Championing a cause!

While speaking to Gayathri Reddy you will realise two things — what a confident woman can do and what it’s like to have your hands full, yet give back. The 20-year-old Chennai model talks about her journey into the fashion industry and says, “I used to be extremely scared of the camera and would refuse to get clicked. I’m not sure why and how I decided to model but I chose to give it a shot. Three years after modelling, people encouraged me to try out at Femina Miss India.”

As simple as it may sound, her story wasn’t all roses, “When I was a child, other kids used to tease me for my complexion. I think all dusky girls must have faced it when they were young. But now I realise how much of a blessing dusky skin is. It’s been one of the main reasons why I got selected for Miss India, because they really liked my skin tone.”

The desire to reach out to other women motivated Gayathri to start this campaign. She says, “That’s why I promote the Dark is Beautiful campaign. I want dusky women to know that all you need is to believe in yourself. People discriminated against me at the start of my career and told me I could never be a model. I wanted to prove them wrong. You can achieve anything; colour isn’t that big a deal.”

Not only does she promote this global movement, she has also started an NGO that will be in full-swing next month onwards. She explains, “My friend, Sharath, and I wanted to clean the city and eventually, the country. Everyone seems to attend one clean-up and believe their job ends there, but places need to be kept clean all the time. So once we clean a part of the city like the beach, we plan to employ five to six people to constantly keep them clean.” She goes on to say, “We’ve already been to a few places to see what needs to be done. It’s really important for celebrities like models and actors to support such causes, because the public follows whatever we do and will eventually join us.”

She concludes about telling us her future plans, “I am preparing for Miss Diva Universe, if I do win I’ll be going on to compete for Miss Universe and then eventually I want to get into acting. I also want to keep working with my NGO and eventually in a bigger way with Dark is Beautiful.”