In December 2021 Molly Mae Hague went on an episode ‘The Diary of a CEO’ with Steven Bartlett to discuss her life as a businesswoman. Within this episode, she made some controversial comments that have now been plastered onto every inch of the internet in recent days.
“Beyonce has the same 24 hours in a day that we do. We’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it.”
“When I’ve spoken in the past I’ve been slammed a little bit, with people saying, ‘It’s easy for you to say that, you’ve not grown up in poverty, you’ve not grown up with major money struggles. So for you to sit there and say we all have the same 24 hours in a day is not correct. But I’m like well what I am saying is technically is true”
She went on to say how you can get what you want, it just depends on what lengths you’re willing to go to.
A lot to unpack, to say the least.
Her general stance and dismissal of systemic disadvantages people are born into and have no control over such as race, disability and class were deeply problematic. Many likened it to the idea of ‘if you’re homeless, just buy a house’.
However what people found most insulting was the fact that Molly Mae herself became famous from ITV reality show ‘Love Island’ a show known for its problems already with 2 contestants and the host Caroline Flack’ suicide being linked to the show.
Her businesses and her success came after the show where she came second with her boyfriend Tommy Fury. She already had a platform to launch her businesses and collaboration including a £500,000 lucrative deal with PrettyLittleThing from her fame built on a reality show based on being good looking and arguing.
It is not to say she hasn’t worked hard since then and I think if people actually took the time to look into what she does I do think she works hard and people need to remember she is only 22 years old and may have a very naïve look on the workplace. Her line of work in influencing is structured and works very different from most people’s jobs and she needs to be aware of that.
The most disturbing part of her statement is in relation to her work with PrettyLittleThing. Mid 2021 Molly Mae announced her new role within the company as creative director, a massive title for someone as young as her in a multi-million-pound company. PrettyLittleThing is a popular fast fashion company who are known to underpay their warehouse staff massively as well as for their ridiculous black Friday sales encouraging mass overconsumption with some things being sold for ‘0p’ last year.
Molly Mae saying that we all have the same 24 hours is insulting to the warehouse workers in Leicester who are only around £3.50 per hour which is significantly lower than the living and minimum wage while she walks around as creative director.
It’s incredibly dangerous and harmful to spread these notions around as she does have a younger audience who potentially could just follow and believe what she says without consideration for either their own disadvantages or for others.
The reality of Molly Mae’s statement has some truth in it but what needs to be realised first is the acceptance that some people need more help than others to achieve what they want. There is no shame in accepting that you have been born with disadvantages and that you need more help in whatever form that takes. The dismissal of this from someone of a privileged background is ignorant and upsetting.
Has it been blown out of proportion?
Yes, it was a stupid thing to say when she has over 6 million followers on Instagram and over a million subscribers on YouTube but the anger across Twitter and the internet, in general, has been rather unprecedented. The host of the show Steve Bartlett weighed in and tweeted how he regularly has male businessmen on the show saying similar things about their success and bragging about it and no one has a problem. How successful women have to tiptoe around their success and watch their words. Some of the responses across the internet included slut shaming which was completely unwarranted.
Gender doesn’t excuse her arrogance but the uproar reaction of the world does expose the enjoyment people took in taking her down for over a 50-second clip. When the episode originally came out a lot of people enjoyed seeing a new side to her and found her insightful.
Only a few months ago she was being praised across the internet for being so open with her journey to dissolve her lip fillers and feeling better looking more natural. When she got the role of creative director Instagram was flooded with reshares of her post about it.
What this situation has shown us is once again how quickly the internet can turn on people even people seen as its favourites. Her Wikipedia page was changed to Molly Mae Thatcher, people encouraging PLT to sack her.
It’s interesting, if you were to watch the full interview she does say something about saying the right or the wrong thing and feeling as though you’re going to get cancelled every month. Watching the full thing she does for the most part come across as intentional talking about giving the right impression to her audience of mainly young girls. She also has some quite interesting and quite sad takes on friendship, ambition relatability with what mainly stands out to me was her opinion that she simply doesn’t need friends “friends come and go” she’d rather work.
The point is the reduction of a 22-year-old to a 51-second clip is not achieving anything. Opening the discord around privilege and class discrepancies is important but it has gone way beyond that now.
Featured Image Credit: Backgrid for PrettyLittleThing
Film, Media and Journalism student who writes about things that catch her interest. Instagram @charlsutcliffe
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