Ashley Graham Is Taking Over The Modeling World
Cosmopolitan UK|January 2017

For years, that’s all model Ashley Graham ever heard. Then she changed the conversation for herself… and us

Katie L Connor
Ashley Graham Is Taking Over The Modeling World

Ashley Graham only has one request when I meet her at a rooftop bar in midtown Manhattan: don’t ask her what she thinks of the term ‘plus size’. Why? She thinks it’s outdated and unhelpful. She points out that in the modelling industry, it can refer to anyone size 12 and up – so that’s pretty much everyone. But you can’t ignore the fact that the model, who teeters between a size 18 and 20, owes her fame – at least in part – to the controversial term.

Last year, fashion blogs heralded her as the ‘first plus-size model’ to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. And in the past year, she’s designed collections for plus-size brands SwimsuitsForAll and Addition Elle. And her recent outing as Joe Jonas’s love interest in DNCE’s Toothbrush music video was a coup for full-figured women eager to see themselves in a role beyond, say, Faceless Twerker Number Four.

So, she may not like to be introduced as ‘plus-size model Ashley Graham’ – she’s a model, full stop – but the term doesn’t offend her either.

“Just because I’m not calling myself plus size doesn’t mean I’m not representing a woman who is,” she says. The 28-year-old from Lincoln, Nebraska, is proud to be an envoy for the millions of women overlooked and underserved by the fashion industry. “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.”

This story is from the January 2017 edition of Cosmopolitan UK.

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This story is from the January 2017 edition of Cosmopolitan UK.

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