It’s hard to imagine that a natural beauty like Priyanka Chopra would ever consider altering her appearance. But according to the Indian actress, she once tried to change the color of her skin — a decision that years later, she regrets.
“I was very conscious of the color of my skin,” Chopra tells Vogue India of her teenage self-consciousness. “I was very conscious of being, like, a super-gawky, skinny teenager.”
At a young age, Chopra turned to what seemed to be a magic fix for her insecurities: skin-lightening creams.
“A lot of girls with a darker skin hear things like, ‘Oh, poor thing, she’s dark.’ In India they advertise skin-lightening creams: ‘Your skin’s gonna get lighter in a week.’ I used it [when I was very young].”
Early in her career, she shot an advertisement for one such product, before realizing she was perfect just as she was – and wanted to communicate that message to her fans.
“Then when I was an actor, around my early twenties, I did a commercial for a skin-lightening cream,” she says. “I was playing that girl with insecurities. And when I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh shit. What did I do?’ I started talking about being proud of the way I looked. I actually like my skin tone.”
