Priyanka Chopra Says She Regrets Endorsing Skin-Fairness Creams

Priyanka Chopra shares her regret she experienced after endorsing skin-whitening creams in India. Since she moved to Hollywood, the actor stopped being part of in such ad campaigns. 

She used to endorse fairness creams in India in the early days of her career. During the Black Lives Matter movement, Chopra's previous endorsements of fairness creams re-surfaced. However, in the latest interview, she opened up about how she used to be insecure about her skin colour. 

She also spoke about how normal it is for Indian actors to endorse such skin-fairness products. With much regret, she said that notion in India that if you are fairer, you are automatically prettier is very common. In fact, this stereotype has opened the market for such creams.

" 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 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," the actor said.

In an earlier interview with journalist Barkha Dutt from 2015, Chopra had mentioned her decision of not doing such commercials anymore. "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," she had said addressing the difficulties she used to face.

Unfinished 

Last week only, Priyanka Chopra had announced her memoir titled, Unfinished which is to be released on February 9. The actress said that she will explore the topic of stereotypes associated with skin-colour and endorsement of fairness products in the book.

Seeing my book for the first time.
Can I be terrified and excited together? 🤯😍😭😃 #Unfinished@PRHAudio @PenguinIndia @randomhouse @MichaelJBooks @PenguinUKBooks @penguinrandom pic.twitter.com/dznTHGlhVg

— PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) January 20, 2021

The book opens about the actor's childhood, how she dealt with racism, Miss India and Miss World wins as well as the challenges she had to face while sculpting a career in Bollywood and Hollywood.

Her recent Netflix movie The White Tiger has premiered on the OTT platform. Her co-actors in the movie are Rajkummar Rao and Adarsh Gourav.