Interview with Ashley Graham
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Ashley Graham
Model born in Lincoln, Nebraska, discovered at a mall as a teenager. She hosts the podcast Pretty Big Deal, has designed a lingerie line and hosted Fearless.
Source: Jay Shetty on YouTube
These answers are taken from This Supermodel Is Changing The Way We Talk About Body Image | Ashley Graham on Jay Shetty's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with modeling?
I'm from Texas, Atlanta, Arkansas, New Hampshire and Nebraska. My dad was a business consultant, so we moved around a lot. When I was in the mall and the scout came up to me and said, hey, do you want to be a model, it was another opportunity that my mom and dad saw as, oh, maybe she'll like this thing. Because I didn't love basketball, I didn't love soccer. I also was not artistic at all. It's like I wasn't good at anything. And then modeling came about and they're like, let's try it. And next thing you know, it just all stuck with me.
I went through what someone might call a modeling school, but it was kind of this expo where they put you in front of many different agencies and you have to prance around and show your stuff. An agency liked me and signed me, and it was all very surreal. I had no idea what modeling was. I modeled all through high school, and I moved to New York at 17.
What drew you to a career as a model?
I did not know what beautiful was until I got into this industry that dictated what beauty was, and then it was a whole new world for me. I traveled the world. Even when I got home from Paris, my mom would still be like, you have to mow the lawn, Ashley. I don't care how much money you just made.
I wanted to fit into it because it was a whole new world. It was like tasting a new piece of candy. People offered obscene amounts of money. They offered you the opportunity to be cool. And those are things that I had never felt afforded. And now it's like, oh, do I want those things? What do I have to do to get in? You start to see yourself make changes in your own belief system to fit into an ideal that was set, that doesn't need to be.
How did your career as a model unfold?
I was just this girl from Nebraska working my butt off. I always felt like I was swimming upstream. Where a lot of it began was I was in a commercial that was banned from television because of my size. I was a size 16 girl in lingerie in this commercial, going to meet my boyfriend. That's really where my career took this trajectory of, oh, there's this girl, maybe we want to get to know her. And that is when I realized, okay, I have a voice. How do I use it? Social media.
I remember posting photos of myself in swimsuits or lingerie and not retouching the cellulite out, and getting all kinds of women saying, thank you for giving me the confidence. Then I realized there was a hole in the market for lingerie. People didn't know my name, but they knew I was a lingerie girl because of this commercial that was banned. So I was like, great, I'm gonna make lingerie for all of you then.
Then it all just started spiraling into these great opportunities. I did a TED talk, which was very scary, but it enabled me to have a voice.
What advice do you have for new models?
My mom said, if you keep calling yourself ugly and fat and not worthy, then that's exactly what you're going to be. So change your words. The words that I made for myself were: I am bold, I am brilliant, I am beautiful, I am worthy of all, I love you. And "I love you" was the hardest one of them all. Everybody's affirmations are different. Once you make yours, write it on your mirror, write it on a paper, type it out, so that you can embody it. And they can change over time too.
I think of noes as maybes, and I turn my maybes into yeses. I know that not just one person is gonna give me an answer, so there wasn't a door that I didn't knock on. You have to work your butt off, and you have to work your butt off even harder when you get to the top, because then you want to stay there.
Really knowing who you are and getting to know yourself is key in whatever industry you're in and whatever mountain you're trying to move.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a model?
I always am so humbled when people come up to me and say, you gave me the opportunity just to tell my story, to speak my truth, to get into a swimsuit for the first time. Those stories that they say, because I told my story. I'm like, are you serious? It still shocks me to my core that that's something that has changed someone else's life. And to me, great accomplishment, it doesn't matter what covers, awards, nothing. It is those people.
I always like to think of a negative comment as a teachable moment. I want the younger generation to know you can stand up for yourself and you can do it in a polite way. I always want to make sure that I'm replying to some of my DMs and my comments, to make people know, hey, I see you. That's all that matters.
Has your career as a model progressed the way you expected?
There was a cover that I was up for, and it was Italian Vogue. In the fashion industry that's the creme de la creme. I was on hold to be on this job, and the night before I get the call: you didn't get confirmed, but three other brunettes did. The next night they called me: actually, sorry, you didn't get it. I went and ate a bowl of pasta, because that was my method of coping. Sure enough, when this cover came out, I stopped working, and these other girls started getting more and more jobs. I was pissed. I was angry. I was jealous.
I had this probably three-day conversation with myself about what it would have meant to me to be on that cover. And I said, but it didn't happen. It wasn't yours. The moment that I could say that to myself and forgave myself for getting so angry, it was out of my mind. I didn't need that cover to get to the next stage.
There are so many covers that have not come. But I'm not wrapped up in it, because I know what I'm doing is making a change in the world that I'm living in today.
How do you keep communication clear with photographers, designers and your agency?
I had started this group called ALDA, and it was me and four other curvy girls who had been switching agencies. We did it together, because we knew if we went to a really big agency that did not have any curve models, we could really change the industry. We made these business proposals and we talked about how much money we each made, how much money the whole curve industry is making, and what the trajectory of the industry is. We took it as this business opportunity to tell the industry who we are as curvy women. And they listened.
In the fashion industry everything is a competition, so it was really groundbreaking for people to see us all band together. Even the agencies were shook by it. They were like, you told each other how much you made? But we had to, because we wanted to make sure we were making the right decision. You can't do it alone. There's teams that are behind people. My team is incredible, and I can come to them and say, this is what I see needs to happen in my career.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
At 18 years old I was on the spiraling downfall of hating who I was. I was working, I was making great money, but when you feel really crappy about yourself, there's nothing that will bring you joy at all. So I called my mom and I was like, Mom, I'm not doing this anymore. I don't want to be a model. I want to leave New York City. And my mother is so prophetic. She said, Ashley, your body is going to change someone's life, and you have to finish what you started.
She came up to New York and told me, you have to start going back to church. The first church I walked into, I saw three people that I had known from my church in Texas. It was like a sign. I finally found a community outside of the modeling industry. I went back to my roots, back to who I am, and I thank God I did, because it took me out of that nasty feeling of not feeling worthy.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
What I really want to see change is that we don't have to have this conversation anymore. That inclusivity and diversity is the norm. Things are shifting in that direction. I've been doing this for 20 years and I've never seen something happen this quickly.
I think that we need to see more curves on the runway. Once designers start understanding that not every model or customer is going to fit into this ideal size or ideal beauty, then more designers are gonna be like, okay, I don't have to just keep putting the same type of person on the runway or in a campaign. That's what I'm most excited to see, hopefully in the next five years, even more of a change. There's a long way to go, but we have come so far.
Ashley Graham's Full Biography
Ashley Graham was born on 30 October 1987 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She is a producer and actress, known for The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026), Dirty Old Town (2012) and Love Advent (2011). She has been married to Justin Ervin since 14 August 2010. They have three children.