Ariana Grande: I wear ‘more fake hair than every drag queen combined’

Ariana Grande

These are photos of Ariana Grande shopping at the Chanel store in Hollywood on Saturday. I don’t know much about Ariana except that she’s an entertaining interview subject who waxes rhapsodic about textbook demons and has the good sense to avoid a pap walk with Miley Cyrus. If she starred in a Disney Channel show instead of a Nickelodeon one (Victorious), I’d probably know too much about her. She’d probably also be a bigger mess because Disney kids tend to have even more issues than those featured on other channels. So I am usually ambivalent about Ms. Ariana.

What I am fascinated about is the discussion of fake hair in Hollywood. So many actresses and singers do not wear their real hair by any stretch. They either go with wigs or wear tons of extensions. The ones who do have real hair usually end up getting frustrated at all the damage and then cut it off like Jennifer Lawrence. Now Ariana reveals that her own damaged hair has driven her to drastic measures. She lives in permanent extension and ponytail land, and she’s tired of people giving her a hard time for it:

Since people give me such a hard time about my hair I thought I’d take the time to explain the whole situation to everybody. I had to bleach my hair and dye it red every other week for the first 4 years of playing Cat… as one would assume, that completely destroyed my hair. I now wear a wig on Sam & Cat. My real hair is back to brown and I wear extensions but I wear it in a pony tail because my actual hair is so broken that it looks absolutely rachet and absurd when I let it down. I tried wigs, they looked RIDICULOUS. Tried a weave because I am working on a new project and want to try some different looks and literally wanted to rip my scalp off. So as annoying as it is for y’all to have to look at the same hair style all the time, it’s all that wroks [sic] for now (AND I’m comfortable for the first time in years)…. And trust me, it’s even more difficult for me to have to wait forever for my natural hair to grow back and to have to wear more fake hair than every drag queen on earth combined. So PLEASE gimme a break about the hair (or just don’t look at me lol). IT’S JUST HAIR AFTER ALL. There are way way way more important things. Love y’all very much.

[From Ariana Grande on Instagram]

I didn’t know people were giving Ariana a hard time for wearing her “hair” in a partial ponytail every day. Are these her fans or internet trolls or both? Whatever the case, I do sympathize with her. My own hair is damaged from two years of consecutive highlights, so it’s in a full-on ponytail nearly every day. I wanted to dye over the highlights, but I’m so afraid of ending up with green hair (because of a traumatizing blonde-to-brown experience in my teenage years). Plus you can’t fix damage with more dye. It’s crazy that we worry so much about silly hair, right? Like Ariana says, there are more important things we should all worry about instead.

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande

Photos courtesy of WENN

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54 Responses to “Ariana Grande: I wear ‘more fake hair than every drag queen combined’”

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  1. jinni says:

    Disney should have provided her with a wig instead destroying her hair. Also, I think people are annoyed with her hair mostly because it adds to her whole Lolita look which a lot of people find creepy, especially after seeing her original first album cover (major pedo vibes). I’m sure if she started dressing in a more mature but feminine way, instead of looking like an over grown Toddler and Tiara pageant contestant the majority of the time, people wouldn’t go in on her so hard.

    • WayPastMyBedtime says:

      It wasn’t Disney, but Nickelodeon (I don’t know how you spell it, though 😀 )
      But yeah, I agree with you.

    • Leila in wunderland says:

      I don’t get any sort of creepy vibe from her style at all. It makes me think of the sweetloli look, but not in any pedo way. I kind of like it. Not many other pop stars are doing it right now.

    • Dizzle says:

      I agree 100%. Give the girl a wig and save the hair. And she has an AMAZING voice, first time I heard her on the radio I thought it was Mariah. Shame her marketing peeps have to go the pedo route.

    • Brittaki says:

      Good on her for being honest, though. So many celebrities would have us believe they pranced out of the womb looking the way they do, with no help from a large team of style professionals.

    • CJ says:

      I think for her though, no matter how she dresses, how much makeup she wears, she is just one of those people who will always look really young. My friend has that issue. She’s 29 and looks about 14. She just looks very young.

  2. Anna says:

    I just love that among all those celebs calling out – always anonymously! – other celebs for being fake, AG totally owns up to it herself!

    • Erinn says:

      I agree. Though, I wish she didn’t do the exact same pose/closed mouth smile on every magazine cover I’ve seen of her. She looks so insecure most of the time.

  3. Dani2 says:

    I just can’t with her perpetual “I’m about to cry” face. She’s got a lot of talent but that constant “close to tears” face is annoying.

    • SonjaMarmeladova says:

      That face is very annoying, but I’m warming up to her. She’s not my type of music, but I heard her sing and she can sing. She has talent, unlike Selena Gomez or other starlets who have careers just because they’re pretty.

    • QQ says:

      Yes Dani i too always feel like yelling: STRAIGHTEN UP, QUIT YOUR PRECRYING

    • Dani says:

      She has permanent sad face. It’s actually pretty adorable until you find out she’s 20.

    • hunter says:

      I doubt she can help it, probably just how her features are made – not unlike girls who have “bitch face,” sucks but I think that’s just her face.

  4. don't kill me i'm french says:

    She looks so young like 12 years old.It’s creepy when you know she’s 20

  5. blue marie says:

    I have no problem with her hair, or lack thereof.. everyone has hair horror stories. My 7 yr old nephew loves her, so I watch more of the dang show than I should.

    And Bedhead, stay away from any dye with “ash” in it, I once turned my hair green because of it. (luckily for me, greenish tint hair was in at the time but I still looked like an a-shole)

  6. Penny says:

    It’s not that she’s wearing weaves or tying her hair back, it’s that she styles to her hair in a way that plays up the whole Lolita thing. She’s going out of her way to look about 10 years old, and it’s creepy. I mean that last picture…have you ever seen a grown woman do her hair like that?

  7. Samantha25 says:

    Who is Ariana? I see stories of her all of the time but it doesn’t seem like she’s actually famous. I know she has music and tv shows but I guess she’s only big with tweens. I agree that her young looking face and ponytail is creepy. She’s 20 but looks 14.

    • Felice says:

      Apparently she has quite the voice

      • leolee says:

        She is known for being on the Nickelodeon shows Victorious and Sam And Cat. That gives her the tween popularity. Recently she released a debut album, and had a billboard hit with her song The Way. She definitely has wide vocal range (spans four octaves). Critics label her the next Mariah because of her ability to use whistle register. Some say Whitney because she can sustain belts pretty well.

  8. Suze says:

    I have a friend who is a stylist who says that anyone’s hair that you admire is probably rife with extensions and hair pieces.

    More power to this girl, whoever she is, for admitting it.

    • I have no idea who this girl is but I’m just fascinated by fake hair!

      I have long, naturally wavy hair, so I had no idea how common (and expensive) it is. My hairdresser said it’s ok in the short term (like a few months), but in the long term, it just destroys your natural hair and the follicle. She said she tries to talk clients out of it, but nobody wants to wait for their hair to grow anymore.

  9. anon says:

    why does she always look scared

  10. Mika says:

    A lot of people hate her for allegedly cheating on her then boyfriend, Jai Brooks, with Nathan Sykes from the boyband The Wanted. Jai is a part of a ‘famous’ group of Youtubers (The Janoskians, who are basically a bunch of assholes running around making dumb pranks on people) and when they broke up, Jai made a long tweet about losing his “whole world” to Nathan and so Jai’s fan girls went wild, calling Ariana names and all that shit. Even one of the other member of Janoskians tweeted about it and called her a slut/whore. So I guess the same people who hated her for allegedly cheating on Jai are the ones who gave her a hard time for wearing fake hair.

  11. Jennifer12 says:

    She’s really big with the tweens and kids- my two girls adore her, especially my elder child. She plays her music on the iPod all the time and for a punk fan like me, it’s painful.

  12. Juliette says:

    Nickelodeon Kids are just as messed up… Lest we forget Jamie Lynn Spears very public teen pregnancy occured while she was starring in her Nickelodeon show.

    Also: Nickelodeon gave the world Amanda Bynes.

    The real problem is kids should not be given celebrity and the trappings of wealth and power that go along with it. Mentally and emotionally, they are not mature enough to appreciate the wealth, the fame, or the power and so they often squander the money, abuse the power, and revel in the fame, and subsequently develop some sort of narcissistic personality disorder. Meanwhile the world watches with amusement at the real life soap operas that develop.

    • Dame Snarkweek says:

      I completely agree with your assessment but I do not share in your amusement when these teen stars implode, crash and burn. It’s only about half their fault because I think a lot of them have greedy, pushy stage parents who don’t take proper care of the children. Of course, that is not always the case and sometimes people are just a**holes even if they are only teenagers LOL. But either way I don’t enjoy watching a young person head down the pathway to failure.

      • Nicolette says:

        @Dame Snarkweek I agree with you and @Juliette. I don’t think Juliette meant that she herself enjoys watching the downfall and soap opera drama that seems to envelope these kids. I think she was talking about society in general, which many times loves to watch a train wreck.

        So many kids from Disney and Nickelodeon develop issues, and there have been several times I’ve read rumblings of sexual abuse. Maybe it’s time a serious investigation be launched in Hollywood in general as to the abuse many young singers and actors are being and have been subjected to. It’s been going on for a long time, why hasn’t anything been done?

      • springingforward says:

        Pedophiles gravitate towards jobs/environments that will give them easy access to children. When you combine that with parents who are too eager to surrender their children to Hollywood for money, it is merely a matter of time for many of those kids.
        From child agents to producers, Hollywood is rife with predatory adults.

      • I would not be surprised if the rumblings are true. Those kids are in a vulnerable position with parents that see a fame/money train. I’ve been following the Jimmy Savile case in the UK. He was a big star who abused up to !,000 kids on the BBC premises. Execs knew and turned a blind eye. I just can’t believe he’s an isolated case.

    • jaye says:

      Yeah, but Nickelodeon didn’t give Amanda Bynes her mental illness. That would have surfaced whether she was on Nickelodeon or not.

      You don’t hear about very many of the Nick kids being trainwrecks like so many of the Disney kids. They either keep that mess way WAY on the DL, or their contracts didn’t require them to be virgin angel saints.

      • Leila in wunderland says:

        Jaye, I kind of agree with you. I don’t think it’s sexual abuse, though. I think it’s a combination of fame and money giving a young person more access to drugs and alcohol, the scrutiny and pressure to be perfect in so many different ways, the repressive expectations when it comes to these young stars sexuality and bodily autonomy, and, in some cases, mental illnesses that some of them already had before they were famous.

        If you think back, it can be seen that more than one former Disney star has spoken about some of those above issues having major impacts on their lives and choices. Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, and Christina Aguilera are a few former child stars/ Disney stars who have mentioned these things. Selena Gomez is more of a mystery. Nothing about her is really public, but she has alluded to doing some things that she is glad haven’t gotten out, she has spoken about some of her pressures, and there are rumors.

      • Lola says:

        I have to disagree. A mental illness doesn’t just happen, that’s the psychiatry mentality, in which nobody is responsible for disorders, except for biology, and that’s like saying that if a child gets raped or abused for years and later develops anxiety, depression, or worse things, it’s all because of his/her genes.
        As somebody else mentioned previously, child predators don’t use abuse one or a dozen kids, they abuse hundreds or thousands. That the cases are not out in the media doesn’t mean they never happened.

    • Leila in wunderland says:

      Jamie Lynne’s getting pregnant at 16 doesn’t make her messed up. It just means she had sex, like most teens do (few people make it to their 20’s without having some kind of sex), and she either wasn’t regular with her birth control or her birth control failed. I don’t think that has anything to do with nickelodeon or being messed up.

  13. Ashley says:

    Bedhead, if you want to color your hair, go to a professional, you need a filler and a glaze. Both will be demi permanent color. That way your hair will be soft and shiny. You should never color over highlights with permanent color, especially ash or neutral.

  14. Lucy says:

    She’s right. People need to calm down and let it go, she’s not doing anything wrong…

  15. Duchess of Corolla says:

    She’s adorable and sweet, IMHO. And, she does have an incredible voice!!

  16. Mimi says:

    My 8 year old son has the BIGGEST crush on her. He seriously searches youtube for videos on her lol.

  17. Meggin says:

    That sucks how damaged her hair is. Those extensions look pretty bad though as well. But she seems nice and isn’t really doing anything wrong. Just has hair issues. lol

  18. jaye says:

    I think Ariana is such an adorable girl. Her voice is spectacular.

  19. Jano1981 says:

    I feel like I need to see more pictures (close ups) of her hair. I feel for her that her hair is so damaged, that sucks. I find this interesting (I’m shallow-whatever!) because I wonder why someone like Britney or Lindsay Lohan can still find a way to wear their hair down. There have been a few times where it’s been evident that both were sporting some short and fried hair under their fake hair but it was still down and looked better than this poor girls hair. On a side note, I had no idea who this girl was until I read she plays Cat. When my kiddos watch that show I come close to pulling out my own hair. That annoying voice that makes everything she says into a question. I hope she just does that voice for the show and doesn’t talk like that in real life.

    • leolee says:

      She doesn’t Lol. Her voice is normal. Only on the show she uses that ridiculous voice. She also gas quite the singing voice

  20. shellybean says:

    Awww, I had never even heard of her until now, but she seems sweet. I think her fake hair looks pretty good.

  21. Leila in wunderland says:

    I always wondered why she wore her hair like that all the time.

    She says that she’s working on her next album and is in the studio a lot right now. Wikipedia says that the album will be out next month. That probably means that it will really be out in the middle of this year.

  22. G says:

    CAT RULES! That is all…

  23. Perfectly voiced genuinely! !

  24. andrea says:

    You might not think shes messed up but wasnt victorious a dan Schneider show?

  25. Oh La La says:

    I don’t understand why they would need to dye her hair so often. Surely the roots don’t start showing through that soon?

  26. Lynda says:

    I am 31 years old and have one of those “Lolita”-esque faces. I can’t help it. I’m sure she’s been told to play up her young features to the max, as it is attractive to the tweens and teens that make up the majority of her fanbase. But I will always sympathize with her and her probably forever hearing “YOU’RE HOW MANY YEARS OLD?!”.

  27. Grant says:

    Love her. She’s adorable. And that voice! I saw her sing “Tattooed Heart” on the AMA’s. WOW. Best performance of the night. I think she wow’ed everyone in that audience.

  28. C says:

    What I don’t think you all understand is that she had plastic surgery to make her features look younger as well as extreme weight loss-that’s why she’s so creepy in my opinion. If you look at pictures of her from 2011 she was gorgeous and had curves and looked 10 years older then she does now! Many of her fans resort to the excuse of “puberty” changing her but puberty does not change your facial features to make you look like a toddler. It’s a shame what fame can do to these celebrities, I used to be a fan but now she is just not someone I find likable or relatable. She looks like a Barbie doll now and the innocent act is old.