Kelly Rowland: Beyonce’s Mom Taught Me To Love My Dark “Chocolatey” Skin Color—Plus Fresh Links

Kelly Rowland is quite the toast of Hip Hop and R&B radio and even Tinsel Town, with her sultry voice and lyrics flooding airwaves and her bombshell body taking center stage as she worked as a celeb announcer in this year’s high-profile Academy Awards red carpet. But as confident as Kelly is in her music and appearances, the singer recently opened up to CNikky.com about her struggle to embrace her dark brown skin and the important role Tina Knowles, mom of her former Destiny’s Child bandmate Beyonce, played in helping her get comfortable in and love the skin she’s in:

You know what I had great women in my life to help me overcome that. I remember I went through a period where I didn’t embrace my chocolatiness. I don’t know if that’s a word, but I didn’t embrace my chocolate lifestyle. Just being a chocolate, lovely brown skin girl and being proud of that. I remember being out in the sun and I was trying to shield myself from the sun and [Beyonce’s mom Tina Knowles] said, ‘Are you crazy?’ She said ‘You are absolutely gorgeous’ and she just told me how beautiful I was and how rare chocolate is and how gorgeous the skin is, all of this stuff. And I was just like ‘Yeah!’ Like a light went off and so and my mother had me sitting out in the sun a little more, just to be a little more chocolate. (CNikky.com)

And Other MyBrownBaby Fresh Links We Loved This Week:

1. In Bizarre Birth Story, Doctor Threatens To Call Police & Force A Pregnant Woman To Have A C-Section To Save Her Child’s Life (Mommyish)
2. 5 Things Parents of Biracial Kids Should Know (iVillage)
3. A Birth Control Pill Only Used for Sex (Clutch)
4. George Zimmerman Waives Right To ‘Stand Your Ground’ Hearing In Stunning Twist To Trayvon Martin Case (HuffPo)
5. Pretty Brown Girl Movement: Changing Girls One Doll at a Time (BlackAmericaWeb)
6. Melissa Harris Perry sets it straight about the Harlem Shake (MSNBC)
7. To stem violence against women, men must step up. (CNN)
8. Do Cops Make Schools Safe? Students Of Color Answer (Colorlines)
9. Sex-Ed in Kindergarten? (Ebony.com)

Happy reading, my lovelies—and have a fantastic weekend!