Ariana Grande Is Doing More for Sex Education Than the U.S. Government

You can hear something in Ariana Grande’s new album, Positions, besides her silvery vocals, the lush, swelling strings, and the easy rhymes. 

You can hear the boiling blood of every girl who stood still in a hallway as the principal measured the distance between her hem and her knees. You can feel the frustration of millions of young women who sat through hours upon hours of state-sponsored sex education classes, wanting to learn about their own body but instead learning about male “needs.” You can hear the racing heartbeats of adult women, fighting decades of social conditioning to say to their partners, “No, not like that. Let me show you how I like it.”

Positions makes one thing very clear: Ariana Grande enjoys sex. She wants you to enjoy sex too—the entire album might as well be a searchable Spotify playlist labeled SeXXXy Sounds 2Bang2. 

Many pop stars sing about sex—Christina Aguilera had to be rubbed the right way, Lady Gaga wanted to take a ride on a disco stick, and J.Lo asked, plaintively, for a piece of that sexy body. More recently Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion told men exactly what and where they wanted it with “WAP.” But these are women who are considered mature, fully realized adults. Their main fanbases aren't necessarily teens. We code them as adult women, not as former child stars.  

For a long time, Grande’s brand was innocence. She came up as a teen star on Victorious, whose “big scandal” amounted to licking a single doughnut. She is still rarely seen without a bow in her hair, a pastel accessory, or sleeves falling down over her hands, emphasizing her smallness. It’s not that she’s the first person to deliver a truly sex-positive message on her album. It’s that traditionally when women become icons of femininity, their careers are defined by the fantasies that men project on them. On Positions, Grande is projecting her own fantasies. 

Grande takes things to another level of enthusiasm and sincerity. “Fuck me till daylight,” she cries again and again, on “34+35.” Then, in case we're not math people, she articulates into the mic, as clearly as if she’s on the phone with a frustrating automated customer service system: “I want to 69 with you.” 

It's not just that she's explicit; it's that she's explicit about what she wants. It's a reversal of every Animal House, American Pie, Grease, 50 Shades, and Woody Allen movie—every narrative that tells us that sex is something men want and women give reluctantly. It's an antidote to every song and every album about “blurred lines” or anything that's written by Eminem. It's a lesson to teenagers that's more powerful than most public sex education curriculum in America, which is legally required to include abstinence in 37 states and legally required to include information about birth control in only 12. Your feelings matter, Grande sings, again and again and again. Your body matters. 

Of course, Grande won’t take a quarter of the heat for Positions that Megan and Cardi took for “WAP” because white women are consistently judged less harshly for pushing cultural taboos than Black women and women of color are. However, as one of the most celebrated living symbol of girlhood, she’s a leader in a generation of celebrities who are rejecting puritanical ideas about girls and sex. Zendaya has been casually talking about using protection and enjoying casual hookups in her interviews for years. Former Disney star Rowan Blanchard poses in sheer lingerie and talks about intersectional feminism. In To All the Boys I Loved Before, Lara Jean (Lana Condor) prepares for sex not by learning how to please her boyfriend, but by making sure sex feels good to her.

If you’re a member of Gen Z and you’ve spent a lot of your life watching TikToks about socialist theory and dismantling capitalism, maybe this is just another fulfilling day of pop culture consumption for you. But for Gen X'ers and millennials, who grew up with constant messaging that sex is something that makes women used and dirty, this is big. Thanks to Positions, millions of young people of all genders are growing up humming along to an album about unapologetic female pleasure.

In American culture the idea of a woman requesting sex, choreographing its positions, and enjoying it is less than 10 years old. The idea of a former Nickelodeon girl, a “good girl,” like Grande wanting sex—not using her sexuality as a tool, but actually experiencing pleasure and wanting more—is practically unheard-of.

We already knew that Grande likes singing about sex; she sang about getting fucked so hard you can’t walk straight three years ago in “Side to Side.” She sang about being so good at sex your partner will rethink their theology two years ago in “God Is a Woman.” On her last album she belted out, “Kiss me and take off your clothes!” But this time she abandons metaphor and innuendo and soft romance and sings the quiet part out loud: “This pussy designed for ya,” she chants on “Nasty.” She’s always been cheerfully dirty. Now she's being clear about exactly what she likes. 

In the music video for the title track, “Positions,” Grande plays the president. Should she be the president of the United States? That's for history to decide. Probably not. But should she influence the sex-ed curriculum in the United States? I mean, does 34+35 equal 69? 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.                                

Originally Appeared on Glamour