As part of Vogue’s “Beauty Secrets” interview, singer, actress, and makeup mogul, Ariana Grande, revealed that she’s both had and reversed some light plastic surgery.
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In a self-filmed tutorial, Grande walked Vogue and fans through her skincare and makeup routine. When it came time to put on a lip stain and gloss, however, Grande acknowledged that she had gotten lip fillers and Botox throughout her career. “Full transparency, as a beauty person, as I do my lips, I've had a ton of lip filler over the years, and Botox” she chuckled. “I stopped in 2018 'cause I just felt so… too much. I just felt like hiding, you know?" She continued on to joke that she was having a mini-therapy session, saying, “these are just thoughts that I feel like we should be able to discuss. If we're sitting here talking about beauty secrets, f*** it, let's lay it all out there.”
Earlier in the video, Grande explained how she links each character she’s played, starting at eight years old in theater, with a different makeup kit. “And then in music, I don't know, like a different look for each song and video,” she recalled. “It became such an important piece of the puzzle, and it's such an important part of being an artist and of storytelling.”
As she continued on with her step-by-step makeup process, Grande also revealed that her makeup began as a kind of defense mechanism and a way to obscure herself from scrutiny. “Being exposed to so many voices at a young age, and especially when people have, like, things to say about your appearance and stuff at a young age, it's like really hard to know what's worth hearing and not," the "Rain on Me" singer admitted. "I used makeup as a disguise or something to hide behind.” Since then, she has found a “love” for makeup and appreciates it as its own art and process- even launching and maintaining her own makeup line, r.e.m. beauty.
Thus, she cites her own relationship with beauty in its entirety as having “changed so much over the years,” especially concerning plastic surgery or fillers. “For a long time, beauty was about hiding for me, and now I feel like maybe it's not,” Grande said, fighting through misty eyes. “Since I stopped getting fillers and Botox — and maybe I'll start again one day, I don't know, to each their own, whatever makes you feel beautiful, I do support — but I know for me, I was just like, 'oh, I wanna see my well-earned cry lines and smile lines.' I hope my smile lines get deeper and deeper and I laugh more and more. And I just think aging… can be such a beautiful thing."
It’s clear that Ariana Grande knows how to "Break Free" from public expectations and has found her own way into beauty. You can check out the full tutorial interview above, and make sure to reminisce on her music career with Audacy’s Ariana Grande Radio.