It was Beyoncé that pointed out to us all in 2011 with “Run the World (Girls)” just, who, exactly is in control, and here in the Twilight Zone called 2020, Ariana Grande still wants to remind us of that fact as she sets the tableau of her first single, “Positions,” from the album of the same name inside of the White House. In Grande’s America, dogs clearly serve as unofficial advisors and women are embraced for the multifaceted creatures they are. In fact, it was Meredith Brooks’ biggest hit from 1997, “Bitch,” that explored this complexity in a similar, albeit more “alt-rock” way.
Of course, any pop duchess also owes their inspiration to the pop princess that is Britney Spears. And in 2007, Blackout’s “Piece of Me” expressed the same sentiments of how a woman is so many things to so many people, opening her up for far more scrutiny and judgment than any man. With “Positions,” Grande is clearly in a bubblier mood than Brooks or Spears were with the aforementioned tracks, but it’s any woman’s prerogative about how she wants to deliver a message. And the one here is: “Switchin’ the positions for you/Cookin’ in the kitchen and I’m in the bedroom/I’m in the Olympics, way I’m jumpin’ through hoops.” The marathon that is a woman’s life trying to fulfill so many roles while keeping up with the “maternal” one that has always been expected of her since time immemorial is illustrated in the Dave Meyers-directed video (though the visuals are no match for the M.C. Escher vibes of another video he directed for Grande, “No Tears Left to Cry”).
At one moment in a conference (with a framed portrait of one of her many dogs hovering above her–a decorative move that smacks of Elle Woods), in another doing her best impression of Sophia Loren in the kitchen, Grande reminds us that a woman has long been adept at “switching positions” not just in the boudoir, but in every aspect of life. One of the most significant examples in history was World War II, in which women were expected to immediately take on “men’s work” that they were formerly barred from based on their gender. Clearly because men knew they would do their so-called jobs just as well, if not better. For the inherent quality of all women is resiliency and adaptability, something key to successfully executing any form of employment.
While Grande’s lyrics are not as varied as they were on the eponymous single that led thank u, next in 2019, that may just be the ironic point. Grande has to keep the message as simple as possible because it’s unfathomable to speak in words just how many hats a woman can and must wear (and no, we ain’t talkin’ Lucy Ricardo’s literal hat collection). What’s more, it seems that, by Grande standards, she’s playing it much closer to the vest this time around with regard to the song’s subject matter: her latest boyfriend, Dalton Gomez.
Perhaps not wanting to be overly enthusiastic as has been her undoing in the past (and the curse of instantaneous female Cancer attachment), she shrouds the lyrics in more generalness than they possessed on her last record. And, as a famous woman, she has every right to keep her relationship as private as possible. Though this is also a likely reason why she wields the office of the President as a metaphor for what it’s like to be at her level of fame and have a boyfriend behind her in the shadows, constantly expected to wait in the wings for when she has a moment to spare. This, too, is a major reason why a female has never managed to ascend to the highest office in the land (apart from just garden variety misogyny inherent to a patriarchal society). The male public is too fragile to see such a phenomenon–the manifestation of a “position-switched” adage: “Behind every great woman is a fairly basic man.”
Grande here is subverting the expectations of what we’ve come to know for so long in the White House (a perspective certainly not helped by the Orange One). She is the president, not the First Lady or the “First Daughter” (as the dual-released Chasing Liberty and First Daughter led us to believe was the only way a girl could broker power in the White House). There is nothing “wrong” or “unnatural” about her holding this office as she flits from one aspect of the job to another as seamlessly as her wardrobe changes (again, this element is très Elle Woods). A camera effect that sees her literally turning like slides in a carousel to a new setting where she will perform her latest “position” is Meyers’ straightforward statement on the very real merry-go-round a woman must ride every day (but, by Grande’s estimation, if you can ride a dick, too, that helps).
And yes, this is the angst-ridden theme of Brooks’ manifesto as well. For as she sang in “Bitch,” “You look at me like maybe I’m an angel underneath/Innocent and sweet”–because that’s the trope women are “designed” to embody, unless they’re part of the only other available extreme in men’s eyes: whorish temptresses intent on male destruction. Brooks continues, “Yesterday I cried/You must have been relieved to see the softer side/I can understand how you’d be so confused/I don’t envy you/I’m a little bit of everything all rolled into one.” A careening, wheeling acrobat ready to take on any guise at a moment’s notice, based on the situation and mood. Later, she adds, “So take me as I am/This may mean you’ll have to be a stronger man.” ‘Cause God or whoever knows that women are tired of being strong enough for the both of you in the relationship.
Grande is smirkingly saying what Spears also said–that despite all the critiques and expectations, everyone still wants a piece of her. And “just when you think you got [her] figured out/The season’s already changing.” Let us hope it’s changing into one where we don’t allow a 70+ white (/orange) man to ever again gain the responsibility of being the U.S. president.
