Ashley Graham Reveals An Agent Once Waved Money In Her Face So She'd Lose Weight -- What?!

Ashley Graham may now be applauded for her curvy figure, but that wasn’t the case when she first started out.
In fact, in a recent interview, the Sports Illustrated model revealed that she once had an agent who waived money in her face as a motivator to lose weight. WHAT?
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She dished:

“I had agencies telling me that I had to lose weight. I had one that waved money in my face and said, ‘If you lose more ‘lb’s’ ├óΓé¼ΓÇ£ pounds ├óΓé¼ΓÇ£ you can make a lot more of this,’ and he was waving $20 bills in my face.”

How awful! Although, it seems the agent’s motivation was driven by the “plus size” standards placed down by the industry. Miz Graham explained:

“That wasn’t even a motivator for me to lose weight. I was peaking at a size 18, and in the plus size fashion industry, models go from a size 8 to a size 16/18. So if you’re on the smaller size or the bigger size, you’re not going to work as much as if you’re in the middle. So he was trying to encourage me to lose weight but it didn’t work, because I was that person where if you told me to go on a diet and lose weight, I’m just going to gain weight.”

Huh. The more you know.
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However, it seems that interactions like these were incredibly harmful to the brunette beauty’s self esteem — especially after she left home at 17 for NYC. Ashley shared:

“I had gained a lot of weight because my mom wasn’t cooking for me and I wasn’t working out. I started to really hate myself. I would literally just look in the mirror, and I would be disgusted. It was a constant degrading of my body. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re worthless. I’m surprised you’re a model. Are some of the things I would say to myself.”

Poor thing! To make matters worse, the 28-year-old started to believe her career had peaked. Nonetheless, Ashley eventually broke through the negativity as she concluded:

“A lot of taking care of my body and my mind and my soul had to do with talking to myself and actually giving myself affirmations. It got me out of my funk. I still had cellulite, I still had back fat, I still had jiggly arms, and I decided to love every part of it.”

Bravo! Keep doing you girl, because you’re totally killing it these days!