Ashley Graham Is Not Happy About the Impact of GLP-1s On Body Positivity

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Ashley Graham is on the cover of Marie Claire’s new motherhood issue (MC moved away from monthly print issues in 2021 to focus on digital content and occasional special print issues) and in the accompanying interview with Neha Prakash, she sounds off about the negative impart she sees the rise of GLP-1s having on the body positivity movement.

Ashley Graham (Luca Booth for Marie Claire)

“It’s really disheartening,” she tells Prakash. “There was a pendulum that swung that was so body acceptance, positivity, everybody be who they want to be. And now it’s going back this whole opposite way that feels like a smack in the face to the women who have felt like they’ve had a voice.”

Still, Graham says that plus size women have it better in the fashion industry than they did when she started her career nearly 3 decades ago. “[I’ve] seen more movement for plus-size women than some people give the whole industry credit for,” she says. And fashion, she points out, has always been trend driven: “It goes with the times—and GLP-1s are a time…I know that there are and there’s gonna still be women who are considered plus size forever,” she continues. “This drug isn’t going to wipe out a whole statistic of women.”

Ashley Graham (Luca Booth for Marie Claire)

And whether GLP-1s are a trend or not, Graham does not intend to let them stop her from working. “Why would I stop now and why would I get angry about the work I’ve done?…I put my head down and I focus on the women we’ve built the community with,” she says.

“There’s so many [plus size influencers and creators]…they’re all over the place with their sizes and their proportions and how they look and how they’re relatable. And to me, that’s the coolest part about all of this. Seeing that these girls, who were raised on social media at such a young age are now coming in and they have a platform to say to the younger generation, ‘Be yourself, be who you want to be. If you have cellulite, who cares?’”