{"id":608,"date":"2016-01-16T13:12:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T13:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/?p=608"},"modified":"2019-04-03T05:43:19","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T05:43:19","slug":"all-about-huda-kattan-top-beauty-blogging-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/all-about-huda-kattan-top-beauty-blogging-in-dubai\/","title":{"rendered":"All about Huda Kattan – Top Beauty Blogging in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Still from a video posted to YouTube by Huda Kattan, Credit\u00a0PHOTOGRAPH BY YOUTUBE.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Huda Kattan was born in Oklahoma City but grew up in suburban Tennessee and Massachusetts, where she wore a lot of makeup. \u201cI would go out, and I could hear people say, \u2018Where is she going? Who does she think she is?\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019d smile.\u201d Kattan studied finance at the University of Michigan-Dearborn but then decided to move to Dubai in an attempt to become the most popular beauty blogger in the Arab world. \u201cI was focussed,\u201d Kattan said, on the phone, from her home in Dubai. \u201cI knew exactly what I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

As someone raised in the Western world (where she went by the name Heidi), Kattan is an outsider, but her thick raven hair, her enormous dark eyes, and her heavy hand with bronzer make her look like the women she\u2019s schooling on how to apply false eyelashes or de-frizz their hair. (One of her tricks is rinsing it with bottled water, post shampoo.) Her parents are Iraqi (her father came to the U.S. for college), an advantage when most of the other beauty bloggers aren\u2019t Middle Eastern. \u201cMiddle Eastern bloggers are seriously limited,\u201d Kattan says, explaining that her fellow-beauty gurus in Dubai are mostly from Russia or Australia. She\u2019s Muslim, but says she thinks of herself as \u201ca spiritual person\u201d and chooses not to wear a headscarf, which is helpful when your job is to show off your hair and full face. Other popular Arab beauty bloggers, such as Dalal AlDoub and Sondos Alqattan, both in Kuwait, do cover their heads.<\/p>\n

Kattan launched her blog, Huda Beauty (the name Huda means \u201cguidance\u201d in Arabic), in 2010 and since then has become the pre\u00ebminent beauty authority in the region. She attributes this to being \u201csuper passionate\u201d about her subject; she was one of the first bloggers in Dubai devoted solely to beauty. \u201cI knew once I started, my obsession with beauty was so strong, it would really spread,\u201d she says. (It\u2019s true that she\u2019s as enthusiastic about lip plumping as most of us are about ice cream.) It also helped that she\u2019s a trained makeup artist, so, unlike a lot of bloggers who\u2019ve only put makeup on their own faces, she knew the techniques and products that would work for skin tones and facial features other than hers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a brand appeals to Huda, it will, in turn, appeal to her fans,\u201d says Lionel Durand, the C.E.O. of the Paris-based Black|Up, a brand for ethnic women.<\/p>\n

\"huda-beauty-instagram\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On Instagram alone, Kattan has 10.4 million followers. (By comparison, one of the biggest U.S. beauty bloggers, Michelle Phan, has two million followers.) She can create a trend simply by posting about it, like she did last summer with white henna tattoos (as opposed to those done in traditional red-brown). \u201cIt looks a little more elegant,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason beauty bloggers in the Middle East have a strong influence over their followers is due to cultural reasons,\u201d Durand says. \u201cWomen there are not often \u2018onstage,\u2019 but the Internet gives them an opportunity to emerge and engage with a female audience.\u201d Kattan also sells her own branded false eyelashes at Sephora in Dubai; she won\u2019t reveal sales numbers but says that the income funds the blog and her other content. Sephora\u2019s Artemis Patrick, the senior vice-president of merchandising, calls Kattan \u201ca beauty oracle\u201d and a \u201cglobal powerhouse influencer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kattan doesn\u2019t speak Arabic well, but has tried to do a few YouTube tutorials using the Gulf dialect to please her fans. \u201cThe Arabic is really broken on them,\u201d she says. \u201cIt sounds like someone in grade school speaking Arabic. There\u2019s a lot of grammatical errors. I started to do it because people were requesting it, but I started to slowly stop because it was really, really difficult and uncomfortable for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike the supportive and almost suspiciously nice crowd that comments on beauty blogs in the U.S. (\u201cYou\u2019re so pretty!!!\u201d is typical feedback), Kattan\u2019s followers are judgmental and often confoundingly cruel. They weren\u2019t nice about her fledgling Arabic, and she often gets other comments such as, \u201cOh, look how hairy her arm is\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re a slut\u201d\u2014jarring words made even more perplexing when they\u2019re tagged to a video about how to make your lips look plump. \u201cThey\u2019re very critical,\u201d Kattan says, of her followers. \u201cThey can be really, really tough. It\u2019s actually a bit hard, to be honest. You see all of these Arabic comments and some of them are so awful.\u201d To relax, she closes herself off in her bedroom and listens to self-help podcasts by Wayne Dyer or Jack Canfield while trying out new makeup. \u201cThat\u2019s probably a little lame,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason Kattan\u2019s audience is so demanding is that they\u2019re fanatical about beauty products. Wearing false eyelashes, heavy kohl liner, and heaps of bronzer to the grocery store is the norm in Dubai. Kattan trained as a makeup artist in Los Angeles and has worked with the actress Eva Longoria and the reality star Nicole Richie, but struggled to put enough makeup on her clients when she first started working in Dubai. \u201cGirls would ask me for natural makeup, and I\u2019d be, like, sure, and I\u2019d apply natural makeup on them,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd they\u2019d be, like, \u2018No, I want Kim Kardashian.\u2019 And they\u2019d show me a picture of Kim Kardashian, and I\u2019d be, like, \u2018This is full-on wedding makeup. This is not natural.\u2019 \u201d With examples like this, it\u2019s easy to see why American and European beauty brands are looking toward the Middle East. It\u2019s L\u2019Oreal\u2019s fastest-growing new market. Especially in Dubai, women are constantly buying and fiddling with makeup. \u201cI have to buy three of everything,\u201d Kattan says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any sense, but I have to. I\u2019m worried I might lose it, and if I lose it, then I have a backup and then I have a backup to my backup.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which is good for Kattan. More than a thousand products were sent to her last month by companies hoping that she\u2019ll feature them. Brands also want to hire her as a so-called ambassador, someone contracted to feature their makeup, hair goop, or skin-care products a certain number of times. \u201cWe get three or four e-mails a week from very serious and good companies,\u201d Kattan says. At the same time, she\u2019s looking back to the U.S., where she hopes she\u2019ll get to be as big a name as she is in the U.A.E. For now, though, her popularity in the U.S. is nowhere near what it is in her new home. \u201cIn the Middle East, I can\u2019t walk down the street without being recognized,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the States, I\u2019m totally fine going out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"@madame_madeline_lashes\"<\/a>
Follow Us on Instagram for Updates & Deals on #FalseEyelashes!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Huda Kattan was born in Oklahoma City but grew up in suburban Tennessee and Massachusetts, where she wore a lot of makeup. \u201cI would go out, and I could hear people say, \u2018Where is she going? Who does she think she is?\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019d smile.\u201d Kattan studied finance at the University of Michigan-Dearborn but then decided to move to Dubai in an attempt to become the most popular beauty blogger in the Arab world. \u201cI was focussed,\u201d Kattan said, on the phone, from her home in Dubai. \u201cI knew exactly what I wanted.\u201d As someone raised in the Western world (where she went by the name Heidi), Kattan is an outsider, but her thick raven hair, her enormous dark eyes, and her heavy hand with bronzer make her look like the women she\u2019s schooling on how to apply false eyelashes or de-frizz their hair. (One of her tricks is rinsing it with bottled water, post shampoo.) Her parents are Iraqi (her father came to the U.S. for college), an advantage when most of the other beauty bloggers aren\u2019t Middle Eastern. \u201cMiddle Eastern bloggers are seriously limited,\u201d Kattan says, explaining that her fellow-beauty gurus in Dubai are mostly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,116],"tags":[59,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}