Aren’t we all one of these?
A few years ago, our Desi Girl Priyanka Chopra Jonas, launched her hair care brand ‘Anomaly’.
It’s a brand of hair care that is eco-friendly, affordable, vegan and the packaging is made from 100% recycled rubbish.
We like ethical practices when it comes to brands.
PC was already Miss World, and a superstar in Bollywood before she took the plunge, moved to the West to make a dent in Hollywood, married Nick Jonas and then took this entrepreneurial route.
I, like many other fans of Hindi cinema, have seen her unique path from the beginning.
The name ‘Anomaly’ made a lot of sense when she launched the brand because it somewhat explained who she was - an anomaly to the rule.
She was the brave one that went beyond the borders of Hindi cinema, and even India, to make a global name for herself.
We often see interviews of a confident individual who knows who she is.
But there’s something to be said of everyone being an ‘anomaly’.
A while ago, I explored the ‘minority of one’.
Sparked by a diagnosis, it led me to question ‘is everyone a minority?’
For ages, it has felt like deviating from any group meant you were ‘letting the side down’.
I needed to explore this further when I discussed how it was necessary to have the space for my own view, despite me being a woman of an ethnicity that wasn’t white and born in the UK.
I suppose in this era of groupthink activism this exploration and necessity to hold my own space (and thus my own view) made me somewhat of an ‘anomaly’ too.
I’ve always associated the word ‘anomaly’ with some sort of difference to the crowd.
Whilst everyone is going one way, the anomaly takes their own path.
So the concept of bravery also features.
The term ‘anomaly’ stems from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *sem- meaning ‘one’, ‘as one’ or ‘together with’.
It formed the basis of other words like ‘assimilate’, ‘homeostasis’ and ‘samsara’.
From this root, it evolved into the Greek word ‘homos’ meaning ‘same.
The prefix ‘an’ was added to the word ‘homalos’ and together it meant ‘not even’.
We start to see where the feeling of difference appears.
The Greek word ‘anomalos’, thus meant ‘irregular’ or ‘uneven’.
The term evolved into the Latin word ‘anomalia’ before developing into the English word ‘anomaly’ in around the 1570s to mean ‘unevenness’ or ‘deviation from the common rule’.
The hair care brand is definitely one that has deviated from the common rule; more so because of the Founder’s own path in her career.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas has definitely not stayed within the boundaries of the industry in which she started.
However, there is something to be said about all of us following our own paths, away from the noise of societal norms and status quos.
Away from groupthink where we can so easily lose our individuality.
So yeah, we’re all an ‘anomaly’, if we try.