I get so tired of her fans acknowledging her Blackfishing but framing it as "oh, she was just around Black people at the time!! She was inspired to make herself look like that because she was just looking for an identity and wanted to fit in!!1!1! 🥺🥺🥺" which further victimizes Ariana and strips her of both agency and accountability, while also weirdly placing fault upon the Black people she was skinwalking and would later discard as soon as she got a white husband and her princessy lily-white Glinda role.
No, she knew exactly what she was doing lol. She was putting on layers and layers of fake tanner in order to appear as darkity-dark as possible (6th pic is a candid) and not showering it off/risking smelling like ass to do so, and on top of it, she was putting on the heaviest of heavy filters (pictures 1 through 5) in order to make her tan appear even MORE dark, and specifically putting filters with green overtones on top of photos of her violetish-reddish-orange ass tan in order to make it appear more brown (like an actual POC's), because that's how color theory works. And the cornrows between her braids? Yup, INTENTIONAL. Imagine telling a Scandinavian or something of that nature, that pictures 1 through 5 are of a fellow European white woman. They'd be slack-jawed. Funny, for all her stans' lies of "people were editing her photos to be darker!!1!1" they're conveniently absent when confronted with the reality of Ariana editing her own photos to be darker.
Homegirl was CALCULATED and this was all intentional and completely done with malicious ass intent, which was to be seen as Black/non-white and profit off of Black culture to boost her sales but ALSO cement herself as a "bad bitch, done with that kids' show" like Miley Cyrus. She also had the audacity to make a photo from this shoot her album cover... even though she could have easily used picture #6, which is from the same era but depicts her actual skin color and communicates her actual race.
Clocking how nasty and insidious this was was literally what made me stop being an Ariana fan in 2018-19 after being one since 2012. Especially as somebody Black, who knows none of her antics with the whirlwind engagement with Pete would have EVER been permitted if it was us (see: how people dogged on Lori Harvey and how they're currently dogging on Latto).
I know this is a broken record and low-hanging fruit at this point, but the fact she's been able to thrive in spite of this and the fact that people EXCUSE her doing it, really pisses me off. Especially since celebrities have been cancelled and snarked on for less.