This Self-Tanner Brand's Founder Lashed Out At Bloggers — & It Did Not Go Over Well

Insulting beauty bloggers is like kicking the hornet’s nest, if the hornets were all Twitter-savvy and decked out in MAC eyeshadow and Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade. Marissa Carter, the founder of U.K.-based self-tanner brand Cocoa Brown, is finding that out the hard way after slamming the blogging industry for what she says is a lack of authenticity. Them’s fightin’ words.

“[Other brands] try to do what we did with Cocoa Brown when we initially started — working with bloggers to try and grow their brand,” Carter said in an interview that aired on Irish business podcast The Capital B, referring to other companies that have taken the approach of collaborating with beauty bloggers to promote their products rather than traditional advertising. “Now, the value of a blogger endorsement is nothing — there are no bad reviews anymore.”

Let’s play devil’s advocate for just a second here: Carter isn’t entirely wrong. You can pay anyone to endorse anything these days, whether it’s self-tanner, Sugar Bear Hair vitamins, or just a fancy lip balm. Positive reviews are to always be taken with a grain of salt, because there’s no real way of knowing if someone’s recommending something because they actually like and use it or because they’re getting paid to hashtag it on Instagram.

Regardless, Carter’s comments were not well-received by the beauty blogging community, some members of which did not hesitate to clap back on social media.

Whichever side you’re on (if you’ve taken a side, that is — it’s entirely plausible that there’s truth to both sides of the story), you have to appreciate the irony of a fake tanner brand calling people out for being inauthentic. Alanis Morissette would get a kick of that one, don't ya think?