At first glance, Ariana Grande’s video for “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” seems to be pretty easy to interpret: a girl (Grande) sets her sights on a handsome guy (Riverdale‘s Charles Melton) who happens to be dating another woman, so she tries to break them up. However, at the end of the music video, Grande swims over to the couple in the pool and — surprise! — goes in for a kiss with the guy’s girlfriend instead.
There’s actually a lot more to the video than meets the eye. For starters, the girlfriend is styled to look exactly like Grande, from her trademark brown ponytail to her crescent moon tattoo. So, when she goes in for a kiss with her look-alike at the end, some fans have taken that to mean that the Thank U, Next track is actually a self-love anthem, in which Grande is telling herself to break up with a guy and value herself, instead.
However, the kiss at the end, which actually gets cut off right before the pair lock lips, has also been labeled an act of queerbaiting by a number of people on Twitter. While Grande can kiss a woman and be praised for it, gay women who do the same thing can be on the end of ridicule, shame, and other attacks.
So far, Grande has yet to address the criticisms of her video’s twist. But since this isn’t her first time weathering controversy, hopefully she will soon. In the meantime, check out some of the best responses to the moment from fans on Twitter ahead.
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