| Mikayla Nogueira | |||||||
| Birth Name: | Mikayla Jane Nogueira | ||||||
| Birth Date: | 13 June 1998 | ||||||
| Followers: | 15.8 million | ||||||
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Mikayla Jane Nogueira Hawken (born June 13, 1998)[1] is an American social media influencer. As of February 2023, Nogueira has 15.8 million followers on TikTok, over 2.4 million followers on her Instagram page, and over 501K followers on her personal Instagram account.
Nogueira was born to Patrice, who is an artist[2] and an elementary school counselor, and Michael Nogueira. She has an older brother. Her family is mostly of Portuguese descent. She was raised in East Freetown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Apponequet Regional High School in 2016.[3] She has stated that her love for makeup started when she bought Avon Products from a friend of her mother.
Nogueira attended Bryant University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in communications in 2020. In college, she was an intern for a radio station.[4] Nogueira started graduate school in 2020, but "ended up dropping out of school when I found out I'd have to do it full-time instead of part-time because of the pandemic."[5]
Prior to her notability on TikTok, Nogueira posted beauty and makeup content on Tumblr and YouTube in 2013, including beauty videos and vlogs.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, Nogueira started making TikTok videos. Nogueira first used the platform after making the suggestion to her mother, a teacher, to use it as a way to continue educating her students. Nogueira created a TikTok page in her name to help her mother learn the intricacies of TikTok. The first videos on her page were educational videos on their family farm. Nogueira next posted "The Catfish Challenge", a viral before and after challenge featuring a user's profile photo next to their makeup-free look.[6] This video gained thousands of views within hours of its release. Nogueira's account grew to 2.8 million followers on TikTok in just eight months, and, she had 11.9 million, her voice fueling the growth of the account. Nogueira posts tutorials, reviews, beauty routines, promotions, and other beauty and makeup videos.[7]
In December 2020, Nogueira won the American Influencer Award for Emerging Makeup Artist of the Year.[8] [9]
Nogueira was employed by Ulta Beauty as a beauty advisor until she started working full time for her own brand, Mikayla J Makeup, in late 2020.
, Nogueira has over 13.6 million followers on TikTok[10] and 2.4 million on Instagram.[11]
Nogueira was accused of faking her Massachusetts "redneck accent", based on interviews and videos of her before her popularity on the internet.[12] Nogueira responded, "I went to school for Communications with a primary focus on radio […] So over the years, I created this voice that I would use when I was on the radio or at my internship. Everyone has a customer service voice, right? So, when I first started making my TikToks, I would use my radio voice because it was professional. It was my first time putting myself on a camera to tons of people so I was wicked nervous because my voice has been this topic of discussion my entire life and I didn't know how people would react."[13] Viewers have also criticized some of her cosmetic reviews as being misleading.[14] [12]