Priyanka Chopra Was Asked To Get A Boob Job Early On In Her Career. We’re Glad She’s Speaking Up
For the longest time, the definition of beauty has been limited to one complexion, body type or simply a version that people (read men) approve of. Anything outside of the preset definition is automatically deemed ugly or undesirable, everything else be damned. And one of the biggest cultivators of such unrealistic beauty standards has been the film industry that has time and again promoted a certain type of beauty and it doesn’t matter if you are Priyanka Chopra.
Priyanka Chopra’s anecdote in her autobiography Unfinished has a bit that talks about being body shamed in the beginning of career, as she was asked to make certain tweaks to her body and consider getting done a boob job for the sake of getting roles in movies.
She wrote, “After a few minutes of small talk, the director/producer told me to stand up and twirl for him,” which she said, she did. “I did. 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.”
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She goes on to reiterate, “If I wanted to be an actress, he said, I’d need to have my proportions ‘fixed,’ and he knew a great doctor in LA he could send me to. My then-manager voiced his agreement with the assessment.” And this was cue enough for our eyes to roll as far back as possible.
She continued, “I left the director/producer’s office feeling stunned and small. Was he right that I couldn’t be successful unless I had so many body parts ‘fixed’? I thought of how individuals in the media and others in the industry had referred to me as ‘dusky’ and ‘different-looking,’ and I wondered if I was cut out for this business after all.” A thought has crossed the minds of millions of girls who were made to feel inadequate simply because their version of beauty was a little more raw and real for everyone else.
Talking to Metro UK about it, Priyanka Chopra said, “It’s so normalized that it doesn’t come up in conversation. I talked about a movie that I walked out of because of how I was spoken to by the director. It was early in my career, but I never told him why I walked out.”
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“I never had the courage to stand up for myself, and actually admit it. Because I heard so often, ‘Don’t be a nuisance, you’re new in the industry, you don’t want to have a reputation that you cause trouble or you’re not easy to work with.'” After all, that’s what we as women are taught in society, to be compliant, to be patient and to be enduring to all and every crappy request made to us. Except, Priyanka wasn’t going to be one to follow through. And the fact that she is a global sensation with the same jaw, same body and without a boob job, is pretty telling of how irrelevant such patriarchal conventions are.
She shared, “Now on the other side of 35. I know that’s a normalized thing that girls hear so often. I fell for it too, even though I consider myself a forward-thinking, smart girl. I learned from that over time, but at that time, I was terrified. Yes, I faced that then, I faced that like everybody else when you’re in patriarchal industries, which ours has been for a very long time.”
