Ariana Grande, Before and After

In 2009, she became a redhead for her role on the Nickelodeon series Victorious... and you know what? I don’t hate it on her. Although it’s not a natural-looking red (and it isn’t meant to be), the shade gives her a very flattering, peaches and cream complexion. At this point, she also started straightening her curls.

She went an even darker shade of red the following year. But with the wrong shade of foundation, it’s now clashing with her skin tone. (You can actually see where the foundation ends, at her collarbones!) This is obviously her natural nose, and if you zoom in, you can see she’s got a few teenage blemishes (she was 16 at this time). Also note her eyelids, and the distance to her brows, because this area will definitely change.

This is when Ariana started with the ponytails, no doubt because her hair was becoming damaged from all that red dye. It’s also when she began getting spray tans, which I’ll admit are better than a mask of warm-toned foundation, but still clash badly with burgundy hair. It looks like the dye didn’t quite “take” on her eyebrows, which are brassy on the edges and ashy in the middle. As for her makeup, I’m surprised to see her in red lipstick, which would be very off-brand for her these days. 

This might be my favourite photo of her, at 19 years old. Bright fuchsia lips, fresh makeup (way less than she wears now!), and a more realistic shade of red hair—this is a look I can get behind. But already, there are signs of changes to come. Her brows seem to be getting higher, and her upper lip is now fuller than the bottom one.

I’ve got a couple shots to show you from 2013, because this was a pivotal year for Ariana. This is when her eyebrows migrated up her forehead, and she took on this permanently smug expression (as Buzzfeed put it: “Have you noticed that Ariana Grande always looks like she’s politely listening to a very bad joke?”³ ). Problem is, one brow is actually higher than the other. She also returned to the spray tan, but traded her red hair for a medium brown. (And yes, that’s a ponytail again, too!) 

Fortunately, her brows look more even here, but they’re definitely sitting much higher up on her forehead versus back in 2010. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a too-tight ponytail that’s causing this situation! I can’t help but wonder if she tried out the look with Botox first, liked it, and then decided to undergo a more permanent procedure.

By 2014, at age 20, Ariana had blossomed into a full-fledged pop star. Everything is more exaggerated now. Her hair has tripled in size thanks to some new extensions, her lips are over-lined, and her eye makeup is more dramatic than ever. Although I strongly suspect that a surgical procedure was involved, it kinda looks like her ponytail is pulling up her eyelids here!

The next year, she went back to her natural dark brown hair colour (which I think suits her the best). She also ditched the rust-toned eyeshadow that she’d been favouring, and tried out a pair of cat eyes with soft, baby pink lips. But there’s something else to pay attention to: her nose. Although we can only see it in profile here, it appears smaller in relation to her other features.

Just when we thought Ariana’s uneven eyebrows had been corrected... they’re back! (And so is the spray tan and blonde hair, at least on the ends.) Needless to say, this photo has me wondering if we’re looking at a botched brow lift here. Her brows sure weren’t like this back in 2009 and 2010. If the smoky eyes are supposed to distract from them, it isn’t working.

Later that year, she showed off a new set of bangs (which were likely clip-ins), and honestly, it’s a smart idea. Now, whatever is going on with her brows is obscured—although to me it almost looks like they’re pulled even higher, especially at the outer tails. The other big change is her nose, which is looking distinctly more petite than before. Plus, we’ve got another case of mismatched foundation. This time, it’s several shades lighter than her body!

By the time she was 24, Ariana’s style had evolved to match her pop diva status. She kept her signature ponytail, but now, bold winged eyeliner was her new thing. She paired it with rust-toned shadow, a lighter tone of foundation, and drawn-on eyebrows (with one still higher than the other). The finishing touch is a dab of glowy highlighter placed just so on her newly sculpted nose. Notice her sharper jawline, flat eyelids and sculpted cheeks.

Two years later, she stepped out in almost the exact same look as 2018. Even her pose is similar—did you know that she only allows the left side of her face to be photographed?!⁴ I honestly think that might be because of the aforementioned eyebrow issue, because you don’t notice them as much at this angle. What I do see, however, is some newfound volume in her lips!

Fast-forward to 2024, and Ariana is now in her blonde era. She initially revealed her new hair colour on Instagram in 2022, and it’s likely linked to her upcoming role as Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked. Bonus: The bleach is working well to camouflage the whole brow situation, too! Meanwhile, her lips are a tad lumpy (which could be from lip filler), and her dimple is looking more prominent (since she’s smiling, for once!).

Ariana may have been more candid about cosmetic procedures than most of our Before and After subjects, but something tells me there’s more going on in these photos than just a few injections. 

In fact, the most dramatic changes happened after 2018, when she supposedly quit using Botox and filler. If that were true, then how did her lips become noticeably fuller in 2020? (I don’t think it’s just makeup!) And why didn’t she address the most obvious changes, which happened in her eye and brow area?

Let’s check in with the experts to see what they think she had done.

“I think she had a brow lift, upper eyelid surgery, a lid tilt, rhinoplasty, and chin surgery” says Dr. Charles Lee.⁵

“There’s a few cosmetic procedures that I’m pretty confident that she’s had done,” says Dr. Daniel Barrett. “One is a rhinoplasty, a chin implant, canthopexy [fox eye surgery], and then a brow lift in addition to Botox and filler. So why do I think that? If you look at the tip of her nose, you can see it’s much thinner now. She probably had some cartilage reduction and maybe the bones brought down as well. A chin implant, winged, would take care of the little bit of deficit you see [on one side of her jawline]. And the almond-shaped eyes and the higher brow position from the brow lift.”⁶

“How do you go from here [how she looked in 2011] to here [how she looked in 2022]? The first thing is we have to do a brow lift,” says Dr. Philip Miller. “That can be done either with surgery or with threads. It looks like it has to be a little asymmetric, too. And you also want to do a rhinoplasty to make the tip a little bit more narrowed and turned up. Cheek augmentation, that could either be done with implants or with filler. And then we want to make the eyes a little bit more narrow and the edges turned up a little bit, and that can be done also with the thread lift, with a mid-facelift or a number of other techniques.”⁷

“I think that she probably had a rhinoplasty or a nose job,” says Dr. Samuel Golpanian. “She probably had a brow lift, but it’s unclear whether it was from Botox or a surgical brow lift. She also may have had a canthoplasty or a surgical procedure to tighten the lateral or side portion of the eye to make it more almond-shaped.”⁸

Whatever procedures Ariana has undergone, they were likely way more extensive than she’s admitting. So her Vogue interview is right out of the Bella Hadid playbook. When the changes become so obvious that they have to address them, they give us a partial confession instead of telling the full story.

So much for “full transparency”!