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Ashley Graham’s Weight: Agencies Begged Her To Drop Pounds

By Laura Meltzer
Published on: 05:35 PST, May 18, 2016

Ashley Graham’s weight has only benefited her modeling career. Haters? Yeah, back off. She doesn’t have time for you.

The curvaceous model has been making strides in her career lately. Thanks to a super sexy cover done by Sports Illustrated featuring Graham, the model’s career has only skyrocketed.

Those curves are everything. She’s a force to be reckoned with!

Ashley Graham’s weight has allowed her to become a spokeswoman for hourglass-figured ladies everywhere. While it seems life has been easy for the superstar, guess what? It hasn’t. Before the model became a household name, the star went through a fair share of struggles regarding her size. Recently, the 28-year old star did an interview with People Magazine where she shared some of her horror stories of starting out in show business. She had agencies telling her that she “had to lose weight.”

Ashley Graham’s weight became a point of fixation for modeling agencies. Not only did the superstar hear that mantra again and again from representatives, but they even tried to bribe the model.

“I had one that waved money in my face and said, ‘If you lose more lb’s – pounds – you can make a lot more of this,’ and he was waving $20 bills in my face.”

Still, having dollar bills waved in Graham’s face wasn’t the motivator for her weight loss. The model was peaking at a size 18. Graham explained in an interview with People Magazine that models either can be a “smaller size or the bigger size,” otherwise “you’re not going to work as much as if you’re in the middle.”

Ashely Graham’s weight hadn’t always been a struggle for the star. Growing up, Graham’s mother always encouraged body positivity. While the superstar was teased for her figure growing up, being called names such as “thunder thighs” and “cottage cheese thighs,” her mother always had a way of making her feel better. Still, she couldn’t have that forever. As Graham grew up and moved from Nebraska to New York, the star didn’t have the comfort of her mother. She had stopped working out and missed her mother’s cooking.

Ashley Graham’s weight was beginning to take a toll on her self-esteem.

“I started to really hate myself. I would literally just look in the mirror, and I would be disgusted. It was a constant degrading of my body. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re worthless. I’m surprised you’re a model. Are some of the things I would say to myself.”

With the combination of Graham’s self-negativity and constant pressure to stop packing on pounds from agencies, she began letting her deprecating thoughts bring her to a negative place.

“As the years went on, I really started to believe it, and not that I saw my work deplete, but I saw that my work couldn’t go any farther than what it was.”

Ashley Graham’s weight couldn’t impact her to such great lengths forever. The model began taking her negativity and turned it into a force of positivity. Instead of allowing the voices in her head to call herself fat or unattractive, she learned to appreciate her figure.

“A lot of taking care of my body and my mind and my soul had to do with talking to myself and actually giving myself affirmations. It got me out of my funk. I still had cellulite, I still had back fat, I still had jiggly arms, and I decided to love every part of it.”

[Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images]

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