Ashley Graham covers the August issue of Cosmopolitan

Ashley Graham cosmo
BEN WATTS/COSMOPOLITAN, STYLED BYAYA KANAI
Ashley Graham covers the August issue of Cosmopolitan (on newsstands July 12).
“You’re pretty… for a big girl.” For years, that’s all model Ashley Graham ever heard. Then she changed the conversation for herself… and all of us.
BEN WATTS/COSMOPOLITAN, STYLED BY AYA KANAI
BEN WATTS/COSMOPOLITAN, STYLED BY AYA KANAI

 

Ashley Graham Quotes

On Amy Schumer taking Glamour to task for implying she is plus size: “I can see both sides, but Amy talks about being a big girl in the industry. You thrive on being a big girl, but when you’re grouped in with us, you’re not happy about it? That, to me, felt like a double standard.”

On calling herself a model and not a plus-size model: “Just because I’m not calling myself plus size doesn’t mean I’m not representing a woman who is… I’m giving curvy women a seat at a table that we’ve never been invited to before—a table with high-end fashion people who have never considered us beautiful.”

On the trolls who remark on her interracial relationship with husband Justin Ervin: “One comment on Instagram was ‘I knew a girl her size could only be with a black guy.’ I think that’s so ugly. But we talk about the fact that I’m white and he’s black all the time. I’ve seen how racist America is. It’s opened my eyes to how ignorant I have been, how white privilege has taken over a lot of my thoughts and actions because it’s just something that I take for granted.”

On a previous relationship with an alcoholic: “He was abusive in more than one way… He threw a couch on me. He came home drunk. I was sitting on it, and he flipped it upside down. I remember my elbow being jammed but thinking, He didn’t hit me; he was just really angry, you know? You hear stories of women who say the exact same thing—I wasn’t showing up with bruises, he wasn’t beating me every day. Looking back, I should’ve left, but I was an insecure woman in a terrible relationship who did not know herself.”

For more of Ashley Graham’s exclusive interview and photo shoot with Cosmopolitan, pick up the August 2016 issue on newsstands July 12 or click here to subscribe to the digital edition!

Leave Us Your Comments.