As the global star, Priyanka Chopra, gears up for her Hollywood release The Matrix Resurrections, the actress recently made an appearance on InStyle’s Ladies First With Laura Brown to talk about her career, marriage, and more. During the conversation, the actress spoke about the unrealistic beauty standards and how she fell for equity on lighter skin.
A few years ago, Priyanka Chopra faced backlash for promoting fairness creams pretty early on in her career, which she regrets. “There were so many unrealistic beauty standards. Being ridiculously skinny was one, which I didn’t think about in my 20s, because I had a crazy metabolism at that point, as you do. But more than that, the equity on lighter skin in Asia, for sure. That’s something that I fell for. The fact that you have to be perfect, your face has to be perfect, your hair has to be perfect, you have to dress perfect, speak perfect, you have to have the right opinion on everything, you have to say the right thing. I think that part was the first (time) I kind of was like, ‘Forget it, I’m okay being messy sometimes, and it’s okay.’” she said in the podcast.
In a Marie Claire profile sometime earlier this year, she said, “[Skin lightening] was so normalized in South Asia; it’s such a large industry that everyone was doing it. In fact, doing it is still a check [mark] when you are a female actor, but it’s awful. And it was awful for me, for a little girl who used to put talcum-powder cream on my face because I believed that dark skin was not pretty.”
On the work front, Priyanka Chopra will star in The Matrix Resurrections, Text For You, Citadel and more.