Dear Ashley Graham,
First of all, let me say thank you. Thank you for being a revolutionary in the world of beauty. Thank you for breaking down beauty standards and giving a voice to the silenced party of plus sized women. Thank you for being the woman that girls aspire to be and the role model for those of us who are finally accepting our bodies as beautiful.
I, like many women, struggled with my body image starting at a young age. For most of my childhood, I was bullied for being chubby. This cast a shadow over the way that I would see myself for a long period of time. It truly wasn't until your revolution of self love and breaking the body mold did I finally embrace myself with open arms.Growing up, girls like me couldn't help but look at magazine ads with petite models and compare ourselves to them. We couldn't help but think that we needed to look like them to be accepted. You know as well as I do how damaging that is on a young girl's mind but when we're surrounded by these images, what else could we do?
Being able to finally see a woman who has a figure like mine walk a high fashion runway, pose for Vogue, and rock a bikini for Sports Illustrated has completely changed the way I see myself. I see my curves and I love them. I see my full figure and I feel good about myself. I no longer find myself wishing to be smaller. Now don't get me wrong, I'll still pinch at my love handles from time to time but I no longer feel so bad about them. I do go to the gym and work out when I can and I do my best to watch what I eat. We all have to take care of ourselves after all right? But now, I don't feel so bad about eating some pizza or a burger. I now know that I'm honestly okay withing being a size 14 and its okay that I am okay with that.
Ashley, you've helped not just me but you've helped the world become more accepting of all shapes and sizes of women. Plus size women and girls of today see your pictures in magazines and they see themselves being represented. They see a beautiful woman that they could grow up to be some day. Thanks to your presence in the fashion world, the media doesn't hurt their self image as much as it used to. You have carved a path for girls to know that their beautiful just the way that they are. You've helped to set the stage for plus size women so that we can show the world how beautiful we really are and that is something that the world can never thank you enough for. You've changed beauty standards for the better and we are all better for it.
