If you scroll through her social media pages, you will come across the hashtags #MelaninQueen and #BlackIsBeautiful repeatedly.
These past few years, Maureen Bandari has made it her passion and cause to get dark-skinned women seen.
She has done a series of photoshoots for her cause, the latest being with Mombasa-based musician Nyota Ndogo.
“How are our dark-skinned girls going to feel confident in their skin if they never see themselves on television or on the billboards?” she poses.
Her campaign for equal representation in the media for women of all skin tones was unexpected.
While she is dark-skinned, she does not recall experiencing any colourism growing up in Nyamira County.
It was when she moved to Mombasa that she came face to face with the prejudice against women who fail to pass the ‘brown paper bag test’.
“I saw how dark-skinned brides get their skins bleached ahead of the wedding day; I saw women getting recommendations for make-up artists who knew how to use lighter shades of foundations so that a woman would look lighter when she got married.
I worked in the pharmaceutical industry and every pharmacy I came across stocked skin-lightening soaps and creams. It just wasn’t right. Skin colour should not be a condition to be met for a job like I have seen on some casting calls for models,” she says about the things that riled her into action.
Maureen, who prides herself as the voice of reason amongst her four sisters, grew up envisioning a completely different job from the one she has now.
Her parents are both teachers, so she knew early on that she was expected to take on one of those courses that were considered ‘serious’ back then.
“I was good at the sciences. I studied biotechnology at Kenyatta University. I had hoped to work [in the] research [industry],” she recalls.
She got her first job in the pharmaceutical industry in 2013. She got a job working as a medical representative for a multinational.
She spent her days marketing various drugs to doctors. This part of her journey, she says, was very important.
“Being employed was not a waste. I learnt good customer experience which has been an invaluable resource for me in my business.”
Maureen has always been interested in make-up. She has always taken good care of her hair and skin, but she never thought about it as a source of income until she moved to Mombasa and could not find a make-up artist with her shade of make-up.
A friend of hers would import make-up and Maureen began buying from her. Then she began watching YouTube videos on make-up application.
Then she began shipping the make-up herself. “I would do my make-up and head out, and I would always have someone asking me where I got this or that product. I saw a gap in the market and using my savings, I set up an online make-up store, Bandari Beauty, at the beginning of 2018. I am a cosmetics retailer.”
She juggled her business and her job for a year before she finally quit her job earlier in the year to concentrate on the business.
When Maureen finally walked out of her safety net to grow her business, she imagined that she would finally have all the time in the world to do whatever she pleased. She was wrong.
Now that she is managing her team, she reckons that she is even busier than before.
“I spend my early mornings working for the business, putting together orders and touching base with clients. Then, after I have dropped my two and a half year old daughter to playschool, I spend the day doing content creation, which is usually either shooting videos or photos with various brands that I work with.”
What she loves about being a business owner even more than the fact that she works for herself is that she is able to spend her evenings with her daughter uninterrupted, unlike before when she would leave her asleep in the morning and find her already drowsy late in the evening.
While her social media pages are riddled with activity one notices that neither her husband nor her daughter are paraded here.
“I chose this life. I chose to put myself out there, so I protect them. If they will be seen on the internet, I want it to be out of their own will,” she says.
She is reluctant to reveal her plans for the future but she shares that she intends to leave a legacy in the beauty industry.
“I want to make my parents proud,” she says. She is also excited for the beauty industry.
“When I look back to when I began blogging almost 10 years ago, we have done pretty well. We now have a variety of local make-up brands and women have learnt make-up skills.”
The only thing that needs tweaking is the mindset that things made in Kenya can’t be of the best quality.
And people need to start paying attention into the effort that has been put into manufacturing these products.
