The star is done being told she's "not good enough."
Ariana Grande is weeding people’s criticisms out of her life — literally. In the music video for “Petal,” the title track of her new album that dropped on Friday (July 31), the Wicked actress reclaims her narrative by taking a garden chainsaw to a group of executives who have a little too much to say about her.
The visual — shot entirely on VistaVision, a 1950s cinematic format — opens with Grande in character as Pepper, an aspiring star who sits among dozens of other hopefuls inside the fictional Fame INC. headquarters to audition for a panel of older men in suits. She leaves disappointed, however, after they hand her an evaluation sheet stamped “Not good enough.”
Accepting their feedback, Grande returns à la Sandy from the end of Grease, sporting a black bodysuit and red lip. Alas, the men’s evaluation is equally harsh the second time around — “NO SEX APPEAL! Should get some work done” — and so she returns in a new costume with visibly artificial breasts bulging out of a low-cut cow-print dress, which the executives label “DESPERATE.”
After several rounds, Pepper returns one last time, during which one of the men cuts her off mid-song and tells her: “You give off this feeling that is completely … what’s the word? Inauthentic.”
