Why it is incredibly foolish for Ferragni to appeal

Chiara Ferragni is everywhere in the news and that has nothing to do with a new bag, the over-the-top Christmas decorations in their family home by Lake Como, or maybe even a new love baby. Ferragni, the Italian mega-influencer with nearly 30 million followers (she lost 4000 in one day) for whom Harvard even once conducted a study, has fallen hard from her self-built throne.

She sits on the board of Tod’s, has her own clothing and sneaker line, and there are chewing gums for sale with her signature winks on the package. In short, the money fountain flows more abundantly than the November rain in the Netherlands. But apparently, it is not enough. Last year, Chiara Ferragni sold a typical Italian pandoro gate (as far as I'm concerned, the only Italian product that can perfectly stay in the packaging, but that's beside the point) and said that the proceeds would go to a children's hospital in Turin.

And that, it turns out now, never happened. Yes, the panettone factory dutifully donated 50,000 euros to the hospital (that was probably Ferragni's condition to have her name on the panettone), but the rest of the proceeds went straight to Villa Ferragni.

And now the superstar is crying crocodile tears because oh no, that’s not how she meant it and she wasn’t raised that way and she doesn’t want to pass on these values to her children.

Meanwhile, she has hastily transferred a million euros to the hospital.

So far a typical case of a nasty slip-up by an influencer and a similar case of crisis management. Showing remorse and pulling your pants up. But, and here comes the stupid part as far as I'm concerned, at the same time she is appealing against the 1 million euro fine she has to pay for fraud and deception. Because she finds that disproportionately high. Dear Chiara, that is foolish. You can do water ballet in your millions. Take a deep breath, cry it out, and pull out that credit card. Your reputation has a dent deeper than Su Goroppu in Sardinia and the only thing you can do is be humble, admit your guilt, and pay. Maybe the people of Italy and the rest of the world will embrace you again and you can continue dancing in your walk-in closets. But now it’s not up to you to teach anyone a lesson. You can learn to take it.