During a cruise when Ariana Grande (33) was eight years old, she had the opportunity to showcase her powerful voice in a performance that was highly praised by producer Emilio Estefan. Since then, the artist has revered the figure of Gloria Estefan, whom she considers her great muse.
Ariana's voice is a divine gift. She has the range of a light lyric soprano and a four-octave range that allows her to go from low notes to whistle registers. When she moved from Florida to New York at fifteen, she quickly tasted success with the Broadway musical 13, which allowed her to seek new opportunities in Los Angeles, where she became a teen idol with her role as Cat Valentine in 'Victorious' and its spin-off Sam & Cat (2013-2014), two of Nickelodeon's main series.
Finally, in 2013, she released the single The Way, which rose to number one seven hours after its release and several months later released her first album Yours Truly, which also topped the Billboard chart. To date, she has seven albums, with Petal being the latest released at the end of this past July. In total, she has sold over 90 million copies, making her one of the most successful solo artists in history.
Nothing has eluded the music star in her career. A national American idol for almost two decades, she finally landed her first leading role in film with the acclaimed musical 'Wicked' (2024), which out of the ten Oscar nominations, only won two awards.
The evolution of her artistic career has brought about a profound physical transformation that, with the influence of social media, public scrutiny has become such a torment that she recently announced through People magazine that she was taking a long professional break.
The last straw has been the negative comments on YouTube after many fans watched the music video for Petal. Some of these comments were "I can see her whole skeleton. This is not right", "she is surrounded by enablers. Eating disorders are not a joke" and "it's not about wanting the old Ariana back. It's about wanting her to be healthy".
Also, during the promotion of the two parts of Wicked, she had to endure repeated questions about her extreme thinness, which at times led her to tears in front of the cameras.
As her representative announced to 'People', the actress and singer will temporarily leave the public eye after finishing her Eternal Sunshine tour on September 1st in London. "She is looking forward to finishing the tour and ending on a high note, both in good health and happiness, and then taking a well-deserved break from public commitments and appearances, which have generated constant and endless public scrutiny," it is stated.
The truth is that very little remains of that teenage girl with long curly hair who used to pose showing her right side of the face and who for years has only done so with the left side because it is assumed that is where her dimple is. A quirk that Julio Iglesias also has.
That hair belongs to a bygone era because as she confessed on her Facebook account in 2014 "I had to bleach and dye my hair red every two weeks for the first four years I played Cat (...) As you can imagine, that completely destroyed my hair". This situation led her to start using wigs, extensions, and her famous ponytail.
From the 2010s, two distinctive features of her image were eyes lined with black eyeliner without her characteristic wing from later years, and peach-colored lip gloss. As for clothing, there was also a significant change as she gradually moved away from bubblegum pink tones.
During her attendance at the 2013 Radio Disney Awards, the first hints of the high ponytail for which she is now completely recognized began to emerge. The following year, she popularized the high ponytail with increasingly daring designs that exposed her abdomen. Additionally, she stopped using the typical hair bows to let her hair move freely.
By 2015, the winged eyeliner also became her main distinctive feature.
Her weight is another story, as she has always been the subject of comments since she entered the spotlight. But it should be noted that the star is 153 cm tall and has a petite build, but for reasons unknown as it is strictly a private matter, Grande has fluctuated in weight, leading to almost destructive criticism. Therefore, she has earnestly requested that public comments about her body be avoided.
In this painful moment, she has the support of her entire family and, for a time, her former husband, Dalton Gomez, a luxury real estate agent from whom she separated in 2023 after almost two years of marriage. The couple did not have children.