Actress Priyanaka Chopra has opened up about the bullying she faced as a teenager in an American high school and said that she believed 'dark skin was not pretty'. The 'Quantico' star has also said that she regrets endorsing skin lightening creams during her initial years in Bollywood.
In an interview with Marie Claire, Chopra said that skin lightening was so normalised in South Asia that 'everyone was doing it.' The actress said that it is 'still a check' for actresses.
"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," she told the French-British magazine.
Opening up about the bullying she faced in high school because of her skin colour, Priyanka said, "In high school, I feel like the kids who were after me didn’t even understand why. I think it’s that they decided that they were more powerful than someone else—me—and when you pick on someone, it’s because you’re insecure."
"It affected me adversely. It affected my confidence; it affected who I wanted to be. I felt exposed, when your skin is raw," she shared.
Earlier in 2015, she had opened up about why she decided to end her association with fairness brands 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," she'd said, in an interview with journalist Barkha Dutt.
On the work front, Priyanka Chopra Jonas has kick started the shoot of TV series 'Citadel'. 'Citadel,' which has been touted as an action-packed spy series, also stars Richard Madden, Roland Moller alongside Chopra.
