Ariana Grande is in hot water again, this time for appearing to look Asian in a new photoshoot.
TikTok discovered the recent photoshoot and unsurprisingly took it apart, as TikTokers love to do. Several of them said that Grande appeared to look Asian in the images, pointing out that it really didn’t look like the singer at all.
In the photoshoot, Grande sports an oversized blazer, a small white scarf tied around her neck, and sits hugging her knees to her chest. One TikToker, @kuzumi.n, explained the ways Grande appeared Asian in the images. She noted the pop star’s “innocent posing,” “little bows,”, and even the colour of her lipstick as being similar to Asian standards of beauty.
She further compared Grande’s photoshoot to K-pop beauty and the fetishisation of “innocent” Asian women. @kuzumi.n also shared a picture of a K-pop star who looked strikingly similar to Grande. “They look a little too similar. Especially considering that Arian Grande is a white woman,” she insisted.
The TikToker, otherwise known as Niena, met with both approval and resistance from other users. “Genuine question: wrong about what? How could someone even be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when we’re discussing opinions and interpretations?” asked someone. “Ariana knows what she’s doing especially since she loves posing as brown woman for so long,” another countered.
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Oli London, a white influencer who identifies as transracial, praised Grande’s “new Asian look.” “It’s so cute and oriental,” she wrote last week on Twitter.
It’s not the first time Grande has been criticised for her ethnic ambiguity in pictures. She’s been accused of ‘Blackfishing’ (when someone appears to present themselves as Black when they aren’t, through hairstyles or having very tanned skin) by fans in the past, including in her music videos.
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@kuzumi.n Reply to @paige.mantaray this, coupled with the fact that she was black fishing before is why there’s a problem
