Ashley Graham’s Sports Illustrated cover finally sets the standards every girl has been dreaming about

Today’s the big release of the famous hyped up Sport’s Illustrated issue featuring model Ashley Graham, the first curvy model to be on their cover at a size 16. How exciting is this?!?!

I’ve been spending every day for the past couple of years following Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne and other really skinny models on Twitter and dreaming of my head on their paper thin bodies. But I created unrealistic role models that I looked up to. Expectations like those were part of the reason why I was so insecure about my body. Nothing against them, their bodies are still beautiful — but not everyone can look like that. And even if I lost weight, I don’t know if my figure would still be the same. Everyone is different.

Not just social media was affecting me but TV commercials, magazines and even people I knew would tell me that if I wanted to do something I would have to “lose weight first.” I was constantly disappointed in myself and thought I would never succeed in anything if I didn’t look like Heidi Klum. I would go to sleep and I would pray that overnight I would miraculously lose 100 pounds and be hot af.

Society has made it impossible for girls to be comfortable in their own bodies. Every other retweet on Twitter is the “body goals” of someone with a perfectly good body on their own. But women like Kendall Jenner were the only people society was promoting. The only body that people believed was acceptable.

Banana Republic’s latest catalog boasts “pants for every body,” with the word body highlighted. But the photos speak a different truth. There are no different bodies here. Just the same skinny legs and flat butt over and over and over again.

And we all remember when Calvin Klein finally had the “courage” to unveil their plus-sized model — a size 10! 

Thankfully, people like Ashley Graham rescued us curvy girls from our miserable downward spiral into over-eating more chocolate and screaming at rom-com movies. Now, I can scroll through my Instagram feed and look at models that make me feel good about my body. It is a lot easier to be confident when I know someone else just like me is celebrating her body and making a career of it.

Graham isn’t just a curve model, she’s a body activist whose been standing up to body shaming for years. She’s the perfect role model for girls and makes it abundantly clear that that’s what she wants to do. “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, in an interview with People.

Graham isn’t the only person on social media inspiring women to be confident with whoever they are. Curve models like Andy Garcia’s daughter, Alessandra Garcia-Lorido — who often posts scantily-clad pics of her bodacious bod on Instagram — and one of Kylie Jenner’s best friends, Jordyn Woods are also embracing their bootylicious bods, shame free. And these ladies are not only sending a message to teenagers and little girls, they are changing the way that society as a whole thinks about the female figure.

On March 1st, Mattel is releasing a new line of Barbie dolls with 3 new and different body types along with their original; curvy, tall and petite. It’s about time!

This is becoming the standard and before we know it, people will be used to every body type. Eventually, there will be no such thing as “body goals” because we’ll be too happy with our own bodies to worry about any one else’s. Women don’t come in one size and it’s time we start teaching young girls that.

We’re finally being represented and we’re finally changing society. Congratulations to Sports Illustrated for being the first people to get their head out of their ass.

And a cheers to us curvy ladies for finally getting our voices heard.

Xoxo, Cecilia