WITH their trendy clothes, empowering messages and tales of “real-life” parenting, mummy bloggers have become virtual friends to their millions of fans.
But the picture-perfect world of the “mumfluencers” has been blown apart with one of its stars admitting to using a fake account to troll her peers — and even her own husband.
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Clemmie Hooper, 34, known online as Mother of Daughters, posts chummy pictures of herself with other female bloggers to her 662,000 followers on Instagram.
And she shares the occasional message about her husband Simon, 35, also a blogger, gushing about their 11-year marriage or the fact he has nipped out to buy her tampons.
But Clemmie, a part-time midwife and author who also has a podcast and writes blog Gas & Air, has admitted using gossip site Tattle Life to slate her fellow bloggers, as well as Simon, who she called a “Class A t**t”.
Said to be writing under the name AliceinWanderlust, she sneered that writer Bethie Hungerford, known as Hungermama, was “desperate” to join a bloggers’ clique.
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And she bitched about Anna Whitehouse, aka Mother Pukka, writing: “One minute she’s in Africa with Comic Relief, then she’s swooshing her blonde locks with Grandmother Pukka for Garnier.
“It all slaps a bit of bulls**t and inconsistency to me.”
Anna had previously called Clemmie a “cool mum”, and in 2015 she shared her painful account of her miscarriage with Clemmie so she could post it on her blog.
Clemmie also slammed black writer Candice Brathwaite — who she once featured on her birthing podcast — for using “race as a weapon”. This has led to accusations of racism.
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The attacks had been going on for several months, causing disquiet in the close-knit world of the mumfluencers.
Blogger Laura Rutherford, who goes under the name That Mummy Smile, had urged AliceinWanderlust to unmask herself, writing: “You’ve goaded and encouraged trolls to tear my reputation apart for the last eight months. There is absolutely no justification for this behaviour.”
Rumours grew that Clemmie was the person behind the account when AliceinWanderlust posted from St Lucia at the same time Clemmie was very publicly on holiday there.
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One dubbed her and her husband Simon, a management consultant and popular influencer Dad of Daughters, as “Sellers of Daughters”.
Some now say it was only a matter of time before the insider bitching burst the mummy blog bubble.
A social media source said: “There is a lot of rivalry and people will support each other online just to get ahead. They will like each other’s posts and comment on them so they get more prominence, but they’re not really friends.
“In public, they’re all like, ‘Oh babe’, and behind their back they’ll be calling them a bitch.”
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AliceinWanderlust claimed to be an ordinary mum who could not afford the brands some mumfluencers promote and who could only holiday in a caravan in Devon.
Meanwhile, like many top influencers, Clemmie often posted idyllic pictures of sun-drenched holidays in exotic locations.
For many, these will be freebies in exchange for positive coverage.
Clemmie and Simon live in a six-bed home in Ramsgate, Kent, worth £748,000. Last year, the company they run together, Gas and Air Limited, was worth nearly £180,000.
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Clemmie has published a pregnancy book, launched two jewellery lines with artist Rachel Jackson and promoted Marks & Spencer’s autumn collection alongside Holly Willoughby and Line Of Duty star Vicky McClure.
She has also appeared on ITV’s This Morning and BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
There have been paid partnerships with companies including Pampers, as well as sponsored videos for Mothercare and fashion brand Boden.
Sponsored posts in the UK can net anything from £75 for those with 5,000 followers through to £700 for a following above 50,000.
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Social media queens with more than 100,000 fans can earn £1,500 per post — and much more.
It is claimed Clemmie lost out on one offer for £30,000 when she tried to push it up by an extra £20,000. She has seemingly come a long way from the “ordinary” woman she initially claimed to be — and some fans have not liked it.
One critic previously posted on discussion site Mumsnet: “You (and other Insta influencers) are like the modern-day versions of 90s glossy magazines.
“Full of unrealistic portrayals, photoshopped within an inch of its life, making us feel unworthy for not working hard enough.”
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Clemmie — mum to Anya, 12, Marnie, nine, and three-year-old twins Ottilie and Delilah — confessed and apologised last Thursday.
She explained she set up the fake profile to respond to the thousands of negative comments about her and her family on Tattle Life.
She said: “I decided without telling anyone else that I would make an anonymous account so that this group of people would believe I was one of them, so that I could maybe change their opinions from the inside to defend my family and I.
“It grew bigger than I knew how to handle. I regret it all and am deeply sorry. I know this has caused a lot of pain.
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“Undoubtedly I got lost in this online world and the more I became engrossed in the negative commentary, the more the situation escalated.”
But one social media source told The Sun: “It’s hard to see how Clemmie can recover from this.
“She has lost around 30,000 followers, which isn’t a huge proportion for someone who has more than 660,000, but that is still a good chunk.
“It’s unlikely any brand will want to be associated with someone who has been accused of racism.”
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Clemmie has not posted on Instagram since November 3.
There are now calls for the Nursing & Midwifery Council to investigate whether her actions go against the Midwifery Code of Conduct, which includes a “social media” section stating that midwives must “treat people with kindness, respect and compassion”.
Her husband, who has partnered with Renault as Father of Daughters, has continued to post to his one million Instagram followers.
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“Make no mistake about it — she made some bad choices. I just wish she could have spoken to me about this before it all got too much.”
Meanwhile, Tattle Life, which was set up last year to encourage constructive criticism of bloggers and influencers, has been accused of being a hotbed of gossip and backstabbing.
Vicki Psarias — blogger Honest Mum — said: “I’ve been targeted on there myself with cruel jibes.
“It seems to have become a site that allows people to hurt other people, venting their own issues and prejudices on to others. There’s a dark side to mummy blogging.”
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A petition calling for the site to be closed down has hit more than 25,000 signatures, and Helen Whately, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, has called on the Home Secretary to investigate.
In response to the accusations, a spokesman for Tattle Life said: “We have a zero-tolerance policy towards content that is hateful, abusive or threatening, and we take the privacy of social media influencers far more seriously than they do themselves in many cases.”
But as Clemmie is now finding out, the policing of a website is nothing compared to the policing by your own peers.
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