Social media these days attracts negative criticism much like a line of ants to a few grains of sugar, except here, the livelihood of trolls doesn't depend on living off sweet crumbs from a plate. Walking down the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) Gala, in a strapless red Ralph Lauren dress with a bejeweled golden coiffure, which was in keeping with the theme – Heavenly bodies: Fashion and the Catholic imagination, was rife with talks of 'cultural appropriation'. Yet somehow it brought back memories of Pee Cee's 2017 Met debut in a long Ralph Lauren trench coat dress, which was used as a pizza base or pancake batter in memes. Earlier this month, Chopra was ridiculed for wearing a blazer dress on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The pastel blue Dion Lee dress with brazen cut-outs over the chest area was annihilated by Twitter trolls. She was also condemned for not being "sanskari" enough in her knee-length floral dress while meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Berlin last year. Even Pee Cee's Hollywood debut in the Baywatch remake, where she acts in a negative role, was met with immense trolling.
"She is successful, and success breeds its own enemies," says Sudipta Sarangi, professor at Virginia Tech University who penned a paper on Indian crab mentality. "More negativity is directed at her possibly because she had to step on more toes than less successful people," Sarangi concludes.
Being a former Miss World and more recently featured for three seasons in the American TV series, Quantico, has not shielded her from virulent critics. There's something about Chopra that has attracted fan-based criticism on an international stage. Film critic, Omar Qureshi, humorously explains this as "Star Wars" (pun intended). "There are fan clubs [of other celebrities /politicians] that are paid something like Rs 1.50 per tweet who are not rooting for you," Qureshi warns against faceless trolls.
In recent years, Pee Cee has focused on frying bigger fish on an international stage and has stayed away from Bollywood, whose meaning and worth has been reduced "to a zumba class," she argued on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The 35-year-old actress has gone onto bag a number of awards including the Padma Shri in 2016. Pee Cee is also rumoured to be in the running for playing the lead in the Kalpana Chawla biopic, scheduled to begin shooting next month. Despite all this, the numerous jabs at her expense keep on coming. Still the actress has rolled with the punches. "I say, the more trolls she has, the more power to her," Qureshi emphatically states.
And to all the trolls out there, here's another to put in their pipe and smoke: Pee Cee was the only one invited from Bollywood to the royal Harry-Meghan wedding. Now what will they say about that?
