Beauty mogul Huda Kattan apologises after criticising blogger Mina Hasan’s makeup technique

Huda Kattan, the founder of the billion dollar cosmetics company Huda Beauty, came under fire after she posted a video criticising a reel of another lifestyle creator. Mina Hasan, a young content creator from Boston, participated in the colour-correcting trend on TikTok, where people have been mixing different colours to try and fix their foundation or hide blemishes.

Hasan told BuzzFeed News that she was thrilled when the official account of Huda Beauty approached her on Instagram. The message said, “Hi beautiful! We absolutely love this post!! & we’d love your permission to share it on our social channels with full credit to you ofc. Please let us know if you’re happy for us to repost this.”

Hasan, who has 110,000 Instagram followers, was thrilled about the opportunity as this could have helped her reach out to the 52 million followers of Huda Beauty and also because Kattan came from a similar background.“I was so excited that someone at her level, who represents me as a Muslim and woman of colour in the beauty industry and is very established, would come to know about my existence and that I would get featured on such a large platform,” she said.

However, the 20-year-old creator was shocked when she saw the video posted by the popular makeup brand. It turned out that the beauty mogul wasn’t a fan of the trend. In the video, Kattan had a harsh reaction towards the creator’s makeup skills.

Hasan was under the impression that they loved her video, and hence expected it to be positive. In the now-deleted video, Kattan said, “Girl, okay we do not need to use that much colour corrector. Actually the whole thing of colour-correcting is just to put a little bit of colour-corrector so that you don’t see any pigmentation anymore.”

Dismissing the makeup trend on TikTok, Kattan added that the creator was “wasting a lot of product.”

Reacting to the incident, Hasan told Buzzfeed, “I didn’t know it would be a reaction video, especially one with a negative tone. It clearly contradicted the connotation of the DM. There was a condescending tone and expressions that implied that I don’t know makeup.”

Viewers highlighted Kattan mocking the creator for participating in an ongoing trend, which achieved the result Hasan was expecting to get. They wrote that the reaction was “aggressive” and had a “mean girl energy”. They even said that she was being a “hypocrite” as Kattan had tried whacky trends by other creators in her previous videos and commended them for it, unlike this time. They specifically pointed out Meredith Buxley’s 10-Pump Foundation Hack that Kattan tried and praised.

However, some defended her, saying that she also said in that reaction that it’s a lot of makeup being used.

Several people accused Kattan of being more forgiving towards popular white content creators compared to brown artists. Though her Instagram feed contradicts that accusation as she has posted several videos criticising and supporting both.

After Hasan posted a video expressing her disappointment, Kattan shared another video apologising for her reaction and the miscommunication. She said, “When I saw the video I was really upset. First of all the message should not have said ‘repost’, it should have said ‘reaction’.” She added that she always reviews her videos before they are posted, but this particular time she couldn’t do it as there was a lot going on.

Explaining her reaction, Kattan said, “Sometimes when you’re recording and you’re in the moment, you say things you don’t mean.” She added that she didn’t get a chance to watch the video back and edit things out. She posted the conversation with Hasan in which she apologised and added, “I felt maybe I offended her technique and that’s the last thing I want to do.”

“There are different application styles and we just have to leave it at that. I apologise and I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart and I really do hope that we can get past this,” Kattan said.

Hasan thanked her for the apology video and said she appreciated the explanation and transparency behind the situation.

The apology received mixed reactions online though, as some users are still slamming Kattan, saying that an apology isn’t enough as she should have been more responsible while posting the reaction.

However, there are also fans who are appreciating Kattan for apologising publicly.

Kattan has moved from being a beauty influencer to a beauty mogul and while she is entitled to her opinion, she could try to be extra careful while making videos that could be hurtful to others, especially younger creators, many of whom look up to her.