Transcript of Ariana Grande's Meltdown, Explained

Wo gibt's eigentlich die weißen Rosen aus Athen? Und wo regnet's für mich nochmal rote Rosen?

Natürlich im Europa-Rosarium Sangerhausen mit der größten Rosensammlung der Welt. Viele tausend Rosenarten warten auf Sie mit prachtvollen Blüten und herrlichem Duft. www.rosarium.de With Pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the Pray.com app today. Hello, I'm Tim Rice, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Story, where 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 Frey Schultz. 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 crazier, 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 Miley 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 weight in the most unhinged way. So the story in the music video is that she goes to this casting call, she goes and there are 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.

Um, you know, and maybe— I'm not saying she hasn't gotten that comment. I think Hollywood's an insane place. Uh, but it says— it says if she's blaming people for her— what clearly looks like an eating disorder. Um, so she goes up, they say you're too skinny. She comes back, she looks like Sandy from Grease. 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 off all their heads. This is the end of the music video. Very interesting, very stylized, very strange story. But basically the gist of it is that she is trying to blame her fans, she's trying to blame the media for making her the way that she is, and also saying this is not something that you should comment on. And she's said this in commentary before, even going, I think 3 years back, she made a video on TikTok where she said, "Please don't comment on people's weight. It's none of your business." And I think that there, in other scenarios, there's an extent to which this is true.

We love to comment on celebrities' bodies and their weight loss and their weight gain. 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 and 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 pro-anorexia 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 rib cage 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 isn't criticizing, you know, a haircut or, you know, it's not like the Us Weeklys of the mid- 2000s where, you know, a picture of a perfectly healthy celebrity is on the COVID with just the word fat over it. Like people are legitimately, and again, to your point, this is obviously not across the board. I'm, I have no doubt that there are people out there, you know, 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, I think the, the, the broader, the, the general kind of tenor of the commentary is one of concern. A lot of people are comparing her to Karen Carpenter, uh, 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, uh, after I think heart failure, right after her long struggle with an eating disorder. Um, the other thing with Ariana Grande though, and you mentioned Wicked, is, uh, she and Cynthia Erivo, who was her co-star in the Wicked movies, had this like 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 theater kid vibe that they wanted to attract with, you know, obviously this adaptation of a Broadway musical. But there was also a lot of like— Ariana Grande seemed— they seemed weird. Like the two of them both seemed kind of gaunt and they were always leaning on each other and they seemed a little out of it. Like, what do we think is going on here? Not to armchair psychoanalyze, but I mean, Is this— is this just as simple? 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 might be going on with Ariana.

Right. And again, we don't know and we don't want to speculate too much because again, this is— this is more about just kind of calling out— this is 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 codependent relationship with her between her and Cynthia Erivo, 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 and 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, seemed to spread through the Wicked cast. Michelle Yeoh, who was also in the film, got super skinny. Um, 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 8, to now, uh, we had then the body positivity movement where you had morbidly obese people on the COVID of a magazine and Cosmopolitan is saying this is healthy. And now we have Ozempic and everyone is trying to lose weight, and then some people are losing too much weight. So it's very 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 Ozempic 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 where we're— 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 start, this actually started years even before the real GLP-1 revolution with the, with the buccal fat removal. That was sort of, that was kind of ground zero for this, right? Women having the fat sucked outta their cheeks, kind of creating this like hollowed out Victorian child look. Now it's the Ozempic. I find it fascinating that, and I think this, this is, you, I like the way you're talking about how it sort of compounds, right? Where it's, Obviously, this whole thing is a spectrum, but you take— so you imagine whichever celebrity— I can't think of one off the top of my head. I mean, Ariana Grande is a great example, right? Someone who was always just physically small in stature and also very skinny and waifish. Now, you would think that everyone who didn't look like that in Hollywood or in the music industry would maybe regress to that mean thanks to Ozempic.

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 just be, you know, kind of like shaming each other for eating and kind of trying to aestheticize anorexia. It's all very, it's all very odd. Um, 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, the weight, uh, situation Ariana Grande's appearance is that this is already, this is almost sort of like a charmingly, uh, 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 them criticizing the male gaze and the unreasonable beauty standards, right? I mean, you look at what's really going on now with everyone from, uh, Sabrina Carpenter to the new, you know, Kacey Musgraves with her new album.

The new thing for female pop stars is really just, they're just kind of being overtly sexual, uh, and cheeky, right? It's all very wink wink and more of this. I don't even wanna say that it's like empowered, right? It's just, it's very, um, it's very jokey almost, right? It's very intense, it's very campy. Um, that— I just— 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 2016, maybe a little bit dated. Um, 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 jokey way and I'm doing it for myself. I'm not like anti— or, you know, I'm not anti-feminist. You have to kind of like 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 Antihero, 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 just kind of showing the way that she is perceived and 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 and looks down and the scale just says the word fat.

That's right.

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 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 during peak woke and peak, uh, peak body positivity. So it was this whole like, yeah, it was, it was, I don't even, yeah, the fat, the fat pride people were mad. Like, it was, it's, it's crazy to think that this was ever a way that we talked about things, even though it was only like 5 years ago.

Yes. Yeah. And I just 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 businesswoman though. And that's, you know, that's why she does what she does. But I think 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 3 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 antidepressants and drinking and eating badly. So she kind of acts like, oh no, now 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 help.

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— there's this tendency, I think, to— and certainly on the right, or, and even like the right more broadly, really just like any sort of more traditionally minded people, our parent, anyone's mom basically, right? We tend to criticize celebrities for any kind of anything other than perfect behavior. And a common criticism is, you know, well, like they're a bad role model, right? This is influencing kids. It's like, it's a very 1960s, like those, you know, those Beatles with their mop tops. 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. Um, uh, I'm trying to think of the most ridiculous celebrity. Like, you know, there, 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 gonna say, this is, these celebrities need to stop smoking. You know, kids look up to them. No kid looks up to Willem Dafoe, right? That's a ridiculous argument.

Ariana Grande. Like, I can't believe Cardi B was twerking on stage.

Right.

Like, that's so bad for kids.

Right. Like, likely 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 like target— it's not maybe the newer albums, but like traditionally it hasn't been explicit. You know, it's family friendly. It's for the radio in a large part. She's in Wicked, which of course is, you know, I'm sure it's rated PG-13 or whatever, but it's The Wizard of Oz. 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 celebrity to whom all American young girls, even if they don't look up, they are hyper-aware of her. Right. And the way that they might not be aware of other pieces of pop culture. So I think that's where it is also. That's a legitimate concern, not just kind of concern 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 live your life in a way that's gonna make anyone 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, uh, you may, you maybe should consider a responsibility you have to, um, to, 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 feel responsible for anything.

But she had this quote to the media a couple of years ago where she said, if I'm, 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 say, no, no, I'm good. I'm healthy. I'm just fine. I don't need anything. Yeah.

It's also just, I think at the bare minimum, right, there's, there's the setting aside even the role model discourse. This is not— this is something that we expect from anybody who spends time around impressionable people, right? We, on a small— it's 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— 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, it's, 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 completely switching gears or half switching gears. Uh, we've talked about like 3 of the 4 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 is having some sort of mental and physical collapse. Sabrina Carpenter is out here cosplaying as like Jessica Rabbit. And then off to the side, Olivia Rodrigo is just quietly releasing like 2000s-style emo songs and performing with Boomer rock icons.

Like, she— all the other pop girlies want to be the next, like, pop princess, and I kind of think Olivia Rodrigo wants to be like Lou Reed. Uh, and I think that's just a very— that's a hysterical subplot. Like, every day you scroll through Twitter, it's like, Sabrina Carpenter did a sexual innuendo, Ariana Grande collapsed 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, just a true artist. I love that you know all this too. I'm really— I'm learning about female pop, pop stars from you. Um, Olivia Rodrigo is— I really enjoy her music. I think it's really fun and different, very much a callback to bands like Paramore. Feels like kind of millennial culture for Gen Z. Um, and she does some cool stuff. She has an upcoming concert that's all female artists, uh, but of course then she ruins it by saying we're gonna donate money to Planned Parenthood, and I'm gonna criticize the Trump administration.

She does really love Planned Parenthood.

She loves abortion. She really loves it. 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 control, other forms of birth control, something at concerts.

It's, 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, said, I support a woman's right to choose and I support Planned Parenthood and I think Dobbs was bad and whatever. Like, so every celebrity. And then, but there was a handful, like Olivia Rodrigo is obsessed with Planned Parenthood. She talks about it all the time. She has like Planned Parenthood banners at her concert, which again is like, that's like, it's so cringe almost, right? Like it's so lame.

Yeah. What are they paying her? It's very Hillary Clinton-esque.

It's basic. Yeah, it's basically corporate sponsorship, but for which she also, I mean, she is like, she's like the Citibank musician, right? She does like the credit card commercials and everything is sponsored by. So I do really know, I guess I know, I know a shocking lot about, about people, I'm realizing. But yeah, the play, it's really like, that is one where it's like, this is like, this is odd. Stop, stop talking about Planned Parenthood that much.

Yeah. I mean, and while we're criticizing people for being bad role models, which we've established is sort of okay to do in select circumstances. I think we can do it.

We've criticized enough people for doing it that I think we're now allowed to, is how it works.

Yes. Yeah. Uh, only us, we can criticize anyone we want. Uh, but yeah, she, she was also a Disney star. She was in the new High School Musical shows and now, which were really kind of similar. I never watched them and I love— I just love that you did.

I'm not kidding. High School— it's called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. My, one of my best buddies and I watched it when it was on Disney Plus. It's like, it's, it's like a, it's postmodern. It's like, it's, it's the, it's so weird, dude.

It's, there's like actually a really subversive cultural critique.

I don't even think it's subversive. 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 where they filmed the High School Musical movie. Putting on a High School Musical version of High School Musical.

This is like Christopher Nolan levels of slayage.

And like, real, like, the actors who were in High School Musical appear as themselves. So like, this show, it's, it's, I, it's so absurd. And it's like, it's, it's like not good, but it's so bad that it's good, which is not a thing that I usually believe. I don't believe in that as a, as a judgment, but in this case it is. Anyway, I digress. Wise Olivia Rodrigo. She's a bad role model.

Yeah, I'm sold. I'm gonna go watch the new High School Musical. Uh, but yeah, she's— she is not a good role model. Mostly, you know, what I'm aware of is the Planned Parenthood stuff. And like you said, she talks about it all the time. Uh, 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 in life if you don't have abortion, uh, access, whatever. Um, and it's just unfortunate. And she said— she said some positive things. She's talked about how she wants to get married and have a family. Uh, but she also, she said something at one point where she was like, uh, 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. Um, so yeah, she's definitely a very mixed bag. I do actually like her music, but, um, very disappointed in her, um, pushing of abortion. But you know who's someone who is a 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. Um, but you know who's been really good is Hilary Duff. She, um, 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 a good, like, a fun mix of, um 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 unironically super wholesome. And yeah, she just seems like she's living a genuinely good life and is happy. And it's rare to see that. Like, again, even, even the folks who, even celebrities who aren't like ostensibly bad boys or, you know, like troubled. Uh, most of them don't seem like they're having a good time, right? I mean, it's the classic, like, most celebrities seem either super forced or super fake, uh, or super unhappy. And Hilary 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 gonna say that and someone's gonna be like, there is something inappropriate. But it's 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. Um, she was in— she was at, uh, a sports Illustrated Swimsuit model. And then she had this quote where she was like, I, I asked for a high-waisted bikini because I'm, I'm a mom and I'm not showing all that off. But it was great. It was just like, she has her boundaries. Like, she's very, you know, I just, I really like— I think she's setting a pretty good example. And, uh, she's been a good— it's been happy to see— good to see her trajectory because that's not always what happens with a lot of the kind of younger—

the child stars especially. Yeah, I mean, she's maybe the only one who made it out all right. I mean, I mean, you get— there's obviously like the— what, who, um, Ryan, uh, Gosling and, um, I forget 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 Clubhouse, the— or the— yeah, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. That's what our kids watch, whatever, the, the Mouseketeers, or, uh, yeah. But, but that's, that's on— that's not even when we talk about like the, the Disney Nickelodeon child stars.

That's, uh, yeah. Well, Zendaya too, she's become a huge movie star and fairly clean. She has a no nudity clause in her contract, even though she's been in some pretty crazy shows like Euphoria. But, you know, she has, she has a boundary there. She's married. So that's a lot of positive things.

I genuinely always forget that Zendaya started on— 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 genuinely forget that. I first encountered Zendaya as an adult actress. This in probably Euphoria, uh, and then was informed later that she had been a child star, which is very funny.

I think it was— I want to say Wizards of Waverly Place. I don't know, something Disney. Someone, someone's gonna be listening and they're gonna know.

Yeah, they'll be in the comments. Um, speaking of Euphoria, I would encourage everybody to go read Maddie's review, uh, of the Euphoria series finale on The Daily Wire. It's very good, and, uh, she makes a strong case for why not only was the, the show good, which I agree with, but also the the finale was a little bit conservative almost, which, uh, is the 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. Um, Madeline Frye Schultz edits Upstream, The Daily Wire's home for lifestyle and culture. Um, you should follow her on X. You should read her stuff and other Upstream stuff at The Daily Wire. Uh, and of course you should come back next week for another episode of Behind the story. But until then, Maddie, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me on. This was great.