Ariana Grande Credits Drag Queens as Her Beauty Inspirations in ...

In an all new “Beauty Secrets” video with Vogue, pop star, actress, and R.E.M. Beauty creator Ariana Grande, opened up about why makeup is so important to her and the inspiration behind some of her most iconic looks.

She said her love for makeup began when she was a kid performing in family theater and it only grew from there.

She loves how in music, there’s “a new look for every song and video. It became such an important piece of the puzzle. It’s such an important part of being an artist and of storytelling.”

She then went on to say her inspiration often comes from the characters she plays. “Also from watching drag,” she said. “I love drag so much, it is so inspiring to me,” she gushed.

Her admiration for drag started when she was quite young. “When I was on Broadway doing “13,” I used to go afterwards to go see the queens and sometimes I’d end up singing. That was a really joyous and important part of my life,” she remembered fondly.

She got emotional when speaking about how her relationship with makeup and beauty has changed over the years. “I feel like my relationship to beauty has changed so much over the years, especially because I started so young. Being exposed to so many voices at such a young age, especially when people have things about your appearance at young age, it’s really hard to know what’s worth hearing and not.”

She explained that “for a long time, beauty was about hiding for me. Now I feel like, maybe it’s not.”

“Our relationships to beauty are so personal. We’re all here talking about beauty secrets, isn’t the secret that we all just want to feel our best and be loved?” she asked.

To close, she brought it all back to her love for drag! “When I did Drag Race, Ru came out to come sit at the judging panel. She was like ‘Miss Grande! I love your never ending stream of PR packages that are constantly arriving.'”

Grande said she apologized and offered to end the flow of influx of packages. To which Ru Paul replied “No! I really mean it, I love it!” After Ru complimented R.E.M. Beauty’s chocolate brown eye pencil, Grande said “I can and will die now. That was the best moment of my makeup career so far.”

Grande has long been an outspoken ally to the LGBTQ community. This past pride month, Grande was one of 250 celebrities to sign GLAAD and The Human Rights Campaign’s letter urging social media platforms to do more to stop the spread of hate against LGBTQ people online. Read more here.