“‘Make them stop and stare’,” is a phrase I’ve become famous for ever since I started modelling,” Jasroop says of her daily mantra. “When I was younger, there would be the odd day when I'd go out without makeup and people would stare at me and whisper. I felt so uncomfortable. But now I've turned it from a negative into a positive and I want people to stare because I'm happy within myself.”
Jasroop smiles broadly when telling me this. Years of insecurity and shame have become an inspirational expression of individuality. But her journey towards self-acceptance hasn’t been easy.
Jasroop developed vitiligo when she was four years old. An autoimmune disorder, in which the body’s immune system attacks pigment-producing cells, it causes patches of skin to turn a milky-white colour. She says, “It started with a small patch on the corner of my eye, but over the years it started to progress very quickly on my skin. Back then, vitiligo, or any skin condition, was a big taboo in South Asian culture. You weren’t even allowed to say the word ‘vitiligo’ because people believed it caused bad luck.”
Growing up, Jasroop flew back and forth to India for countless appointments with dermatologists as her well-meaning family tried to “cure” her of the condition. A shy child already, other people’s reactions to her vitiligo made her feel even more isolated when she started secondary school. She admits that she struggled to cut through the noise from her peers taunting her with insults about her “cow skin”, and doctors giving her false hope. “I started to notice, ‘Wow, I really am different’,” she says. “I was getting bullied very badly to the point where it started to have a massive effect on my mental health and, on top of that, I was taking lots of different medication.”
Nothing was working so when she was 11, Jasroop made the decision to stop taking medication. “It wasn't because I didn't want to be cured, it was because I was in a very bad place,” she says. “My family were so supportive about my decision. The doctors didn’t even ring us, so it just goes to show that it was a money-making scheme. They were making thousands and thousands of pounds from us every month for something that can't be cured.”
There was a point during college when Jasroop started to internalise the toxic comments about her appearance from a group of teenage boys and stopped living her life because she felt so insecure. Months of therapy followed, she says, “as I started to think my skin was disgusting. I couldn't even go food shopping with my mum without wearing full-sleeved clothes, without covering myself in makeup to the point where you wouldn't even be able to tell I had a skin condition.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, around 1 in 100 people in the UK develop vitiligo. And yet, Jasroop says, there is still so much ignorance and prejudice surrounding this skin condition. “I feel like my story is definitely very inspiring to a lot of people, especially because I've never seen someone from my South Asian community doing what I'm doing. At first, my distant relatives back home in India didn't understand why I was two different colours. They thought, okay, we need to cure her, or if she turns all white, that's even better.”
It was during lockdown that Jasroop’s life unexpectedly changed and one day she found the courage to leave the house without any makeup on, revealing her bare skin in a crop top and shorts. “I was genuinely so happy,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe I've just gone out without a care in the world and my real skin on show.’
“Lockdown was a time of self-reflection for me,” she continues. "Because I was by myself, I was thinking a lot about the person I am on the inside and how I was looking at myself and my skin. I suddenly felt like I didn't need to be cured – this is me. Who knows, if it weren't for lockdown, I genuinely believe I wouldn't be sitting here right now speaking openly about my skin. It could have taken me another 10 years to feel confident within myself and really find who I am.”
It was her biggest motivation for sharing the first-ever picture of her natural skin on Instagram. She expected a backlash but instead was astonished at the number of overwhelmingly positive messages she received. "I was very scared to put that image out at first because I’d never posted a picture on social media without covering myself in makeup,” Jasroop tells GLAMOUR. “People were so positive about it, and I just thought, ‘I've started to accept myself.’”
More good news was to follow, as Zebedee Talent scouted her on Instagram in December 2020. Within a week of signing up to the modelling agency, Jasroop went from being a Zara sales assistant to being booked for a global campaign for Primark Beauty and editorials with Vogue Italy and Farfetch.
While people often assume that modelling helped Jasroop develop a sense of self-love, she maintains that it’s the other way around. “Beauty is confidence,” she says. “Feeling confident and positive on the inside reflects onto your face, onto your body language, and what you stand for reflects onto other people. If I wasn't comfortable in my own skin, I wouldn't be modelling. I wouldn't be in the industry. Modelling has given me the platform to raise awareness about vitiligo but the self-love definitely came before that.”
And while she clearly loves her new career, she doesn’t want to be defined by ugly-duckling-to-swan tropes. She’s also not afraid to call out the fashion industry’s innate lack of diversity, which means that skin conditions such as vitiligo can become a trend rather than the norm. “If they're casting for a campaign, it shouldn't be, ‘Oh, we need a model with vitiligo, or we need a wheelchair model.’ It should just be, ‘OK, we've got this model and it just so happens that she's disabled.’ You shouldn't have to think about hiring someone with a disability. It should just be OK. It should just be normalised.”
Jasroop feels that, although growing up with vitiligo made her struggle to find body positivity as a child, her skin has ultimately taught her a lot about herself as an adult.
“I grew up watching America's Next Top Model but when I saw Winnie Harlow on there, I never thought, ‘I want to be a model like her’. I just thought maybe one day I'd have the confidence to go outside with my skin like she does. Looking at my vitiligo now, I can't ever imagine living without it. People ask me questions all the time about my skin and, rather than shutting them down like I did when I was a child, I'm proud of who I am. You can ask me as many questions as possible because, at the end of the day, there are people out there that are just curious and they just want to be more educated. Even if I get one or two negative comments, it doesn’t get to me. I'm really happy and grateful that I've got to a point where I've got very thick skin and I just don't care what people think.”
For more from Fiona Embleton, GLAMOUR's Associate Beauty Director, follow her on @fiembleton.
“I really worked for the little Winnie who's never seen herself represented.”
