It’s Ashley Graham’s world and we’re all just living in it.
Just a few months since showing off her body after giving birth to twins, the 34-year-old model bared it all in a new Instagram post, this time sharing the unretouched photos from her cover shoot with The Perfect Magazine.
In the series of images that she posted on the social media platform, Ashley is seen laying naked on a blue background while covering her face and wearing her hair down. One photo in particular is a black-and-white close-up of her unretouched body.
In her upload, the plus-size model included the screen shot of a text message exchange between herself and Katie Grand, the founder of The Perfect Magazine. Katie is seen texting Ashley, "Conceptually, what do you think to no retouching on the photos?"
Ashley, known for her honesty when talking about a variety of usually taboo subjects, including public breastfeeding, responded to the message saying, "I personally think it's the best choice! The pictures look stunning and speak for themselves."
Fans quickly took to the comments section to praise Ashely's candor and her choices.
"Thank you for making me feel normal," one user wrote.
“GORGEOUS. Thank you, on behalf of all women. You are incredible!!!,” someone else noted.
““Yessss. Shedding light to natural bodies and mom bods love it!!,” yet another fan commented.
Ashley shared the photos from her cover shoot just a few days after posting a video of herself laying naked in bed. Always open to discussing her form and the way women's bodies are seen and treated in the public eye, Ashley received a ton of virtual applauses for that Instagram post as well, which she captioned, “Made in the image of God.”
In that same upload, she shared an up-close-and-personal photo of her tummy as well.
Back in May, the celebrity even penned an essay for Glamour, dissecting her feelings towards her own body and detailing the dramatic birth of her twin boys Malachi and Roman.
“I was bringing it up constantly to my team. I was like, 'You don’t understand. I used to be a sex symbol, and now I am a baby-making machine and I have stretch marks up to my belly button. What the eff is happening?' Then one day I just stopped and thought, Screw it, this is my life, and I posted a photo of my stretch marks on Instagram, which that day my husband described to me as looking like the tree of life. Bless him," Ashley wrote in her essay. "I’d like to say that that was it. That after posting that photo, I found peace with myself and my new body. But it wasn’t that simple. Malachi and Roman’s birth was incredible, but the aftermath was deeply overwhelming. I couldn’t walk properly for a long time, let alone exercise. I would shake, I didn’t feel like myself physically or emotionally. I had planned to be back at work after eight weeks, but I was a wreck, and when I saw myself in the mirror, I still felt like I looked pregnant."
She went on to acknowledge her fortune when it comes to her career and being able to afford help while raising children.
"I felt, and still do feel, deeply lucky that I was able to take a longer maternity leave than I had planned—I’m privileged to have a job and an income that sustains me, and brands that were willing to wait until I felt capable of returning, when so many millions of women across the U.S. don’t have access to paid leave, or protections from their employer beyond a short time frame," she wrote. "And yet, I work in an industry that expects me to return to work in a body that has 'snapped back' – a pressure that no woman, in any industry, deserves to feel. I have always fought against unfair and unrealistic standards and yet, if I am being completely honest, here I was, expecting myself to snap back. And fast."
As usual, we praise Ashley for her honesty when talking about important issues related to women.
