg yea you’re actually done but if i could have a moment more of Toulouse’s time’.”
You cannot have a cover without a story. She talks about how her life has changed since the Manchester bombing that left 23 of her concertgoers dead in May of 2017. When asked about it, she humbly says, “It’s not my trauma.” Then she continued with tears in her eyes, “It’s those families’. It’s their losses, and so it’s hard to just let it all out without thinking about them reading this and reopening the memory for them.”
Then she paused to add, “I’m proud that we were able to raise a lot of money with the intention of giving people a feeling of love or unity, but at the end of the day, it didn’t bring anyone back. Everyone was like, Wow, look at this amazing thing, and I was like, What the f*ck are you guys talking about? We did the best we could, but on a totally real level we did nothing. I’m sorry. I have a lot to say that could probably help people that I do want to share, but I have a lot that I still need to process myself and will probably never be ready to talk about. For a long time I didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything, because I didn’t want to think about anything. I kind of just wanted to bury myself in work and not focus on the real stuff, because I couldn’t believe it was real. I loved going back into the studio with Pharrell because he just has this magical outlook on everything. He truly believes that the light is coming. And I’m like, Bruh, is it, though?”
A little over a year later, her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller died from an accidental drug overdose. At the time she was having a whirlwind relationship with Pete Davidson, that ended a few months after that. You can understand why she cannot see the light, just yet.
Over the weekend, my friends bashed her and I would not allow it. Before Machester, she was a brat. Afterward, she grew up and she is becoming a good woman. She is still processing everything she has gone through in the last two years. Can you blame her for needing more time to heal? It took me years to get over several deaths including my grandmother, our first cat and nearly myself in a short amount of time, and even I cannot imagine what she is going through.
She is trying to make a difference. I think in time she will. She is still mending, and luckily she has a support system to get her through it.
