Actress Priyanka Chopra shared a sad body-shaming incident that happened in her life and left her emotional.
Chopra revealed that someone told her she was “too big” and not “sample-sized.”
The actress is not unfamiliar with body shaming, as she previously disclosed that a business executive once advised her to get plastic surgery to “fix” her “proportions.”
Read on for more details.
Priyanka Chopra Was Told She ‘Wasn’t Sample-Sized’
The actress discussed the criticism she receives as a public figure at a recent South by Southwest film festival event. Chopra, 40, told the host that she was body shamed for her size, and both she and her loved ones have been subjects of nasty remarks in the past, acknowledging that it hurts to hear those things.
“I’ve been told many things that are difficult to hear,” she shared, per People. “In my job, the pressure is so intense you can’t really show the chinks in your armor.”
Chopra continued, “someone told me yesterday that I wasn’t sample-sized… I was hurt, and I discussed it with my family, and I cried to my husband and my team, and I felt really bad about the fact that I’m not sample size, and that’s a problem, apparently, and most of us are not, and sample size is size 2.”
The “Quantico” actress said that her family and loved ones are sometimes not spared from the barrage of insults and reactions, noting that people seemingly forget she’s human.
She Was Advised To Get Plastic Surgery
The former Miss World previously revealed that an industry executive suggested she resort to surgery to fix her proportions.
In her memoir, Unfinished, Chopra wrote that she felt “devastated and hopeless” after a failed nose surgery following her Miss World victory.
According to E.T., the procedure didn’t turn out as planned because the doctors accidentally shaved the bridge of her nose, resulting in its collapse and leaving her “terrified.”
“Every time I looked in the mirror, a stranger looked back at me, and I didn’t think my sense of self or my self-esteem would ever recover from the blow,” she stated.
Chopra divulged that the media scrutiny of her looks caused her to lose several movie gigs, prompting an industry executive to suggest cosmetic surgery as the solution.
“After a few minutes of small talk, the director/producer told me to stand up and twirl for him. I did,” she wrote.
She added, “He stared at me long and hard, assessing me, and then suggested that I get a boob job, fix my jaw, and add a little more cushioning to my butt. If I wanted to be an actress, he said, I’d need to have my proportions ‘fixed,’ and he knew a great doctor in L.A. he could send me to. My then-manager voiced his agreement with the assessment.”
The “Baywatch” actress said she left the meeting feeling “stunned and small.”
Priyanka Chopra Learned To Accept Herself
The actress pointed out that despite the negative remarks and criticisms of her looks, she’s learned to keep her head high and chest out.
Chopra mused that she survives by surrounding herself with people who genuinely care about her and love her for who she is rather than just what she can contribute or provide for them.
“It doesn’t have to be a room full of people — I can count them on my hands,” she added.
The “Isn’t It Romantic?” actress also shared in her book that one of her “greatest regrets” was promoting skin-lightening brands in commercials.
She reportedly began lightening her skin with home remedies at a young age after experiencing a great deal of bullying and criticism for her skin tone.
Even after moving to the US, she encountered racism and was frequently urged to “go back to your country,” which she eventually did.
When she first started out as an actress, Chopra worked with skin-lightening companies, but she has since changed her stance and distanced herself from the “archaic cultural norm.”
“Looking back, this was one of the biggest missteps of my career and is one of my most profound regrets,” she noted per E.T. “I can’t go back and change what I did, but I can apologize, and I do so sincerely. To all the people who saw the harmful messaging that I contributed to, to all the people who still have to see commercials like these in every medium, I am deeply sorry.”
Priyanka Chopra On Getting Equal Pay
Elsewhere in her chat with Jennifer Salke at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, Chopra opened up about being paid equally as her male co-star in a movie for the first time in her career.
She shared that the feat came in the movie, “Citadel” in which she starred alongside Richard Madden, pointing out that equal pay has been a constant conversation women have been engaging in before now.
“I’ve been working in the entertainment industry for 22 years now, and I have done about 70-plus features and two TV shows,” she explained. “When I did Citadel, it was the first time in my career that I had pay parity with my male co-star—the first time in 22 years.”
She continued, “And I wonder, ‘Did that happen because there are very few female decision-makers in Hollywood?’ I wonder if it would have been a different conversation if a woman hadn’t helmed that decision.”
