Ashley Graham: The Bitter Truth About Her Dress Size And Why Every Woman Is Ashley

Ashley Graham is the new face of Sports Illustrated. But that’s not what got her into news. She is the first ever plus size model to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

It’s common knowledge now that Ashley Graham is a size 16. And a report also goes on to say that she is two sizes bigger than an average American woman. That’s right. An average American woman wears a size 14, reports SF Gate.

That’s why it may not come as a surprise that Graham is actually 30 inches at the waist, and her bust size is 38 inches, as listed by by her agency, IMG.

The lovely Graham is very vocal about issues that relate to body images and sizes of women. “I don’t like to use the words ‘real women,’ honestly,” she told Elle in February. “I like to use the word ‘woman.’ And I say that because there are so many women out there who are naturally thin, or are naturally curvy.”

“It is so important to be healthy and I truly believe you can be healthy at any size,” Daily Mail reported her as saying.

Ashley says she firmly believes one can be healthy at pretty much any weight. “You can be a size 2, 12 or 22, it doesn’t matter as long as you get off the couch and you take care of your body. Your body is going to thank you at the end of the day.”

Now that is something that everyone would love to believe and live by. She has also spoken at a TEDx talk in Spain, which talks volumes about her confidence as a young woman and how in the world of reed thin models, she maintains her confidence. She said in her speech that she “felt free once [she] realized [she] was never going to fit the mold that society wanted me to fit in,” she said. “I was never going to be perfect enough for an industry that defines perfection from the outside and that’s okay. Rolls, curves, cellulite, all of it – I love every part of me,” People reported.

The hot model said she was very thankful to Sports Illustrated, and that they are breaking many barriers by putting her on the cover of a magazine that has so far featured “normal” sized models. “I thought Sports Illustrated was taking a risk by putting a girl my size in the pages,” Graham said. “But putting me on the cover? They aren’t just breaking barriers; they are the standard now. This is beyond epic.”

She goes on to say that it’s a big deal not just for her but for all of society and girls who feel that they are fat and those who are embarrassed about having stretch marks on their bodies.

“Girls who are insecure about their bodies, girls who feel fat, girls who have cellulite, girls who have stretch marks on their body — those are all the things that I had as a kid and I never had a woman like me growing up to look at,” Graham said. “I had my mother and that’s one thing, but to have somebody who has cellulite, who has things that jiggle, who has back fat and talk about how you can be an overcome and not let society take you down for all of that. That’s real,” Style News reported.

It sure looks like Ashley Graham is a true ambassador for those women who do not feel confident in their own skin. By appearing on the Sports Illustrated cover, she has proven that size, after all, does not really matter.

[Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images]