Ariana Grande Makeup Fails We'll Never Get Over

When we think of Ariana Grande, words like singer, actor, Instagram, and beauty come to mind. She's a Grammy winner, an Oscar nominee (for 2024's "Wicked"), the sixth most-followed person on Instagram, and a heavy-hitter in the beauty industry. And all of this for someone who was born in 1993. 

Makeup has always been part of the Ariana Grande brand. When Grande started her career on Broadway, she starred alongside Liz Gillies in "13." Gillies told Sunday Edit in a 2022 interview how they followed smokey eye tutorials to do their stage makeup. Grande's first foray into beauty product creation was her own fragrance, Ari by Ariana Grande, which launched in 2015. Since then she has put out more than a dozen fragrances, some award winning, with sales that exceed $1 billion. In the makeup world, her biggest contribution has been her r.e.m. line, which got started in November 2021. By the end of 2023, the brand was raking in nearly $90 million annually. 

Clearly, beauty and Ariana Grande are synonymous. But it can't be all smooth sailing in the world of celebrity beauty, unfortunately. Even Grande the Good has had the occasional makeup fail that we have a hard time seeing past.

Both Ariana Grande and her "Wicked" co-star Cynthia Erivo have taken method dressing to the next level while promoting the film version of the popular musical. In doing so, Grande cosplayed her character Glinda by consistently wearing pink to promotional events. She also kept the blonde hair and eyebrows that were an integral part of the character's look.

The "Thank U, Next" singer told Vogue that she dyed her hair and brows for the role (going the extra mile in the hair department, since she covered her dyed hair with a wig to portray Glinda). Filming for both the first and second movies wrapped at the beginning of 2024. By the end of that year (she's pictured above in December) it was starting to feel like Glinda blonde-brow overkill. However, in September 2024 the "Hairspray Live!" actor told Allure, "I actually am still bleaching them, but I'm toning them a little bit in between brown and blonde." We think that's a good call.

Ariana Grande has definitely transformed her look through the years. It's almost hard to remember back to 2010 when she had to consistently dye her hair a shade somewhere between ruby and maroon for her role on Nickelodeon's "Victorious." In a 2014 Facebook post, she wrote that the fortnightly dye-jobs ruined the condition of her hair.

But it wasn't the crumbling hair health that had us doing a little cringe. It was the then-teenager's eyeliner. For a 2010 "Shrek Forever After" premiere in New York, Grande lined her eyes heavily in black liner. But because she has close-set eyes, the heavy liner on the inside of her eyes, closest to the nose, makes the eyes look even closer together. We've noticed that Grande doesn't repeat this faux pas nowadays. Rather she concentrates her eye makeup on the outer edges, which gives the appearance of eyes that are further apart.

Ariana Grande's nose has been the topic of many a plastic surgery discussion. The "We Can't Be Friends" singer swears she hasn't tampered with her nose, but rather attributes the shape to contouring. She showed Vogue how she likes to create a button nose (thanks to r.e.m. products, naturally). For the November 2024 "Wicked" premiere in L.A., we once again saw the contouring on display. Unfortunately this isn't as cute as a button (nose).

For this Glinda-core moment, Grande relied on her go-to makeup artist, Michael Anthony, and we believe he's partly to blame. We've noticed he does the same button-nose contour on client Lindsay Lohan. Regardless of who is pushing the nose contour, fans aren't here for it. One Reddit user wrote, " ... how and why do they do such dark contouring. The line on the nose gets me every time." They later added, "Like does her makeup artist not think to blend it out or make the contour on her cheeks less dark???" Another user wrote: "Her 'button nose' just looks like a bruise or cut across her nose."

Ariana Grande's beauty evolution has had some highs and lows. Unfortunately her look at the 2015 American Music Awards was a dip. The "Focus" singer was up for Artist of the Year (One Direction nabbed the prize) and Favorite Female Pop/Rock Artist, which she won. Her strapless dress showed off her arms and chest, which looked like they had been spray tanned. And not the best tan, we're sorry to say. It looked pretty splotchy in places. 

But that wasn't the biggest travesty. It was the foundation shade on her face that was much lighter than her body. So either her face wasn't tanned and her makeup artist attempted to match the foundation to her un-tanned face. Or her face was tanned but her makeup artist (or maybe it was Ari herself) possibly fell back onto her tried-and-true foundation shade, not considering that it was too light.

This shouldn't happen again. One of the perks of having your own makeup brand is developing products to fill a void. Grande's r.e.m. line boasts 60 foundation shades of its Sweetener Foundation.

As one of the most followed people on social media, Ariana Grande has come under more than her fair share of scrutiny and has stated how critical the public can be. In 2019 the social media-sphere showed no mercy when Grande posted an Instagram story that showed smudged black eye makeup in the morning, per Refinery29.

Cue floodgates opening. Fans and critics quickly pointed out that Grande hadn't removed her eye makeup before bed, a big no-no for all those who know the importance of removing eye makeup thoroughly. Grande came to her own defense on X, formerly known as Twitter, noting that she had cleaned the rest of her face and had even done a face mask. She added, "leave me alone sis" (via Refinery29), before listing some of her favorite skincare products in subsequent tweets. All of us are guilty of beauty fails. Fortunately for us, we don't have millions of people tracking them.