Priyanka Chopra Jonas is conquering the globe one day at a time. Now, as she is riding high on the success of her Netflix film, The White Tiger, and is gearing up for the launch of her memoir, Unfinished, the actress spoke to a magazine about the challenges of her past, her biggest ambitions and much more. During the interview, Priyanka spoke about regretting endorsing fairness products when she was actively working in Bollywood. Recalling how her participation in the endorsement had received enough backlash, Priyanka highlighted that discussions started about how skin lighteners promote colorism and racism.
Calling skin lightening awful and revealing that she used talcum-powder cream believing that dark skin wasn't pretty, Priyanka shared, "[Skin lightening] was so normalised 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 the past, Priyanka spoke about being called kaali by her family members. She said, "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."
(Source: Marie Claire)