Priyanka Chopra Jonas - First Bollywood. Then Hollywood. Now Silicon Valley

The Forbes India W-Power Trailblazers issue celebrates women who have bent norms, fought stereotypes and cemented their space in male-dominated fields

- Pankti Mehta kadakia

A jig here, a high-five there: US Congress headlines got a lot more flavour in January this year, electing a record number of women who are changing its face. One of those faces is coloured, under 30, and not afraid to shut down her critics with a mix of sharp intelligence and liberated millennial-ness: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the youngest woman to serve in the US Congress, speaks as eruditely about increasing marginal taxes and controlling fossil fuels as she does about her K-beauty skincare routine. When Republicans attempted to tear her apart for an old dance video from college, she filmed a now-iconic response of her boogying into her shiny new Congress office, broadcasting an unequivocal message of strength, served with a dollop of with. ‘Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office’, her campaign began. And here we are.

Very often, women in power are afraid to showcase their personalities, or, indeed, their femininity. “Women leaders are often judged as being too soft-spoken or too abrasive,” Komal Mangtani, senior director and head of engineering and business intelligence at Uber, told us in an interview. “But if there are more of us, and different kinds of us... it would teach people that women have different styles of leadership, and men have to get used to them.”

What AOC represents is a new breed of women willing to balance power with a so-called puff: That it’s okay to demand high-level policy changes, but also to discuss your beauty routine on Instagram. That fashion can be used to make political statements. That it’s time retire the cringe-worthy phrase ‘beauty with brains’, and recognize that there isn’t ever a dichotomy.