You should never touch a child’s head in Malaysia; it’s an insult in their culture, even if you see it as a “harmless” act. The same thing goes for social and community standards in the Arab world; if you cross them, it’s more than likely that someone will feel insulted, even if you’re causing no real harm and your intentions are benign. Arab influencers are no exception to this rule.
Despite the fact that laws in the arab world are moving forward towards more openness and freedom of speech, when it comes to our inherited traditions and moral codes, people still cherish their social standards and expect the same from all generations and types of personalities.
Not many people are aware that there is an unspoken, unofficial blacklist that includes some of the most famous Arab influencers, who are euqally loved and frowned upon by Arabs, and most of their audience has a love hate relationship with them.
So what does it take to get you on the unofficial blacklist?
Crossing gender boundaries:
Badr Khalaf is a Saudi influencer who currently lives in Italy with his wife and daughter. He’s famous for his hilarious beauty tips and folkloric morning dances. Khalaf also refers to himself as “Badria” sometimes and likes to photoshop himself to look like a lady in his pictures.
Badr has a huge fan base of Arab girls who follow his beauty tips and love his hilarious advice about men and relationships. On the other hand, Arab men shower his posts with negative comments and insults.
Men getting plastic surgery:
A relevant story happens with Fifo. Firas is a Lebanese makeup artist who has admitted to having done a number of cosmetic procedures on his lips and eyebrows, adding makeup and long hair, he became a famous talk show guest whenever people talk about gender roles and boundaries. Fifo is used to posting videos online to remind his fans of old folklore sayings and tends to get tons of negative comments on his look.
Removing the Hijab:
Asia is an Iraqi fashion blogger. She was highly appreciated and loved, until she removed her hijab, changed her dressing style, and showed more of her tattoos. Asia lives in America and hardly ever speaks Arabic, but she still has a wide Arabic-speaking fanbase, many of whom have spent a long time struggling with her new style, and still, some of them couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that she is not going back to her previous look.
The same case happened with Dina Tokyo, an Egyptian hijabi blogger who lives in England. She was famous for her hijab tutorials and daily vlogs, with videos that showed what it was like for an Arabic Muslim family living in Europe. She also wrote a book about modesty and then removed her hijab after the book was published.
She suffered for years from hateful comments, and lost a lot of her fans and followers, until she managed to redeem her YouTube channel viewership.
Dress Code:
Model Roz is a Snapchat superstar, known as the first Saudi girl to become a professional model. She lives in the States, but her entire fanbase is from the MENA region. She speaks to her fans in fluent Arabic with a Saudi accent, but gets a lot of criticism about her clothes and lifestyle, including the fact that male friends visit her apartment.
She receives these comments with an open mind and heart, and answers them all politely and openly.
Dancing on social media:
Dancing is one of the activities that often falls under the category of +18 content in the Arab world, so you can hardly post a video without making headlines on the news, causing confusion and becoming a full-on trend, this includes Arab influencers too of course.
Fouz el Etreby, the Saudi influencer, gets in trouble regularly because of her videos where she dances with her husband.
This list of influencers is ignored by the official press entities in their respective countries, and in most cases never make it to the headlines or talk shows, at least not in a positive context, and they are also famous for getting the harshest comments from their fans, meanwhile, they still get a lot of ads based on their high viewership!