Companies are stealing influencers’ faces

Enlarge / 30 October 2019, North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne: Svea Simonis (l-r), Antonia el Ghali, Chany Dakota and Ana Lisa pose in a pink Cadillac at the Supercandy Pop-Up Museum. On 1 November, the "Supercandy Pop-Up" Museum opens in Cologne and offers photographers, bloggers and influencers the perfect backdrop for self-presentation. (credit: Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The first time Lucy Kyselica's face was stolen, it turned up in the window of a beauty salon in small-town America. Kyselica is a Dutch beauty YouTuber who mostly makes videos about historical hairdos, but she had also made a video showing her subscribers how to thread their own eyebrows. The salon took a screengrab from that video, enlarged it to poster size, and used it to advertise their eyebrow threading services. Across the ocean in the Netherlands, Kyselica only found out because some fans recognized her, and asked her if she was working with the salon or if she even knew her image was in its window. She wasn't; she didn't. She sent an email, and never heard back. "It may still be there," she says.

In the six years since, Kyselica has seen her image used to sell other people's products over and over. She's been the face of hairstyling tools, hair thickening products, and beauty pills. "The products are always kind of dodgy," she says. Most recently, it was clip-in bangs sold by a Chinese merchant on Amazon. Kyselica decided to publicize her problem, and made a video about it: "I Ordered My Own Bangs Off Amazon " "aTM". You see, Kyselica's bangs, which are her signature look, aren't actually clip-ins. They grow from her scalp.

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