You may have seen #mua all over your Instagram feed but never known what it stands for. Well we have to be honest, when we first saw it on a number of influencers posts, we did have to Google it and found nothing.
After some asking around, it was explained to us and then it suddenly felt obvious. MUA stands for Make Up Artist. Obvious now, right? I mean, it’s coated all over images of people doing their make-up.
A common connecting term is ‘aspiring mua’, by young people producing make-up tutorials and reviews, where they hope to move into the beauty industry.
There are over 44 million posts on Instagram with #mua included at the time of writing and this number is growing at a rapid speed.
Other Terms Used
If you are hoping to add these terms to your Instagram post to find others looking for make-up artists, then you also might want to include #makeup #makeupartist #makeuptutorial #instamakeup #makeupaddict #hudabeauty #wakeupandmakeup #makeuplover #beauty #eyemakeup #makeupjunkie #beautymakeup #cosmetics #bridalmakeup just to name a few.
Of course, we recommend also adding some more detailed and specific hashtags, so if you are working on eye makeup then opt for terms around this, like #eyeshadows or #eyemakeup.
Is This Hashtag Only Seen On Instagram?
We are starting to see it included on blogs, on other social platforms like Twitter and occasionally on big make-up brand sites, however it is predominantly seen on Instagram.
Instagram has successfully been the home and birthplace of a number of terms and acronyms that have become commonplace in the English language.
Other Meanings Of MUA
While we would love to say this is globally accepted as the acronym for make-up artist, there is inevitably other terms it is used for, being just three letters.
Many mistakenly took Mua as the shortened version of the kissing sound ‘muah’ or ‘mwah’. Some presume it is the ‘military utility assessment’ while others use the term for ‘mail user agent’. Many in Manchester mistook it for ‘Manchester University Academy’.
A lot of the confusion also came around Manny Gutierrez, or as most commonly known, Manny Mua, where people believed that was the surname rather than ‘Manny Make-Up Artist’.
You will also find a number of make-up artists use MUA as their surname on Instagram or Twitter now, as it can help them to appear in search results (very clever).
