Ashley Graham Quotes

All my Doctor's said I should become a model.

I was bulimic and anorexic for a while, just hating my body. As an actress, I was never thin enough, never pretty enough. My boobs weren't big enough.

I was told I was fat in the modeling world, and a director on a shoot told me I needed to lose weight. The J-Lo booty wasn't popular then, and I wanted to be the perfect Hollywood girl - tall, blonde and skinny. I couldn't do the 'tall' because I was 5'2, and I couldn't do the skinny, either.

I just worry about the girls who look up to me. I don't want them to think I starve myself or don't eat, and that to be like me that's what they have to do.

I was 15 years old, taken out into a parking lot on the set of 'Donny & Marie,' and at the time I was 5-foot-5 and 103 pounds - like, nothing. I was told I was an embarrassment to my family and the show would be canceled if I didn't lose 10 pounds.

As a teenager, my favourite rejection was, 'She looks too healthy,' which of course translates as, 'She needs to lose weight.'

I don't really see myself as a big supermodel.

It's not attractive when girls get superskinny. Guys don't like it. Girls don't like you as much. You lose some happiness when that's all you think about.

My body back at the Playboy mansion was the most important thing in life back then because we were in the spotlight every minute. We had to look good. The girls who gained the weight, those were the girls who didn't get the work.

Like virtually all of the women I know, I spent my teenage years battling with my body and feeling I wasn't good enough. A lot of that negativity is because I was pursuing a career in modeling and was told countless times that my body was too big. My hips and thighs were too wide.

I began working as a model because I was born thin. I didn't become thin to be a model.

I lost count of how many times photographers and designers would tell me to lose a bit of weight, especially as I got a little older and my body started to develop.

When you model, there's no way you can't notice yourself. Do you know what I mean? Because you're constantly surrounded by people saying, 'Oh, she's too short, she's too skinny, she's this, she's whatever.' And you're right there. They're talking about you, and you're right there.

There is a breed of fashion models who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary.

Models are just mannequins seeking validation at the hands of sleazy fashion people.

Eileen Ford wanted me to fix my nose and my teeth. I said, Sure, great, but I really had no intention to.

We are being accused that some models are anorexic. But we as fashion designers cannot be blamed, because you know, when I talk to women around the world, rich and poor and young and old and intellectual and not, what they want to be is skinny. You ask them, 'What is your dream?' It's to be skinny. That's all they want.

In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker's party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.

People would tell me sometimes that I should model, but I was like, 'I don't know!'

When I'm sitting in a casting room in Paris, I'm not the thinnest model. Sometimes I'm not the most flat-chested, either.

I modelled in my 20s, and it was an obsessive time. I was under pressure to look a certain way.

Fashion is killing women's body image of themselves.

When I got my headshots done, there was this woman screaming at me to blow my lips out. She kept saying, 'You want to be like Scarlett Johansson, don't you?' In the shot, my eyes are popping out; I look terrified. I realised I'd rather not get a job than go through pain to be something I'm not.

You see your peers weighing 80 pounds and you think, 'Oh, my God, I've got to be 80 pounds or I'll fail.'

I can't remember a time where I really battled with my body, but I can remember being asked to lose weight and battling with the advice. It hurt me. Especially as my baby fat naturally melted away as I got older.