The Shady Side Of Mikayla Nogueira
The online world of beauty influencers used to be on YouTube where makeup moguls reigned supreme. But, after scandal after scandal — including Dramageddon – the beauty community collapsed and those once hailed as YouTube royalty moved to the more popular app, TikTok. Then came Mikayla Nogueira, whose connection with the TikTok camera turned the app into short-form YouTube and changed the game.
Although she started posting on Tumblr and YouTube in her teen years, the Massachusetts native finally found her success on TikTok in 2020. Her first makeup video was her version of the "Catfish Challenge". The TikTok went viral and changed her life forever. In less than a year, she gained over four million TikTok subscribers and won the 2020 American Influencer Award for emerging makeup artist of the year. She quit her job at Ulta to be a full-time influencer, which has led to over 15 million followers amassing 1.4 billion likes, numerous brand deals, a custom product made for her by Huda Beauty, the 2023 Streamy Award for Beauty, and more.
Nogueira is known for her Boston accent, her over-the-top personality, and a cystic acne makeup trick, but keeping with beauty guru tradition, she has been caught in the middle of many scandals, some of which were either brilliant PR tactics or just a poor lack of judgment.
Viewers thought Mikayla Nogueira fakes her accent
Mikayla Nogueria's staple is her strong Boston-ish accent. It has been the subject of many TikToks including her viral pronunciation of "KIM KAH-DA-SHEE-IN." But fans have often speculated that her signature voice is being exaggerated or faked.
In her older TikToks, her accent and volume were noticeably fainter and got more intense over time. Viewers also found pre-TikTok videos from her YouTube where she sounds more like your average East Coaster. Since her rise to fame, Nogueira's accent has been noticeably different depending on the situation or the subject at hand. When she's playing with makeup or trying a product, the Massachusetts no "R" sound is in full effect. Then, her accent is tamer in more serious videos, for example when addressing criticism or when she's answering questions for Interview Magazine. The inconsistency had beauty community fans in a tailspin.
On Brittany Broski's "For You Podcast," podcast (via Yahoo), Nogueira discussed her voice. "I went to school for Communication with a primary focus on radio ... Everyone has like a customer service voice, right?" she explained. "So, when I first started making my TikToks, I would just use like my radio voice because it was professional ... I was wicked nervous because my voice has been like this topic of discussion my entire life and ... I didn't know how people would react." Many people have come to the influencer's defense, saying their accents also fluctuate. Whether faked or not, her voice has given her a familiar brand that has the internet talking.
Fans were outraged over Lashgate
The scandal that forever changed Mikayla Nogueira's image started with mascara. In January of 2023, the makeup influencer dueted a TikTok about the L'Oréal Telescopic Lift Mascara and demonstrated how impressively long it made her lashes. However, she cut the camera in between each coating of her lashes, and the result seemed too good to be true. Viewers accused Nogueira of wearing false strip lashes and shamed her for lying about the product's capabilities. Thus began lashgate.
The post was sponsored by L'Oréal, something she disclosed in the description and briefly on screen. However, to the company's benefit, the speculation and disbelief about the mascara resulted in Telescopic Lift flying off the shelves. Dozens of TikTokers reviewed it, but most notably, controversial beauty guru Jeffree Star returned to his makeup-reviewing roots and tested the mascara. Like Star's, most reviews did not end with the dramatic results Nogueira had promised. Initially, she replied to people's comments that it looked like false lashes, but she did not post another TikTok until February.
Finally, she posted her comeback video. "I'm sure we all know why we've gathered here today," she began. "It's the month of love, b***hes!" Nogueira's lack of response was revolutionary in the world of influencer scandals. No notes app apology, no clap back, just nothing. Although Lashgate led to many fans distrusting her, she surprisingly gained supporters as well.
Her wedding seemed more like a brand deal
Mikayla Nogueira and her husband, Cody Hawken, tied the knot on July 1, 2023. Hawken was a staple in her videos, so fans had front-row seats to their romance. The fiancée posted about the search for the perfect dress, the perfect hair, and the perfect lipstick and lip pencil combination. She found the first two and created the last. The week of her wedding, Nogueira announced her collaboration with the popular affordable makeup brand, e.l.f. Cosmetics, to make her perfect lipstick and lip pencil kit, The Marriage Material Lip Duo. The kit went live just before her wedding day and sold out within minutes.
Nogueira faced much criticism from fans for combining a brand collab with her special day, and it only intensified after details about her wedding were posted. e.l.f. was all over the venue. There was a kissing booth with their logo on it, an e.l.f. gifting booth, and e.l.f. gift bags with her lip duo inside. The gift bags included products from other makeup brands, which made the sponsorship rumors grow.
When she returned to TikTok after her honeymoon, the newlywed denied all sponsorship claims. She explained she was overjoyed by their collaboration and wanted to celebrate. As for the kissing booth, she claimed she asked e.l.f. if she could put their logo on it, even though the booth wasn't sponsored by them. People called that out as strange, but maybe she's just an ecstatic fan.
There were rumors she replaced her friends with influencers
The wedding rumors continued for Mikayla Nogueira. On the morning of the bride's big day, followers noticed a surplus of TikTok influencers posting "Get Ready With Me for Mikayla's Wedding" videos. Inherently, there's nothing abnormal about a GRWM post, but as the guest list unfolded, fans clocked that nearly every TikToker invited posted a pre-wedding video, including controversial beauty influencer James Charles. From the outside, her wedding started to appear like an event for clout.
To make matters worse, a supposed lifelong friend of Nogueira posted on social media that she received a Save the Date from the couple but not an invitation. According to the friend, Nogueira left her on read after she reached out about a formal invite and later heard the influencer was uninviting close friends and replacing them with fellow content creators. The friend posted a screenshot (via TikTok) of another text she sent, reading, "You'll look back at your wedding photos in 10 years from now and deeply regret inviting all of those internet strangers that you didn't even know."
Nogueira neither confirmed nor denied this friend's existence, but she did refute the claim that she uninvited loved ones. "My wedding was 175 people. 10% of that was influencers," she clarified in her video. "The reason why it seemed like it was all influences is because the only people posting on TikTok are influencers ... My grandma isn't making a TikTok about my wedding." She's got a point, but it still looked bad.
Nogueira took sponsorships from brands she previously criticized
A large part of how influencers make their money is through sponsorships. Some will review products they don't like, but they do a good job selling it for the check. Others, however, have been caught red-handed contradicting previous unsponsored reviews that told their followers how they really felt, something Mikayla Nogueira has become infamous for.
On January 18, 2023, Nogueira posted her unsponsored review of the Essence foundation and concealer, and she dragged them through the mud! She also criticized and laughed at their limited shade range. After including both products in her makeup routine, Nogueira approved the foundation but not the concealer, "I'm gonna pass, I think it's just like a whatever concealer," she admitted. In October of that year, Nogueira used the same products but in a sponsored ad and with a much cheerier tone, "We're doing a full face of Essence, I have always wanted to do this!"
She's a regular culprit of this. In January 2022, she did a series called "Full Face of Makeup I Hate," which featured a Charlotte Tilbury mascara she liked but had much criticism of, "I actually really like this mascara but it bleeds like a b***h. Your under eyes? Racoon at the end of the day ... I've found better." Months later she used the same product in a post sponsored by the brand and sang its praises.
Old videos showed her using problematic language
Before TikTok, Mikayla Nogueira was a teenager posting vlogs on YouTube. Most of her vlogs were about her family's chickens, complaining about her brother, and sharing her thoughts about relationships. In one vlog from 2012, fans asked the then-14-year-old if she was transgender.
"I'm a full-on female," she explained, noting that her deeper voice was because she matured earlier than others. She apologized if being transgender offended anyone and used a derogatory term about trans people in the process, also conflating being a trans woman with being a man. "I'm a real girly girl, I wear makeup ... Just because I have a manly voice doesn't make me distinctively a man and it does not make me transgender," she said. Nogueira concluded that she was trying to speak with a girlier voice to avoid being mistaken as not cisgender again, "Obviously being called 'transgender' is not exactly a compliment."
In 2023, drama reporter Rich Lux posted an undated Omegle video chat featuring Nogueira and an unnamed friend. The two were randomly matched with the YouTubers Vikram Singh Barn and Simon Mint, known online as Vikkstar123 and Miniminter respectively. After Mint explicitly shared that Barn was Indian, Nogueira still referred to him as Black, which she caught some flack for.
She responded to accusations of being rude to a waiter
The common saying "Don't meet your heroes" circled once again after a Boston waiter came out about the time she served Mikayla Nogueira at a restaurant. In 2022, a college student working in a restaurant posted a TikTok (survived by YouTube) recounting her experience waiting on Nogueira, her father, and then-boyfriend Cody Hawken.
The waiter recalled how she greeted their table and shared that the staff were big fans, yet was met with rude comments from Mr. Nogueira and a snarky thanks from the influencer. The server later apologized if she made things awkward, which was also met with unfriendliness. After the video went viral, Nogueira responded by apologizing and saying that the waiter may have misinterpreted her social anxiety as rudeness. Many viewers came forward about their struggles with anxiety and argued that it was no excuse for rude behavior.
Not long after, Nogueira posted a makeup tutorial and briefly addressed the situation, "By the way, if you saw that waitress story ... she's full of s****. So, yeah, f*** you, dude." While the TikToker said she apologized to her personally, the server said Nogueira's apology was poor and that many people came forward on Reddit with similar stories.
She went back on her promise to a small business
To kick off 2024, small business owner Matthew Stevens posted a video accusing Mikayla Nogueira of going back on her promise to promote his product. Stevens is the creator of Illusion Bronze and posted a video asking Nogueira, well-known for her self-tanning, to review his brand. She agreed. However, four days later, the influencer posted a review of a bigger self-tanning company that allegedly stole Stevens's unique branding and product qualities. Nogueira was very apologetic for the poor timing and texted Stevens promising to make her Illusion Bronze review ASAP.
Well, two months passed, and fans started asking her for the review. She texted Stevens that she was going to review it the next day. In prior years, Nogueira had stopped reviewing smaller brands supposedly because these indie companies would not be able to handle the sudden influx in orders. So, to avoid this, Stevens purchased $10,000 worth of products in preparation for her promised review.
The day came and there was no review, but she was seemingly wearing the tanner, although it looked more like a spray tan to Stevens. When he reached out to her, she promised a review again and did not deliver. She responded to his January video and owned up to never making the review when she promised to but refuted all other claims including getting a spray tan. Stevens reacted to her video and was flooded with fan support.
Her tone-deaf comment about being an influencer
Work is work, and no one truly likes to work. However, sometimes complaints about a job can be a little tone-deaf. In the comments of one of Mikayla Nogueira's since-deleted videos, a viewer said, "Poor you. Report to a job 9-5 lol". The influencer posted a heated video reply (via NBC News) to this comment and went down the list of her job's daily requirements, including waking up at 6 a.m., filming for five hours, editing those videos, going to meetings, and managing multiple social media accounts, "I literally just finished working, it's 5:19. Try being an influencer for a day. Because the people who say it's easy are so far out of their minds ... You do not want to have this job."
Nogueira's venting was not well received. Many fans responded by describing their laborious lives. Comparing struggles is often unhelpful, but since her fans are basically her employers, complaining about having access to exclusive makeup and red carpets to a working-class audience is never a good look.
She did post an apology, which she kicked off with a 5:19 joke that many found distasteful. She expressed heartbreak over her video being misconstrued and regretted posting it in the first place. She said she was in a bad place when she made the video, but owned up to making an unfair and tone-deaf comparison.
Her pictures and videos look photoshopped
A big taboo in the beauty influencer world is using excessive filters. Since the creators are reviewing makeup, fans find it more helpful to see the unedited version of the product so they can make a reality-based decision on whether or not to buy it for themselves. However, dozens of influencers have been criticized for using Facetune and Photoshop. Some have owned up to it and even made jokes, like James Charles and Nikita Dragun, but others continue to deny it.
In her response to Matthew Stevens's video, Mikayla Nogueira admitted to using a color grading filter on her videos that made her tan look more vibrant and orange than it actually was. In the past, she has been adamant that she doesn't use filters, yet internet investigators have compared her pictures to candid photos taken by others and found edits to her chin and changes to her body shape.
Followers also suspected she makes edits herself in her makeup videos, which would align with the distrust she already has from Lashgate. In an Instagram post dedicated to one of her friends, Nogueira posted two solo pictures first, both of which appeared highly Facetuned. In the photos where she's posing with her friend, she's still edited but her friend is seemingly not. At every accusation, fans came to her defense. Nogueira has earned a reputation for deception. Still, she racks up the views, sells out products, and gets away with not addressing controversies.