Before model Ashley Graham took the stage at the Create & Cultivate conference in Brooklyn, on Saturday, she uttered these words to herself: “You are fine, you are brilliant, and you are beautiful and bold.”
Graham told the audience of about 1,000 that she has recited this mantra before major meetings and events throughout her 20-year modeling career.
“[The mantra] is fun now because it’s in me,” she said. “But back then, before it was in me, it was necessary … because I didn’t believe it. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know why I was worthy to have anything I had.”
It was hard to imagine Graham feeling defeated in any way as she spoke on the main stage at Create & Cultivate, a millennial women’s entrepreneurial conference presented by Mastercard with speakers including Martha Stewart and Rosie Huntington-Whitely.
In 2016, after being the first size 14 woman to rock a bikini in Sports Illustrated, Graham became a boundary-smashing symbol of body confidence for women and girls around the world.
Graham has since built an empire of body diversity, whether through designing G-cup bras for larger-breasted women, hosting the popular celebrity-speckled podcast “Pretty Big Deal,” or working with Ellen DeGeneres on the heartwarming digital series “Fearless.” For the fans, she often posts candid photos of herself – cellulite and all – and tramples trolls in the process.
“A girl wrote on my page: ‘Girl, your thighs are busting out of your pants, your cellulite is kicking’,” Graham recalled in a conversation with host Jaclyn Johnson, CEO of Create & Cultivate. “I make these moments teachable moments… I said, ‘You’re right, ma’am. My cellulite and fat is hanging out of my pants and I am sexy A.F.’ I want the younger girls to know you should be standing up for yourself and you should be able to say, ‘No, I wanted to wear that … I don’t know why you’re talking to me like that, thank you very much. I blocked you.’”
However, there was a time when Graham, 31, wasn’t a confident superstar. She started modeling at age 12 and moved from Nebraska to New York City at age 17. Back then, she was just another struggling model who didn’t fit the mold.
“There was a moment when I was 18 years old and I said: ‘I can’t do this anymore’,” she recalled. “I can’t have anyone telling me to lose weight. I can’t have anyone telling me: ‘You’re too this, you’re too that, you can’t have a personality, you’re a model, don’t talk.’ And I called my mom and I was like: ‘I can’t do this. I’m done. I want to come back to Nebraska.’ And she said, ‘No, your body is going to change someone’s life.’ I don’t think she understood what she was saying to me until we came to this point in my life.”
Her mother’s words proved resoundingly true. Graham now runs several media platforms and has over 8 million Instagram followers, to whom she preaches self-love and “health at any size.”









