For some reason I couldn't really see it in the other pics, but this one makes it super clear. Yikes.Are you serious? You don't see it? Really?
Her last name is an Italian surname with several variants, Grande (pronounced in Italian "grahn-day") and Grandi (pronounced in Italian "grahn-dee") the most common amongst them. She is technically correct that the way she is pronouncing her name now is the intended Italian pronunciation. That is unless her historic family surname is actually Grandi, which could have gotten incorrectly transcribed or Anglicized at a place like Ellis Island upon her grandparents immigrating to America. This potentially could be the reason her grandfather pronounced it "grahn-dee".
I'm not a pop music guy so I was only vaguely aware of Ariana Grande as a popular musician and just subconsciously presumed that she was Mestizo or something. Then someone posted this to me however long ago and now this exact image comes to my brain whenever Ariana Grande comes up.The evolution of her look:
That makes sense and I know people change the way their last name is pronounced over the generations too. I'm Mexican so immediately pronounce it the Spanish way and used to think she was Latina. It's definitely not like Lana Del Rey who changed her last name to a Spanish surname.
I'm not sure how this conversation follows. "Latino" suggests someone from Latin America. Italy's not in Latin America, it's in Europe. Ariana Grande is from Florida, and her parents are from Florida and New York. Certainly, there are white Latinos, but where does the "Latino" fit in with Ariana Grande? Why is that even being discussed?
But she isn't tanning naturally. You can follow her career and see she's getting bronzed chemically. There are posts in this very thread showing the progression of her tanning escapades where she had a tan as dark as Nicki Minaj before she swerved away from the Afro-Latina look and is now going the vague East Asian look where she is even paler than she was as a teen. This isn't something biological. Ariana Grande didn't go from spending 20 hours in the sun all day to no sun.
Honestly, I'm not really concerned with the tanning method, I think the whole thing is weird. Whether it's Ariana Grande potentially engaging in cultural appropriation, which I guess would because she feels that Italian people are boring or unmarketable, or it's Donald Trump putting in energy to get his orange shade.
But Ariana is American. Of course she should be viewed through a US lenses. She's literally Italian American and grew up in Florida!
It's pretty clear she is engaging in cultural appropriation. Her music, the people she would perform with, the way she would speak in interviews, and other things make it very obvious. She's profited off of her black-coded persona and will absolutely do the same with her new Asian-inspired coding.
I wasn't trying to say that it was an explanation. I'm saying that that, at least personally, tanning is just a natural biological function that I have no strong feelings for one way or another - it's not a significant concern whether or not I'm particularly light or dark form moment to me. So to me, it's alien that people go out of their way to change their skin colour for some aesthetic purpose or to present as fashionable, such as Ariana Grande does.
What are you arguing? Ariana, her parents & her grandparents are American with roots in New York. She has deeper roots to Sicily & Abruzzo, Italy. None of this is of Latina descent. Also the controversy is of Ariana appropriating Black & Asian cultures. Both Ariana & this conversation has nothing to do with the (legitimate) diversity of Latina culture. She literally has no connection to Latina culture.
But nobody is upset by the act of tanning on its own. It's the combination of her known cultural appropriation with the tanning and now de-tanning and giving her eyes a look that would make people think she is asian. This is the girl who got "seven barbecue grill" tattooed on her skin in Japanese.
I think the point is that Latinos don't "look" a certain way. It's as meaningless (or insulting) as saying someone looks Mexican.
I'm just going to be upfront and say that I genuinely have no idea what you think I've been saying or what you're trying to convince me of that I don't already understand.
I mean, yes, there is no certain way Latinos should look. But that's a really far stretch from the point of this thread. We shouldn't be getting to the point where we're defending Ariana's non-existent Latina heritage.
On page 6, someone posted "she's not Hispanic" which was responded with someone posting a nonsense picture of Ariana. But that occurred in response to this same conversation that was already happening at the time (for multiple pages). While that effortless image response was dumb, it has nothing to do with this weird long-running argument.
This is the same person in these two photos.
Wtf lol.
"Grandee" on the left 👈 "Granday" on the right 👉
Lol whoa that's definitely too much.Also look at the promo image being used for The Voice this season
Are you serious? You don't see it? Really?
