Priyanka Chopra Speech: Empower Each Other

Learn English with Priyanka Chopra. Priyanka Chopra, actor, film producer, humanitarian, and one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world, discusses global beauty standards, supporting women, everyday philanthropy, and the responsibility that comes with being in the spotlight.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas is an Indian actress, model, film producer, singer, and film director. Chopra, the winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant, is one of India’s highest-paid and most popular entertainers. She has won numerous awards, including two National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards.

In this speech, she also quotes: “No one is going to tell you, here’s an opportunity. Go make something of yourself. You’re going to do it for you because people are only going to try and take it away. And it’s so important for us to be able to empower each other in everyday life. We don’t have to conquer the world.”

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Priyanka Chopra:

“I believe destiny and hard work go hand in hand.” Priyanka Chopra

Priyanka Chopra – FULL TRANSCRIPT:

“Interviewer:

Priyanka, you are a global icon. You have a career spanning over 20 years, multiple continents, multiple industries. You have over 100 million followers, authentic followers. I will also say, real followers, global followers, and people all over the world look to you for inspiration.

You’re the first South Asian woman to be a star of a U.S. TV network. Right? But after our conversation the other day, I realized I think America is just getting to know you. So the question for everyone who’s here is who is, who is Priyanka? Who are you?

Priyanka Chopra:

I think I’m kind of trying to figure that out myself, and I think it’s OK not to know. We spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we really are and then we change and then we figure it out and then we change again.

And I think that’s the most constant, right? I’m constantly changing, constantly evolving, and I’m hoping that everyone’s still curious about me as I keep doing that.

Interviewer:

You mentioned something the other day that when women are pitted against each other in any industry, that everyone loses, and so that’s such a wise and evolved way to think about things. Tell me how you’ve come to realize that at such a young age?

Priyanka Chopra:

Well, a couple of things, I have a hypothesis, so I feel like we… I’ve had so many times whenever I’m doing interviews, people always ask me that ‘Oh, you’re doing a movie with, you know, a female co-actor. Did you guys get along?

Priyanka Chopra:

Were there catfights?’ But when it comes to boys, they say ‘Oh my gosh, that looks like a bromance and everyone got on so well.’ So I feel like over time because women have a lack of opportunity. We were pitted against each other because we had… there were only like five opportunities, like five places a woman could be hired. And so we were elbowing each other out to get to that one spot. So the crux of the problem is the lack of opportunity for females and the more opportunity we create for each other, the more sisterhood will grow.

Priyanka Chopra:

We’re 50% of the world’s population.

Interviewer:

That’s right.

Priyanka Chopra:

We need to be represented in every field like that. We need to empower by each other, by the people who are in positions of power by putting us in positions of power. So I realize many, many years ago that the more I championed women in my own small way, maybe I’ll be able to create a world around me, at least where, you know, women run the show because we kind of do it really well. We just aren’t given the opportunity enough.

Interviewer:

Women are statistically based on the data working twice as hard as their counterparts to earn the same dollar. And this is an issue for me that everyone knows I’m very passionate about. And women of color are working three times as hard. Where? Why is it that you think we’re held to such higher standards? And what are those standards were held to?

Priyanka Chopra:

So every generation of women somehow has to fight for the right of empowerment for the next generation of women. How many of you drive? Do you remember there was a time when women couldn’t? Today, we don’t even think about it because those women fought for us.

So how many of us vote as females?

Interviewer:

Put your hands up?

Priyanka Chopra:

There was a time we couldn’t. Now we don’t even think about it. So we as women, everyone in this room and everyone in this world has a responsibility to our future daughter, to our future granddaughter, to change the world in a way where they don’t have to think about lack of opportunity. They don’t have to think about diversity. Diversity shouldn’t even be a conversation. It should be normal when we look around this room there’s not one kind of person. I don’t even see one kind of person in one row. And that’s our normal. And that’s the world we will create for our daughters, for our kids. We will create men that empower the girls around them. We will create men that respect the girls around them and create a legacy for their children going forward. And I think that’s our responsibility and we need to take that really, really seriously.

Interviewer:

One of the things that I love about you is that you are now investing in tech. And up… Yes. And your manager also has been like a prolific investor within the space. And so I know you’ve invested in Bumble and now you’ve invested in a tech incubator that’s supporting young women who are learning how to code. Why is that important to you?

Priyanka Chopra:

I just love growing, like I said, I think growing is a very important thing, and when I was very young, I started working when I was 17 years old and I remember my mother telling me this, really young, that women should be financially independent.

It doesn’t matter who your father is, doesn’t matter what your husband is going to be. It doesn’t matter who your brother is. It doesn’t matter who the man in your life is. You need to be responsible for your finances and be financially independent, and that kind of really stuck with me.

And as my career expanded, it was really important for me to invest in little things once I discovered tech. I have always been a fan of technology. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer at one point. I wanted to build rockets.

I wanted to, you know, go to space. But then I became an actor. Go figure. And when I got the opportunity, I remember I was at a dinner for Bumble in New York, and I just thought it was such a cool, cool thing to bring back to India, where women take the first move. To bring it to a country which has a patriarchal sort of society, which actually the world is. The world over is sort of patriarchal, and we as women need to fight to change that, to create that kind of equality because no one’s going to give it to us and they’re going to fight for us to have it.

So it started from taking Bumble to India. And then my next investment is this engineering school, which is called Holberton which was based on Betty Holberton. She was one of the first female engineers in the world, and this school is a peer to peer teaching program where you don’t have to pay tuition and you can pay back your tuition after you graduate and get a job so that you don’t have to worry about, you know, how much school’s cost. So that females can actually be a part of engineering. Just think about it this way.

All of us consume tech, right? All of you have cell phones. Everyone has computers. We’re always online. Digital is such a big part of our lives. But the people creating technology, it’s so skewed because it’s mostly men. And these are men who decide what we as women need.

So we need females to come and do engineering as AI starts coming in and it’s going to be a big part of our lives. Can you imagine the artificial intelligence that we are consuming being created by guys, and guys are going to decide what kind of things we like?

So we need women to come in and realize the tech is a big part of who we are and who we are going to be and our future. So hence me investing in the engineering school. I really love female-driven companies and I like to give them as much strength as I can with my platform, and that’s a big quest of mine in life.

Interviewer:

OK, beauty’s always been a big part of your life. I know that when we asked you to come, I know that you had a genuine interest in beauty. What does beauty mean to you? I feel like you’ve answered that, but I think your perspective is even more interesting because you are in a constant time zone.

You are flying around the world. You see a lot of different cultures. Where do you think global beauty is now going? Where is it going?

Priyanka Chopra:

I think travel and meeting different people of different ethnicities and different parts of the world is so important to expand our minds, even if you just are interested in different countries or what kind of music people like to listen to.

What are the stories? Or just being curious about different cultures instead of being scared of them. Like, I think we’ve also become… we’re living in a world where we are so afraid of different that when something is different, we’d rather not be curious.

We’d rather be like, ‘All right, I don’t want to offend someone’ or ‘I don’t wanna… I don’t want to say something wrong.’ Instead of being curious and saying, ‘Well, what is your name and where do you come from and what do you like?’

I would love to see beauty go to… that’s what inclusivity to me is not just seeing different races on a billboard, but actually getting to know different people, actually understanding what different people might be like. We’ve forgotten that eventually, we’re all human.

It’s this one little planet that we have, which in this big universe is really tiny. So we should stop giving ourselves so much importance and saying, ‘Oh, well, you’re better than me, or I’m better than you.’ We all are basically humanity.

And let’s like, go back to that and bring compassion and kindness into beauty and not be so hard on ourselves or other people. The standard of beauty that the world of entertainment actually has created is the culprit. And it’s so beautiful to see the kind of inclusivity that we’re seeing now.

It has a long way to go. But I love the fact that there’s a conversation around it and you see that difference.

I think we’re really counting on this next generation to take this opportunity to heart so that we can start to see business influenced by our point of view.

And that’ll take us finding our own confidence. Ladies, no one is going to give that to you. No one is going to tell you, here’s an opportunity. Go make something of yourself. You’re going to do it for you because people are only going to try and take it away.

And it’s so important for us to be able to empower each other in everyday life. We don’t have to conquer the world. You don’t have to be the only person who reaches space like you don’t have to have crazy, wild ambitions.

You just have to find your power. And to say that, ‘Oh, I can do this too, I don’t have to create like this crazy opportunity for me to thrive. You can thrive in anything you choose. Just have to find that confidence within yourself.

Interviewer:

And how do you find that confidence?

Priyanka Chopra:

By telling yourself that your flaws are fine? Each one of us has flaws. No one is perfect. None of us. We all have bad days. We’re all going to feel like shit sometimes, sorry for my French, feel like bad, sometimes.

Interviewer:

We’re on the internet. We can say what we want.

Priyanka Chopra:

OK, great. But you’re all going to have bad days, and that’s fine. We have this crazy standard, especially with the internet, where everything has to be perfect all the time, and we have to look perfect or to behave perfect.

We have to say the right things. Everyone screws up. And that’s all right. We laugh through it. Don’t take yourself too seriously and make sure that you don’t live for someone else’s validation. It’s your validation that you need.”[/read]

Priyanka Chopra

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