Grandes ofituts and styling are at times provocative but never truly racy; her music is so all-over-the-map as to avoid betraying anything so risky as a personality. That’s why her presence in the news this week, after getting caught on tape licking unpurchased food at a donut shop and saying, “I hate America,” is so surprising. This unsavory side to Grande’s personality is so unfortunate because Grande hasn’t shown us too much else about herself.
It’s tough to think of a framework in which Grande’s uncouth, frankly gross behavior caught on tape would be acceptable; her licking donuts offered for sale to other people has occasioned a police investigation and may seriously damage a small business’s prospects. But her remark about America might be a little less jarring placed into context—not just of her evening, but of whatever is her personality.
Young people—particularly those who’ve been on television, as Grande was, since they were very young people—will always act out. Grande’s actions only come as a surprise when placed in counterpoint to her robotically good mien, one whose inhumanness has made her, so far, a perfect celebrity.
The efforts to reel her back in have been unusually transparent, as with a lengthy statement, shared via Twitter, in which Grande said that “[a]s an advocate for healthy eating,” she’d been inspired to say she hates America because “I sometimes get upset by how freely we as Americans eat and consume things without giving any thought to the consequences that it has on our health and society as a whole.”
