Ghanaian actress and film producer Salma Mumin says social media backlash over her body enhancement cost her endorsement deals with brands.

Abdul Mumin Umu Salma Tando, popularly known as Salma Mumin, disclosed that she lost endorsement deals with brands as a result of the backlash after undergoing body enhancement.

According to her, maintaining silence was always a priority during the early days of her career rather than responding to criticism. However, she said most people took advantage of her silence and criticised her for everything she did.

The actress made this revelation in an interview with Nikki Samonas on Joy Prime’s Changes show while explaining the sudden change in her response to social media criticism, noting that she was not always like that.

“I used to be very quiet growing up because I was a very naïve girl. I didn’t have the opportunity to grow up with my parents to be natured in a way a child had to be so I had to learn everything by myself. I realized that there’s a saying that goes ‘silence is golden.’ For the longest time, I honestly believed silence is golden so I decided I was going to keep mute about any news at all. Being it good or bad, I was going to stay mute just like Beyonce and @Beyonce.”

However, comments about her body enhancement broke her belief in remaining silent, as they were tarnishing her reputation and damaging her relationships with friends. This prompted her to respond to some of the backlash because she felt it was a matter of her personal life and choice.

She further revealed that the negative comments cost her endorsement deals with brands she was already working with, as well as potential deals with other brands.

“For the longest time I wasn’t responding to anything especially about my body enhancement. My body enhancement purposely because I felt it was a personal thing. It’s not something that one should do and come up on tv or radio stations, take a microphone and start announcing that I’ve gone to enhance my body. No, it’s a personal thing and I felt I didn’t want it out there. However it got out there, I don’t know but it got out there and I felt like how can I tackle this with silence because obviously silence is golden.

“But over the time and years, people kept attacking me; everybody felt they could say anything to me. Back then I used to have endorsement and advertised for Maggi Cube and other brands, all of a sudden I loss all of that in the process. Even before my body enhancement, brands that had reached out to me that were in the process, discussing business with me automatically redrew and I understood why because of how the general public here in Ghana went about talking my body enhancement. I didn’t know how to respond to that and didn’t know what to do.”

Despite the backlash, Salma continued to maintain her silence because she believed it was the key to resolving issues. However, the frequency of the comments fuelled her anger, prompting her to clap back at some critics in self-defence. This eventually changed her perspective on remaining silent.

“I realized it didn’t fix anything because anybody felt they could just wake up and write anything about me, say anything to me and for what reason? Just because I decided that I was going to change how I look. I don’t deserve to be talked to like that. People lied on me, called me bad names, bad friend all because I have been quiet because silence is golden and then I realized that silence is really not golden because time has elapsed. It’s been 8 years and I’m being tagged as a bad friend, called names, brands will not come for me because of my body enhancement and what people say about me. I felt people need to get to know who I am and what the truth really is and that was how I started,” the actress explained.