Ariana Grande's Meltdown, Explained

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We're going to do things a little bit differently today, switch things up. And instead of talking to one of our intrepid reporters about one of their recent scoops, we are going to talk to one of our intrepid editors about what is going on in the world of pop culture. My guest today is my friend, my colleague, Daily Wire, upstream editor, Madeline Fryshul, it's Maddie, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me on, I'm excited.

“So we've got a lot to talk about, because the only thing crazy here, I think,”

than political news these days, is pop culture news, celebrities, things of that nature. But I want to start with, you know, this is, of course, we have to talk about a story at some point. So I want to talk about one of your recent pieces, which was headlined Ariana Grande is wasting away,

and still blaming you for noticing. So for those of our listeners who might not be familiar, or not, you know, not fully up to speed with the latest Ariana Grande drama. Tell us what's going on, what's going on with Ariana. Yeah, well, I don't blame anyone for not being up to speed on the latest Ariana Grande drama.

It's not normally the kind of thing that you should have to pay attention to. But I do think this is a really interesting story. So she is this big pop singer, she started her career with Nickelodeon. It's kind of similar to a lot of these Disney stars like Marley Cyrus, who were child stars and then have kind of had a lot of struggles later

in life kind of gone off the rails. So she has been very, very skinny for the past few years. If anyone listening has seen the wicked films, she was, she started as Glinda and on the press tour was already generating this kind of conversation

that she looked like she was absolutely wasting away very, very skinny and to an unhealthy extent. And this conversation has come back up again because she is touring right now. She just released a new single, a song called "Petal."

And basically in the music video,

she is critiquing fans and the media for commenting on her way in the most unhinged way. So the story in the music video is that she goes to these, this casting call, she goes in, they're all these guys behind a desk. And she shows up and they say that she's too skinny, which is crazy, crazy for her to pretend that that's been a comment.

You know, and maybe I'm not saying she hasn't gotten that comment. I think it all he was in the same place. But it says if she's blaming people for what clearly looks like an eating disorder. So she goes up, they say, "You're too skinny, she comes back. She looks like Sandy from Greece."

Then they say, "She is not sexy enough." And then she leaves and then she comes back reinventing herself again and then they still don't like her. And so then finally she just picks up a chainsaw and then she chops up all their heads.

This is the end of the music video. Very interesting, very stylized, very, very strange story.

But basically the, the just event is that she is trying to blame her fans.

She's trying to blame the media from making her the way that she is.

“And also saying this is not something that you should comment on.”

And she said this in commentary before even going, I think three years back, she made a video on TikTok where she said, "Please don't comment on people's way. It's none of your business." And I think that there in other scenarios, there's an extent which is true.

We love to comment on celebrities' bodies and their weight loss and their weight game. But this is an instance where she looks genuinely unhealthy to the extent that she can have a heart attack on stage. She does not seem like she has the energy to be doing anything

let alone touring. And I think that it's important for people in the media and people who are commenting in her fans to call this out because there are a lot of young girls who look up to her. There are girls who are putting photos of her right now

in sort of throw and erectious spaces online who are saying she looks really beautiful. This is how I want to look. And if you see photos of her, she, her ribcage is visible. Her, if you see photos of her back, you can see her entire spine.

It's just very obviously unhealthy. And I don't think that it's something that we should be afraid to comment on even though Ariana Grande doesn't seem to agree. Rightly, this is in criticizing, you know, a haircut

where a picture of a perfectly healthy celebrity is on the cover.

It was just the word fat over it. Like people are legitimately, and again, to your point, this is obviously not across the board. I have no doubt there are people out there. You know, I'm just as there are people kind of valorizing it.

I'm sure there are people being mean about it. People making fun of it. But by and large, the broader, the general kind of tenor of the commentaries, one of concern. A lot of people are comparing her to Karen Carpenter

and pointing out that she actually doing some side-by-side pictures. Ariana Grande actually looks worse than Karen Carpenter did, like a week before she died after her. After her, after her long struggle with the needing disorder. The other thing with Ariana Grande, though,

and you mentioned Wicked, is she and Cindy Arrivo, who was her co-star in the Wicked Movies, had this really involved press tour that had a lot of memeable moments because it was kind of ridiculous. And part of that was just them, you know,

“I think leaning into the sort of thinner kid vibe”

that they wanted to attract with, you know, obviously the sanitation of a brother in New Zealand. But there was also a lot of like Ariana Grande seemed, they seemed weird. Like the two of them both seemed kind of gone

and they were always leaning on each other

and they seemed a little out of it. What do we think is going on here? The orange hair cycle, Analyze. But I mean, is this, is this just as, it doesn't seem, I guess what I'm saying,

is it doesn't seem as simple as a clear cut eating disorder. It seems like something much deeper by going on with Ariana. Right, and again, we don't know and we don't want to speculate. Too much, too much, because again,

this is, this is more about just kind of calling out. This is, we, what we see is something that's unhealthy and it's not something that we want to emulate. But yeah, you're totally right. There was a very strange co-dependent relationship

with her, between her and Cynthia Rivo, who played the wicked witch of the West. They were the two stars of the film and they would go on press tours and they would hold hands. They would kind of balance each other as if they were

little old ladies who needed help kind of acting. And Ariana Grande, particularly, had this kind of, like, weak and small kind of disposition that she was trying to project to people. And I don't know how that relates to what seems to be

an eating disorder, but it also weirdly kind of spread through seem to spread through the wicked cast, Michelleio, who was also in the film, got super skinny. I don't, I think there is an element to eating disorders that can be sort of compounding.

You see people around you who are not eating and then it gets a little bit competitive.

“And again, this is why I think it's important,”

especially for young girls who are watching or, you know, this kind of stuff can affect men as well. And not just younger girls. I mean, really, I think we are all very weird about weight in America.

And it's very hard for us to strike a balance because we've gone from this like heroin chic time in the 90s where we were saying Jessica Simpson is fat because she was a size eight to now. We had the body positivity movement where you had

morbidly obese people on the cover of magazine and in cosmopolitan is saying this is healthy. And now we have a zampic in everyone is trying to lose weight and then some people are losing too much weight. It's really hard to have this conversation, I think,

in sort of a rational way that's focused on health is really, I think, what the main thing should be is that we bring it back to how can you make sure that you're living your life so that you are healthy, you're eating well, you have energy

and are not trying to fit some sort of look that you're seeing other people around you. I think it can be a little bit contagious. Yeah, the ozemic part of it is what's,

“I think the craziest to me because you mentioned”

the heroin chic of the late '90s, early to mid 2000s, which is kind of, it's Ariana Grande is certainly to that extreme, but we're seeing a lot of these other celebrities who, you know, were very skinny to begin with.

Now, sort of, I mean, it started, this actually started years even before the real GLP one revolution with the, with the Bucal Fat Removal. That was sort of, that was kind of ground zero for this, right?

Wouldn't it have in the fat sucked out of their cheeks, kind of creating this like hollowed out Victorian child look. Now it's the ozemic. I find it fascinating that,

and I think this is, I like the way you're talking about how it sort of compounds, right? Where it's obvious it is whole thing as a spectrum, but you take, so imagine whichever celebrity I can't think of what on the top of my hand.

I mean, Ariana Grande is a great example, right?

Someone who was always like just like physically small

and stature and also very skinny and wafish. Now, you would think that, you know, everyone who didn't look like that in Hollywood or in the music industry, we may be regressed to that mean. Thanks to ozemic, but it's, it doesn't stop there.

Then the skinny ones go further. And so now it's, and then yeah, and then to your point, it's now we have this weird like eating disorder, Twitter is a very strange place that, if our listeners have not stumbled into there,

I do not encourage that you stumble into it. It's very odd, yeah, like high school girls,

for eating and kind of trying to aestheticize and a rexia.

It's all very odd, but I want to go back for a second

to the music video because the other interesting thing,

“and I think what's sort of being buried,”

understandably by the weight situation on Ariana Grande's appearance is that this is already, this is almost sort of like a charmingly retrograde music video. Right, it's been a while, I mean, it's been a couple of years, but in pop music terms, it feels like forever.

Since, you know, a celebrity, a female pop star made a song with a music video that was all about the criticizing the male gaze and the unreasonable beauty standards. Right, I mean, you look at what's really going on now with everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to the new, you know,

Casey Musgraves with her new album. The new thing for female pop stars is really just, there's kind of being overtly sexual and cheeky. Right, it's all very wink-wink. The more this, I don't even want to say

that it's like empowered, right? It's just, it's very, it's very joky almost, right? It's very intense, very campy. I don't know, I don't really have a point there. I just think it's interesting that this is sort of a deviation

from what we've been seeing a lot of. Yeah, it does feel very 26, he may be a little bit dated. And the interesting thing about female pop stars specifically

is I think they always feel like they need to have an angle.

So with people like Sabrina Carpenter, the angle is I'm going to be the classic, really sexy pop star, but I'm going to kind of pretend that it's like in a joky way and I'm doing it for myself. I'm not like anti, you know, I'm not anti-feminists.

“You have to kind of pretend that there's something more elevated”

about the commentary that you're trying to have. But Ariana Grande's music video is interesting because it echoes a little bit. Taylor Swift does this all the time and she has done a lot of songs where she's talked about how the media has portrayed her.

Like, look what you made me do, the song, anti-hero, which also is really interesting, relevant to this conversation. I think that song came out in 2019. And at the time, it was Taylor Swift was kind of showing

the way that she has perceived her insecurities and it goes through the music video and there's like herself and then this other part of herself that's kind of looking down at her and judging her as she goes throughout her day. And there's one scene where she steps on a scale,

looks down and the scale just says the word fat. And people were so upset about this that she took it out of her music video. And the ridiculous thing is that Taylor Swift isn't saying, I am fat, like no one's looking, I mean, maybe some people

again, media is crazy. Some people may be looking at Taylor Swift saying she's fat, but she's not, that's not what she's saying in the video. She's saying, I feel this way. I may be told this about myself.

This is, you know, and I think she also has talked about having body image maybe eating disorder issues. But it was just, it started this crazy discourse where people were like, she doesn't know what it's like

to be fat, like actually fat. She's like pretending to be victimized by body shaming culture, but she can't be a victim because she looks good basically. And that was going to peak woke and peak body positivity.

So it was this whole, like, yay. It was, it was, I don't even yet. The fat, the fat pride people were mad. And it was, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy to think that this was ever a way that we talked about things

even though it's only like five years ago. Yes, yeah. And I just, it seems obvious to me that the, the, she should have, it's fine for her to have that in the music video.

She shouldn't have taken it out. I think she's a little too deferential to her fans sometimes. She's a very good business woman though, and that's, you know. That's why she does.

But she does, but I think, where, where, where you can have this conversation where it's, you know, women of all different shapes and sizes are criticized for various invalid reasons. And again, coming back to the Ariana Grande one. I think it's totally, it's totally fine to have this conversation

saying this isn't a good, this isn't a good influence on young people. Because she seems to be kind of doubling down saying this is healthy. In this one video from three years ago, she was already very skinny then. She says, Oh, well, these photos you're comparing me to back in the day. I was really unhealthy then.

I was on anti-depressants and drinking and eating badly. So she kind of acts like, Oh, no, I'm better. I'm healthier. But then in the same breath, she says, Well,

and you never know what someone's going through

and whether or not they're getting healthy. So she was, you can't really have it both ways. She's saying, I'm healthy and I'm good and also I'm working on it. But none of that is really, really helpful for people who, I think just kind of need to hear her say, I'm going to go eat a cheeseburger.

Like I'm going to, I'm going to do something about this.

“I think the other important point is there's this tendency.”

I think to, and certainly on the right. Or, and even, I think the right more broadly, really just like any, any sort of more traditionally minded people are parent.

We tend to criticize celebrities for any kind of anything other than

perfect behavior and a common criticism. They're a bad role model, right? This is influencing kids. It's like, it's a very 1960s. Like those, you know, those beetles with their mop tops.

It's on, it's very charming in a way.

“But I think oftentimes it's not a helpful critique.”

Like, you know, you'll see people, I don't know. I'm trying to think of the most ridiculous celebrity. Like, you know, there's somebody out there. If there's, if there's a paparazzi picture of Willem Dafoe smoking a cigarette, right?

Someone out there is going to say, this is these celebrities. He just stopped smoking, you know, kids live up to them. No kid looks up to Willem Dafoe, right? That's a ridiculous argument. Or you have a kid like Cardi B was twirking on stage.

I like a bad for kids. Right. Like we place for her to be. But Ariana Grande, as you said, who came up through the sort of Nickelodeon Disney thing, who writes.

Very, I mean, very good pop music, but pop music that is obviously they target it's it's not. Maybe the newer albums would like traditionally. It hasn't been explicit, you know, it's good. It's family friendly.

It's for the radio and a large part. She's in wicked, which, of course, is, you know,

I'm sure it's rated PG13 or whatever, but it's always sort of a vase.

It's a musical. It's obviously marketed to young girls and families. So it's really, it's not unreasonable to say this is a, this is a celebrity to whom I'm married. All American young girls, you know,

even if they don't look up, they're hyper aware of her right in the way that they might not be aware of other pieces of pop culture. So I think that's, that's where it is also like this is that's a legitimate concern, not just kind of the, like, concerned trolling, right?

Is that the phrase? Yes. Yeah. I think the role model conversation is difficult because like you said,

“just because you're in the public eye, doesn't mean you have to sort of”

live your life in a way that's going to make any one who likes your work happy.

But I do think there is some sort of role for people who make money off of

younger people, particularly pop stars who specifically appeal to a younger demographic, like Ariana Grande. And Wicked actually was rated PG. So a lot of people were taking their kids and there was Wicked merchandise everywhere at Target, in Kids Sections.

I mean, I think there, there is a little bit of if you take on a role where you're going to be admired and adored by young people and make money from their parents, you may be should consider responsibility you have to live in a way that is going to be encouraging and positive for them. And she's made comments before I think celebrities usually are kind of like,

I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be anyone's role model. Don't put that on me. I don't want to be responsible for anything. But she had this quote to the media a couple years ago where she said, if I'm a role model, I want to just be honest.

You know, I'm not perfect, but I want to be honest with people. But now here we see her, not being honest with her fans at all. And I think that's the really big problem. You can say, I'm not perfect. I don't want people to look up to me.

But don't kind of lie to people who are looking at you and being concerned and saying, no, no, I'm good. I'm healthy. I'm just fine. I don't need anything.

Yeah, it's also, I think at the bare minimum right there. So there's the setting aside even the role model discourse. This is not, this is something that we expect from anybody who spends high and around impressionable people, right? We're not just celebrities, right? We expect teachers and librarians and, you know, public figures, right?

To behave in certain ways. You know, if you're in a, if you're, we all have duties to each other, right?

“If you want to really broaden it out and it's sort of like, how any of us appear?”

It's just, you know, matters to those who might be impressionable who see us, just a matter of how many people get to see you. I also, I think it's completely switching gears or half switching gears. We've talked about like three of the four big pop stars. So I think it's, I personally think it's very funny that Taylor Swift is out here running

like a Jimmy Buffett-esque business empire with her image and merchandise. Ariana Grande has have some, having some sort of mental and physical collapse. Sabrina Carbender is out here at Cosplaying is like Jessica Rabbit. And then off to the side, Olivia Rodrigo is just quietly releasing like 2,000 style emo songs and performing with Boomer Rock icons.

Like she, all the other pop girlies want to be the next pop princess. And I kind of think Olivia Rodrigo wants to be like Lou Reed. And I think that's just that a very, that's a hysterical subplot. Like every day you scroll through Twitter. It's like, Sabrina Carbender did a sexual and you endow.

Ariana Grande can do ops on stage. Taylor Swift announced a 17th recut of an album that came out 20 years ago. And then it's like Ariana Grande acoustic set with Bob Dylan. Like it's just a true artist. I love that you know all this too.

I'm really learning about female pop stars from you. Olivia Rodrigo is, I really enjoy her music. I think it's really fun and different. Very much I call back to bands like Paramore. It feels like kind of millennial culture for Jersey.

She doesn't have coming concert that's all female artists.

But of course, then she ruins it by saying we're going to donate money to plan parenthood. And I'm going to. She does. She does. She does.

She does. She does.

“Not plan B, I think, because I don't think you can give out plan B.”

But she was giving out, I don't know, condoms or birth. Other forms or something. Concert. It's like, and again, like talk about something. Like to talk about, like, this is another instance of things that occasionally

those of us on the right might overstate. Like there is a difference between. Being a celebrity who publicly, you know, so I support a woman's right to choose. And I support plan parenthood. And I think dog was was bad.

And so every celebrity. And then, but there's a handful. Like Olivia Rodrigo is obsessed with plan parenthood. She talks about it all the time. She has like a plan parenthood.

Banners at her concert, which again is like. That's like. It's. It's so. What cringe almost, right?

They get so late. What are they paying her? It's very Hillary Clinton asks.

It's basically corporate sponsorship.

But for what she also. I mean, she is like, she's like the city bank musician, right? She does like the credit card commercials and everything is sponsored. I do really know. I guess I know.

I know shocking a lot about a. But yeah, the play. It's really like that is one where it's like, this is like. This is odd. Stop.

Yeah. Plan parenthood. Yeah. I mean, and while we're criticizing people for being that role models, the established is sort of okay to do and select.

I mean, we can do it. I mean, we criticize the enough people for doing it.

“That I think we're now allowed to is how it works.”

Yes. Yeah. Only us. We can criticize anyone we want. But yeah, she.

She was also a Disney star. She was in the new high school musical shows. And now. It's kind of similar. I never watched them.

And I. I just love that you did. I'm not kidding. High school. It's called high school musical.

The musical to series. My. One of my best buddies that I watched it when it was on Disney plus. It's like it's it's like a it's post modern. It's like it's it's the it's so weird.

Through it. It's there's like actually a really subversive cultural critique. I don't even think. It's incredible. It is incredibly meta.

It is a. It is a mockumentary about. Real. The real students who go to the high school. The high school where they filmed the high school musical movie.

Putting on a high school musical version of high school musical. This is like Chris to burn Christopher Nolan levels. And like we're like the actors who were in high school musical appear. As themselves like this show. It's it's I.

It's so absurd. And it's it's like not good. But it's so bad that it's good, which is not a thing that I use. I don't believe in that as a as a judgment, but in this case. Anyway, I digress.

Why is it? She's a bad role model. Yeah, I'm I'm sold. I'm going to go watch the new high school musical. But yeah, she's she is not a good role model.

Mostly, you know, what I'm aware of is the plan parent and stuff. And like you said, she talks about it all the time. So she's just sort of kind of perpetuating this like, oh, young girls.

“Obviously, you need to have abortion to succeed.”

You can't do anything live if you don't have abortion. You don't have abortion access, whatever. And it's just unfortunate. And she said she said some positive things. She talked about she wants to get married and have a family.

But she also, she said something at one point where she was like. Is in this interview recently. She was like, I'm too. I'm too young.

I think or something like what like this like this joke that people always make.

Like what am I 16 and pregnant, but they're like 24. It's like you're old enough to you're old enough to get married. So yeah, she's definitely a very mixed bag. I do actually like her music. But very disappointed in her pushing of abortion.

But you know where someone who is really, I think, been a generally wholesome model. And normally this doesn't come from like the Disney stars, the Nickelodeon stars. They kind of all go off the rails.

But you know, he's been really good as Hillary Duff. She has, she's just like, become a mom now. And is like just kind of starring in some sitcoms. She's like in how I met your father, I think. Yeah, her, this whole, and she's on tour this summer.

And it seems like a really good like just like a, just like a fun mix of, you know, she's doing like her songs, new songs, Disney songs. She's bringing on guests. People are taking their kids.

It's, it feels very wholesome. Like on ironically super wholesome. But yeah, she just seems like she's living a genuinely good life. And is happy. And it's rare to see like again.

Even even the folks who even celebrities who aren't like, ostensibly bad boys or, you know, like, troubles. Most of them don't seem like they're having a good time, right? And it's the classic like most celebrities seem either super forester,

And Hillary Duff is just kind of out there, which is good.

Yeah. Yeah, no. She's really wholesome. Her concerts are fun for the whole family as far as I know. I'm not, I'm going to say that and someone's going to be like,

you know, like, you know, like, millennial moms are taking their daughters, going with their kids. And it just feels very nostalgic for them. Like the colors are very bright and it's very girly. She was in, she was at sports,

illist rated swimsuit model. And then she had this quote where she was like, I, I asked her, I've high-waisted bikini because I'm, I'm a mom and I'm not showing all that off. But it's great.

It's just like she has her boundaries. Like she's very, you know, I just, I really like, I think she's setting up pretty good example and she's been a good. It's been, it's been happy to see,

good to see her trajectory because that's not always what happens.

What's a lot of the kind of younger. The child's heart. Especially, yeah. I mean, she's maybe the only one who made it out. All right.

I mean, you get, there's obviously like the, what who Ryan Gosling and, I forgot about Ryan Gosling. I guess really he's the only one I'm thinking of. Like, you know, he was like in the Mickey Mouse club,

or the Mickey Mouse club.

“That's what our kids watch, whatever the,”

the mouse continues. Yeah. But that's, that's, that's not even. When we talk about like the, the Disney Nickelodeon child stars. That's, yeah.

Yeah. We'll send a tattoo. She's become a huge baby star. And fairly clean. She has a no nudity clause in her contract.

Even though she's been in some pretty crazy show. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, she has, she has a boundary there. She's married.

Yeah. So that's, you know, a lot of the things.

I genuinely always forget that Zendaya started on.

Well, I don't even, was it Nickelodeon or Disney? I know it was one of them.

“But like, I'm, that was so, we're both old enough that I think,”

it's like, I, I, I genuinely forget that. I first encountered Zendaya as an adult actress in, probably, you for you. And then was informed later than she had been a child star, which is very scary.

I think it was, I want to say Wizards of Way of Early Place. I don't know. Something Disney. Something Disney. Someone, someone could be listening and they're going to know.

Yeah. And they'll be in the comments. Speaking of you, for you, I would encourage everybody to go read Maddie's review of the Fourier series finale on the Daily Wire. It's very good.

And she makes a strong case for why not only was the, the show good, which I agree with, but also the finale was a little bit conservative almost, which is a type of argument that people love to make and is usually a little goofy. But in this case, I, I think you were right on. Madeline Fryshultz and it's upstream the Daily Wire's home for lifestyle and culture.

You should follow her on X.

“You should read her stuff and other upstream stuff at the Daily Wire.”

And of course, you should come back next week for another episode of Behind the Story, but until then, Maddie, it was a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me on. This was great.