Meet the doctor who breaks stereotypes in medicine and modelling

Dr Priyankha on a ramp walk
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

“I still remember my general surgery posting with night rounds, check-ins at the casualty ward before my shift ends. Then, instead of crashing into bed, I would slip into my stilettos and start practising my ramp walk. Why? Because the next day was my 24-hour duty shift,” says Priyankha PushRag, a medical practitioner in Chennai, who squeezes the in-between time not only to try her hands in a hobby but also to break the many stereotypes that surround her.

“Being a doctor is living my childhood dream,” says Dr. Priyankha who completed her MBBS in 2023. “And being a model is healing my inner child,” she says.

Healing? Years of bullying by friends at school for being dark-skinned made her realise, as an adult, that she needed to reclaim her self-worth. “I started posing for photoshoots, and for the first time, I appreciated myself. That’s how modelling came my way,” she says.

Dr Priyankha
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Non-stop judgments

But balancing these two distinctly different worlds has not been easy. “First, the stigma. So many people around me could not wrap their heads around a doctor being a model. And then came non-stop judgments because of the inhibitions relating to the modelling industry,” shares Dr. Priyankha.

“The thing is, no matter how devoted you are at your full-time profession, someone will always have something to say. The moment I stopped caring about everyone’s opinion, I truly started living,” she says.

Modelling helps her recharge after long shifts at the hospital. Starting with local ramp walks at DOT School of Fashion in Chennai, she went on to ramp-walk for international clothing brands in Singapore and competed in beauty pageants such as Miss Smiling Queen’23, Miss Ramp Walk’23, and Miss Fashion Icon’23.

She was also a finalist in Foden Face of South India and Global Miss Asia India.

Challenges

Breaking into a bigger space comes with its own challenges. “My height is a problem for many international ramp- walks and my complexion is an issue for ad shoot castings because a lot of brands still look for light-skinned models. So I have lost opportunities,” she admits. But she refused to stop as ramp walks gave her the confidence she lost as a 13-year-old. “I am now proud of the melanin in my skin. There are even trans-models who walk the stage with such confidence that they inspire me,” she adds.

Dr. Priyankha is clear about both her dreams, though her modelling hobby raises eyebrows in medicine. She plans to pursue anaesthesia, with critical-care as super-speciality. Thiruvengadam Veeraraghavan, a doctor who dedicated his life to serving the poor in north Chennai, charging a nominal fee of ₹2 and later ₹5 is her inspiration. “In the future, I wish to be like him. That is the ultimate life goal,” she says.