INTERVIEW WITH MULAN ITOJE.
MODEL & FOUNDER OF SPRING MELANIN.
For those who may not know, you could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hi my name is Mulan, I recently set up an event, a well being event called spring melanin for the purpose of Dark skinned women. Specifically for Dark skinned women to attend. The purpose is for nurturing healing conversation and relaxation. A bit more background about myself, I graduated with a law degree, went into modelling and since I’ve been in the industry for about eight years I’ve done creative direction, art direction, management, PR & marketing so from dabbling in the industry I decided to set up an agency and also put together this event call Spring Melanin
As a dark skinned black woman do you feel your experience in the world is different when compared to others? Definitely, I think my experience is (obviously as an individual there’s a lot of things to consider) my shade in particular especially with modelling made my experience a lot different from my other friends who were white or mixed race or light skinned. I remember a casting director said to me “oh your features are very commercial but your skin is so dark” and I was just like “What does that mean? What do you mean my features are commercial but my skin is dark” How do they not go together in that sense? How can my skin not be commercial but if you look in the media you will know from the lack of representation that it obviously isn’t considered commercial but I’m here! So yeah my experience has been very different
30 // BIOLOGICAL PIGMENT BIAS: PERSPECTIVES ON COLOURISM
