The Latest Influencer Scandal Might Be The Worst Of 2019
Just when you thought the year was over...
Some of the biggest Instagram influencers and celebrities are facing criticism for accepting work to promote Saudi Arabia, specifically the MDLBeast music festival which took place over the weekend, without mentioning the country’s human rights record.
After a slew of bad press in the wake of the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi, the imprisonment and torture of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathlouland and the country’s stance on LQBTQI+ rights – to this day, homosexuality is punishable by death – Saudi Arabia has turned to influencers to help fix its public image and to distract the people from what the United Nations has dubbed “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”
Actors Armie Hammer and Ed Westwick, models Elsa Hosk, Jourdan Dunn and Joan Smalls and celebrities such as Sofia Richie and Olivia Culpo were called out for agreeing to attend the music festival and promote Saudi Arabia by Diet Prada, which wrote on Instagram: “[Influencers are] cashing big fat checks in exchange for #content creation (aka propaganda) to rehabilitate the image of Saudi Arabia, a country said to be causing “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”, according to the United Nations. According to anonymous sources, six-figure sums were offered for attendance and geo-tagged posts.”
It continued: “Following the government’s pre-meditated murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in October 2018 , the arrest of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul in May 2018, the outing of a gay Saudi journalist and his partner who began receiving death threats from their families (homosexuality is a crime in Saudi Arabia and punishable by death), and countless other human rights abuses, a bevvy of supermodels, influencers, celebrities, and musicians convened in Riyadh for the inaugural @mdlbeast.”
Following Diet Prada’s post, Emily Ratajkowski took to Twitter to confirm she had turned the trip down, writing that she “had to decline” the offer because she supports the rights of women, the LGBTQI+ community and the freedom of the press.
“I hope coming forward on this brings more attention to the injustices happening there,” she wrote.
