Ashley Graham Quotes

I developed a nutty attitude where I'd think, If some guy really loves me he doesn't care if I'm fat. I'd come up with all these stupid reasons why it would be OK to be fat.

For many years, I picked the wrong men, or they picked me. I think if you don't feel attractive or worth something as a woman, you attract men who don't really look after you. That's what happened to me, but I realise that those relationships were like a journey, helping me to learn something about myself.

But, clearly to me, what I've come to see is that that happened because I didn't have enough feelings of self-worth. So that I didn't feel that... I was worthy of being number one to a man.

Growing up, all I learned was how best to diminish my own light for a partner.

Many people get into a relationship as a way to compensate for something they lack or hate within themselves. This is a one-way ticket to a toxic relationship because it makes your love conditional - you will love your partner as long as they help you feel better about yourself.

Some young ladies are so starved for male approval that what should be a normal attraction to men is accelerated into an obsessive need for male affirmation. Tragically, these dear ladies allow themselves to be devoured in the arms of men who have neither regard not respect for them as people.

Yes, I have patterns of love addiction. But I'm a woman. Of course I do.

I think that each woman, whatever age, needs to recognize something good in her body. Someone has beautiful legs, someone has beautiful hair, someone else has beautiful decolletage or a beautiful waist or beautiful hands. Everyone has something great.

I want people to love me, but it's not going to hurt me if they don't.

I was fortunate to have had a lively, happy childhood, but somewhere along the way I convinced myself I wasn't wanted anywhere or by anyone if I wasn't thin.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

When I see that my geek may have contained some of the best parts of me, when I love and appreciate him, I set my children free to see themselves as lovable however they are.

I was told my whole life, you're fat, you're ugly, you're never going to amount to be anything.

It's important for young people to know that they are made the way they are made and they're beautiful and that's how they're supposed to be.

All my life, men have told me I wasn't pretty enough - even the men I was dating. And I'd be like, 'Well, why are you with me, then?' It's always been men putting me down just like my dad. To this day when someone says I'm cute, I can't see it. I don't see it no matter what anybody says.

I've always struggled so much just to appreciate myself.

Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I wish I had reminded myself of that more.

You don't want to love - your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren't positive, you're negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you've got a shortage somewhere.

It is up to us to give ourselves recognition. If we wait for it to come from others, we feel resentful when it doesn't, and when it does, we may well reject it.

My boyfriend calls me 'princess', but I think of myself more along the lines of 'monkey' and 'retard'.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

I often think you bring unhappiness on yourself, because if you don't like yourself very much, you allow yourself to be influenced by people who reinforce that.

When it comes to life and love, why do we believe our worst reviews?

Far too many girls' and women's romantic relationships are formed around a negation of their own worth and attributes rather than a confirmation of them.

At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.