For a long time, many actors and actresses indulged in promoting skin lightening products and earned a huge chunk of moolah for the same. Priyanka Chopra is no different. When Priyanka became a household name in India, the actress endorsed fairness creams. However, when she moved to Hollywood, she realised how wrong she was to do that.
In her recent tete-a-tete with Marie Claire magazine, Priyanka confessed that she still regrets endorsing fairness creams and revealed that how it is still a normal practice in South Asia.
The Bajirao Mastani actress 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." In 2015 also, while speaking to journalist Barkha Dutt, Priyanka Chopra had admitted to feeling bad about endorsing fairness creams and said, "I felt really bad about it, that's why I stopped doing it. All my cousins are gora-chitta (fair) I was the one who turned out dusky because my dad is dusky. Just for fun, my Punjabi family would call me 'kaali, kaali, kaali'. At 13, I wanted to put fairness creams and wanted my complexion changed." Meanwhile, Priyanka is gung-ho about her book Unfinished, which chronicles her journey from facing racism during her teenage years in the US to expanding her horizon in Hollywood. "Bullying happens to kids and adults. It happens with positions of power, and we've all seen that abused in multiple ways," asserted Priyanka, while speaking to Marie Claire. For the unversed, Unfinished will be out on February 9, 2021.