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I’m not the biggest fan of Priyanka Chopra, nor Nick Jonas, but the woman deserves a nod of respect for having made her way through the Bollywood chain and over to the global industry with a TV show without perpetuating all the South Asian stereotypes that riddled the industry. Chopra’s killing it, so to speak, on the world stage and you have got to hand it to her, for whatever achievements she has, obstacles she has overcome, that she became a world sensation bigger than any Indian woman.
Chopra shared with the world her week-long wedding celebrations, and boy, what a wedding it was. Her husband, pop sensation Nick Jonas tied the knot very much in the public eye and hearts broke around the world over the wedding of the former teen heartthrob. Along with all the wedding pictures and celebrity-spotting (including our Prime Minister, because who can miss such a high-society event?) what went viral was a seriously questionable article by The Cut titled ‘Is Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’ Love for Real?’ In this opinion piece – however, nowhere does the writer substantiate or back up her claims and opinions – writer Mariah Smith has some pretty choice words for Chopra that include calling her a ‘global scam artist’, all of which resulted in a mindless, obnoxious, sexist, xenophobic rant.
Smith starts by proposing a theory – Chopra is a nobody, a “modern-day scam artist” who duped a young, white Hollywood “victim”, Nick Jonas and forced him into a “fraudulent relationship against his will.” What seems to anger her the most are Chopra’s show of wealth, the age difference between her and Jonas, and the Indian marriage customs and traditions that she keeps referring to throughout.
The article comments on the extravagance of the multi-day wedding ceremonies and the quick progression of their relationship from dating to marriage. Smith makes jokes about the baraat, for her, it’s “even more upsetting” that Chopra “never even took the time to make sure he was comfortable riding the horse before arranging to enter their wedding ceremony on horseback.”
She doesn’t see the need to take into consideration the long and very successful career that Chopra has in Bollywood, the awards and accolades, or even the fact that Jonas may be a functional, consenting adult participant. It’s all about the green card, right?
Smith ended with pearls of wisdom for the groom – “Nick, if you’re reading this, find that horse and gallop away as fast as you can!”
In a swift backlash, the writer and publication were quickly called out for the tone-deaf and outright insulting piece from people all around the world including those close to the couple. It’s sad to see that the writer, a woman of colour herself, has little kindness for another of the same in a society that is already hard on the community. The Cut updated the article, edited out the ‘more offensive’ bits of the piece, but it wasn’t enough to stop the flurry of very-warranted critique on social media and they took it down from their website with an editors apology.
From a business standpoint, the strategy of enrage-for-clicks worked wonders for them but the questioning of their credibility would be harder for them to come back from. I want to point out that unfortunately after going through Smith’s Twitter feed when the article was published there were a lot of retweets of people that seemed to agree with her twisted opinion.
We’re in a tricky point in life where on one hand, what happens on the internet, stays on the internet forever –– for example, you can still read Smith’s revised article here and screenshots of the original are available online as well –– but considering the fast rate at which content is consumed and then churned out it’s only a matter of time that people will forget about the entire incident and who the writer was.
It’s really a wonder how this article got off the editing board in the first place but I guess they can hope it was worth all the hype.
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