TikTok star Mikayla Nogueira at the centre of fake tan drama

2024 has barely started and we’re already throwing it back to the good old days of social media beauty drama!

If you keep up to date with the TikTok beauty community, you may be familiar with Mikayla Nogueira. Boasting 15.3 million followers, the video creator is one of the app’s biggest beauty creators. And currently, she’s in the centre of some hot water.

Mikayla Nogueira fake tan drama explained

In early January, a TikTok creator by the name of Matthew Stevens posted a video call out directed at the influencer.

As founder of fake tan brand Illusion Bronze, Stevens says Nogueira had agreed to post a video review of his product, to which he now alleges; “Mikayla’s lies have cost me $10 000.”

Let us explain…

Illusion Bronze is a customisable self tan brand, based on skin colour, hair colour and eye colour. 

According to Stevens, in a video that’s amassed 1.3 million likes, in October 2023, he asked Nogueira to review his small business. Four days later, he says that she posted a review video of a competitor’s product.

After expressing his upset in a video, Nogueira personally messaged Stevens to apologise and express that it was a coincidence, also adding that she had his tanning product at home and aimed to post a video review ASAP.

Messaging him at a later date saying she’ll be posting a review “tomorrow”, Stevens says he took out a Shopify loan of $10 000 USD to order in new stock in anticipation of an increase in orders.

After four months had passed from their initial time of contact, Stevens then decided to post a video where he called Noguiera “a liar”.

Mikayla's response

Given the virality of Stevens’ video, Nogueira quickly took to her TikTok page to share her side of the story.

While she expressed that she believed it was “unfortunate” for Stevens to take this issue online, she took responsibility for the delay in creating a video and clarified she “did not advise him” to take out a $10 000 loan.

“He cannot rely on me for the success of his brand. He just can’t,” she said.

The Internet's response

After another response video from Stevens, social media users have eagerly shared their thoughts on the viral beauty drama.

Those siding with Stevens argue that Nogueira shouldn’t have said she was going to make a video when it didn’t come to fruition, while those siding with Nogueira say Stevens shouldn’t have taken out a loan, nor relied on an unpaid collaboration.

Ultimately, this drama is a whole lot of messy. Who knew beauty products could cause such uproar?

Main image credit: @mikaylajmakeup

Drama aside, here are 8 of our favourite self tan products…