Ariana Grande's Most Glaring Fake Tan Fails Rival Donald Trump's Orange Glow

What exactly is Ariana Grande's real skin tone? The internet has been commenting about her transformation for years, and the answer is out there somewhere. Discussions of Grande's real look resurfaced online once she started promoting "Wicked: For Good." The actress and singer looked so pale — perhaps in an attempt to emulate her character Glinda's appearance during the movie's press tour — that it's become blatantly evident that back in 2013 to 2016 she was tanning so much that her orange glow rivaled Donald Trump's.

Trump has infamously shown off his makeup fails that make him look any color within the range of orange and bronze. Like Grande, Trump also seems to have a problem with his true skin tone. However, Grande wins when it comes to consistency — it wouldn't be a surprise if Trump had a different color every day of the week, while Grande chooses one color and sticks with it for a period of time.

IAB Studio/Shutterstock & Denise Truscello/Getty

But it's not like Grande is above making the same skin tone mistakes as Trump. In the photo above, Grande is performing at the T-Mobile Arena in 2016, and you can see that the fake tan is glaring. It echoes that time when she was spotted at LAX with several different skin tones thanks to a spray tan gone wrong (per E! News). Also, Trump wins when it comes to acknowledging his own look. In 2024, the POTUS commented in a rally that he just doesn't have the time to get a real tan. Grande, however, has never publicly addressed her fake tan choices.

The biggest problem that fans and critics tend to point out when it comes to Ariana Grande's spray tan is that the artist, who is of Italian descent, has been accused on several occasions of modifying her skin tone in order to look like another race and appeal to a larger audience. Grande's appearance was once accompanied by a particular behavior and diction that led to her being accused of "Blackfishing." 

And it gets worse: fans have been quick to notice that Grande's recent pale look is directly connected to a change in her demeanor. Reddit users have pointed out that now that she needs to convey a high-class, well-versed and educated persona, she's dropped the darker tones altogether. But fans aren't the only ones that have weighed in about the absurd of Grande's bronzers. In his Netflix comedy special "Alive From New York," actor and comedian Pete Davidson publicly talked about Grande's much-discussed tan on the cover of Vogue. and joked that she spray-tanned herself brown (per People).

This is one of the many controversies surrounding Grande over the years. Now that she adopted the pale "Glinda look," fans are wondering if she will stick to that skin tone for the rest of her career.