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Ashley Graham's advice for aspiring models isn't what you'd expect

Want to be a model? Ashley Graham has real honest advice for you. (Photo: Getty Images)
Want to be a model? Ashley Graham has real honest advice for you. (Photo: Getty Images)

Even though Ashley Graham has had major success in the fashion industry, she actually discourages others from becoming models.

In an interview for this week’s episode of CBS’ Sunday Morning, Graham told Gayle King the advice she gives to aspiring models — and it’s a bit unconventional.

“And I say to them, ‘Why would you want to become a model?'” Graham revealed. “‘Why would you want to be picked apart all the time?'” She says she suggests other professions in the fashion industry that aren’t so fixed on appearance: “‘Why don’t you go be the editor? Why not just strive to be, like, Anna Wintour? Or why not be a designer and tell models what to do all day?”

And she says she doesn’t aim to discourage aspiring models to avoid competition. She says she does it because she doesn’t want others to feel the same pressures she has from the cutthroat profession.

“Being in the public eye and being someone that a lot of women look up to, there is a pressure that is put upon me,” she once told PopSugar. “But if I let that pressure resonate with me every day, I wouldn’t be as confident and easy breezy as I am. There are some mornings where I do wake up and feel really fat and heavy, and question why I ate that big bowl of pasta and skipped working out, but I can’t focus on those things. I just try to focus on who I am, and then I speak those affirmations to myself.”

While she’s been able to rise above the negativity, not everyone can — which is why she tries to protect others from it.

Graham has spoken out about the destructive ways of the fashion industry before. “I had an agent actually wave money in my face and say, ‘If you lose some weight, you can get a lot more of these. Put that Snickers bar down, honey,'” she previously told Yahoo Lifestyle.

She says wouldn’t wish the treatment she’s been exposed to on her worst enemy, and we don’t blame her.

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