Throughout her years in the spotlight, Ariana Grande has cultivated a signature look. She’s become synonymous with her sky high ponytail, winged eyeliner, oversized sweater and high-pitched voice. Everyone is familiar with Ariana Grande’s look, but that doesn’t mean she’s okay with your impersonations of it.
In a since-deleted Instagram story, Grande reposted a video of filmmaker Jordan Firstman criticising impressions. In one video captioned “this is my impression of a meme,” Firstman said, “what if we, like, we took a moment, like a small clip from a movie or TV show. Something that, like, an artist has really poured their soul into, and it like, it just took them years to make…What if we took a moment from that, and we kind of like, recontextualised it – like, does that make sense? And we put a completely arbitrary meaning onto that thing that the artist loves so much? Kind of like, degrading its entire value.”
Alongside Firstman’s video, Grande wrote, “omg can this please also double as your impression of the pony tail TikTok girls who think doing that Cat Valentine voice and wearing winged eyeliner and a sweatshirt is doing a good impersonation of me…cause this really how it feels.”
“‘Degrading it’s entire value’ I screamed,” she added.
It’s not the first time Ariana Grande has clapped back at fan impressions of her. Last year, TikTok star Paige Niemann made headlines for her striking resemblance to the singer, and her spot-on impersonations of Grande’s character Cat Valentine from the Disney show Victorious.
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Grande retweeted a TikTok of Niemann and wrote, “I just wonder whyyy the cat voice/dialogue. I am sure she is the sweetest sweet sweetheart forreal!! But it’s definitely bizarre seeing people blend the two worlds.”
It seems that the squeaky Cat Valentine voice is what bothers Ariana Grande about the impressions most of all. In a Instagram post celebrating the 10th anniversary, Grande wrote, “I really loved playing Cat Valentine (even though sometimes people think I actually still speak and act like that and her essence will lovingly haunt me ‘til I die).”
There’s no doubt the endless TikTok impersonations would get old after a while, but Grande has two options: either ignore it, or embrace it and laugh – like the Jonas Brothers do.
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