Kelly Rowland Shuts Down Skin Bleaching Rumor | Understanding Lighting On Melanin

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Kelly Rowland recently shut down rumors of possible skin bleaching due to her posting a radiant photo of herself, that appeared to’ve lightened her skin. Kelly Rowland, and many other Black entertainers, do not bleach their skin, but are often victims of ignorance when it comes to lighting, and understanding melanin.

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India.Arie was accused of bleaching her skin back in 2013 when her single artwork for “Cocoa Butter” was released. The photo showed India glowing all brown, but to many, appearing as if she “bleached” her skin. This bothered India enough for her to speak about it heavily in her essay series. India.Arie did not bleach her skin, neither did Kelly, but they did take a photo where the light positively effected their skin.

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The above video of Kelly, dated Oct 6th is a more exact depiction of Kelly’s skin colour, however, so is the photo in question.

Understanding Lighting On Melanin:

Melanin is a dark pigment in the skin responsible for tanning the skin brown, and darker brown (almost appearing to be the shade Black). Melanin ABSORBS the Sun light and can dissipate the suns radiation.

When light is absorbed into Melanin, the pigment can appear to change biological structure, when in fact, it’s simply glowing based on the amount of light it absorbs. Thus if a photo is taken, capturing the moment of absorption darker skin tones can appear to be lighter depending on the camera, and it’s settings.

Lighting darker skin tones is not an easy task especially in tv and film because you don’t want your actor to appear a different tone, instead you want enough lighting to capture the actor as they are, but also enough to light the set. Most times, actors of colour are improperly lit, causing an uproar of colourism to rear, and accusations about racism and white washing. While those ideals are worthy, and often true, in a lot of cases, they are NOT.

In the timeline above, dated when taken, each photo Kelly appears to have a different skin colour, why? Because of lighting! NOT Bleaching people. The third photo is a darker skin tone with purple and red undertones, but the last photo is a darker skin tone with yellow undertones. Case in point?

Kelly Rowlands case? It’s simply not true. She’s not skin bleaching. Next time you think a darker skinned celebrity is bleaching, THINK TWICE before offering an invalid opinion.

Kelly Rowland On Skin Bleaching:

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