ARE YOU READY FOR ASHLEY GRAHAM? The supermodel who’s ahead of the curve

FOR YEARS, THAT’S ALL MODEL ASHLEY GRAHAM EVER HEARD. THEN SHE CHANGED THE CONVERSATION FOR HERSELF… AND US

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 She thinks it’s outdated and unhelpful.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.”

Comedian Amy Schumer has done a similar thing in Hollywood. In her stand-up and TV shows, she often skewers her industry for exalting only the young, thin and cellulite-free. So in April, when the

Trainwreck star took US Glamour magazine to task for implying she was plus size in its Chic

At Any Size special issue, Ashley (the cover star) was surprised. “I can see both sides,” she says, noting Amy’s claim that no one notified her she would be featured,“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.”

But Ashley hasn’t always been 100% comfortable with her body. As a teenager, she says she “walked through the halls with my chest pumped up and head held high, but I was insecure”.

At 16, she was crushed when her first boyfriend broke up with her. “He’s like, ‘First, you won’t have sex with me. And second, I’m afraid you’re going to be as fat as my mum.’ Never in my life had I felt more ugly, insecure and unworthy. That was the beginning of how I would relate and interact with my own body. I started seeking affirmation from boys because of one man’s words.”

Soon after, at 17, she lost her virginity to a man who wasn’t her boyfriend and moved to New York, where she “dated half the city” – or so she felt. “I did it all wrong,” she says. “I dated a lot of the wrong guys and was having sex for a lot of the wrong reasons. I was just looking for love and affirmation.”

When she got involved with an alcoholic, something had to change. “He was abusive in more than one way,” she says. “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. I should’ve left, but I was an insecure woman in a terrible relationship who did not know herself.” But her friends and her mum did. “They would tell me, you’re a 10. You need to put more value in who you are as a woman. But it was hard. For six months to a year, I hid that I was still talking to him. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t step away. I don’t think that heartache made me a better person, but it helped me figure out my worth.”

After the break-up, Ashley devised a plan. “I realised I was giving up my power and the power of my sexuality. I said, ‘I’m not going to have sex with anybody until I see a ring on my finger.’ Then I got more serious and said I’m not going to have sex until I’m actually married. I was adamant, especially when guys were like, ‘Um, third date…’”

She met her now-husband, cinematographer Justin Ervin, at church on what Ashley calls “porn Sunday”. She tosses her head back, laughing at the funny detail of how they met. “The church we used to go to had themes,” she explains. “This Sunday, they had ex-porn stars talking to the congregation about how porn ruined their lives.”

The couple met in the lift and were married a little more than a year later. Ashley was 22; Justin, 29. Even during their three-month engagement, Ashley stuck to the no-sex plan. “It

“I did it all wrong. I dated the wrong guys. I was looking for love and affirmation”

allowed us to know each other on a deeper friendship level,” she says. “We both had pasts.” Now, she says, “sex is the cherry on top of our marriage”.

What’s not sweet are the trolls who remark on their interracial relationship. “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 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 something that I take for granted.”

It’s also heightened her awareness that while she’s helping to redefine beauty standards, there are still miles to go. “Where are the black women? Hispanic women? This body is not new. There are so many different women of colour who have curvy bodies and should be celebrated. I recognise that 100%. It’s not just about size diversity any more.”

These days, Ashley speaks at conferences almost as often as she shoots advertising campaigns. A tireless body activist, she’s never not preaching that beauty is beyond size. Her TED talk has had over a million views. She’s also dyslexic. “When I was young, I never saw myself as a smart person. There are still days when I have to give a speech where I feel inadequate, like, ‘I can’t do this!’ But I haven’t let dyslexia define me.”

Nor will she let the term ‘plus size’ define her. She’s witnessed first-hand how sticky the label can be. Crystal Renn, 30, the model/author who battled anorexia, then rose to plus-size stardom, is one of Ashley’s oldest friends. The two met at the Ford modelling agency as teens. “We were inseparable,” she says. “I went to her house and she’s like, ‘You want to know how to model? OK, take your clothes off.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ We took our clothes off, and she taught me how to move my body.” When Crystal dropped from a size 16 to a size 12, her fans were outraged. “She was going through a hard time,” Ashley says of her friend’s weight loss. “It’s amazing how a community that can praise you for so long can then trash you. But Crystal changed a lot of girls’ lives. She burst open the doors for plus-size models in the high-fashion world. She was one of the pioneers.”

Ashley gets a taste of that outrage whenever she Instagrams a close-up of her face. “Because my face is thinner for a girl my size, [people will] be like, ‘You’re losing weight,’” she says. “They’re really mad!” Yes, Ashley works out regularly but it’s not about weight; it’s about strength and feeling good. “I’m really happy where I am,” she says. “But let’s say just for shits and giggles that I lost weight. Would my fans be mad at me?” She knows the answer is most likely yes. But she takes it in her stride: “Everybody’s going to have an opinion. As long as I’m healthy and I feel good, that’s what matters.”