Iraqi-American beauty blogger and entrepreneur Huda Kattan has revealed that she once turned down the offer of a small fortune for a sponsored Instagram post.
In an interview with “Entrepreneur Middle East” published last week, Kattan claimed she had been offered $185,000 for a single Instagram post — she has 24.8 million followers on the social media platform — but turned it down because she did not want to include “#ad” in the caption.
“I know you have to identify it as an ad, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with it,” she said, without naming the brand in question, but saying she “genuinely loved the product.”
Kattan also revealed an unlikely ethical guide to her decision: Oprah Winfrey.
“I thought about Oprah,” she said. “I was like, ‘Would Oprah do that?’ No, she wouldn’t.”
The 34-year-old admitted it was a “painful” decision — not least because she had her eye on a new car — but said the fact her husband was able to support their family financially made her choice easier.
Authenticity is clearly important to Kattan. On Wednesday, she took to Instagram to raise her concerns about popular photo-editing app Facetune.
“This topic is pretty embarrassing for me to open up about but I feel it has to be done,” she wrote alongside a before-and-after Facetune shot and a video highlighting the differences between the two. “I started feeling like people were waaay too into Facetune (myself included), but we don’t need it as much as we think we do and I feel sometimes we go too far.”
Kattan said she wasn’t going to stop using the hugely popular app completely, but asked that the make-up industry, in particular, consider not using it so heavily and so often.
