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You are bold, you are brilliant, and you are beautiful.
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There is no other woman like you.
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You are capable.
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Back fat, I see you popping over my bra today, but that's alright.
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I'm going to choose to love you.
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And thick thighs, you are just so sexy, you can't stop rubbing each other.
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(Laughter)
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That's alright. I'm going to keep you.
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And cellulite, I have not forgotten about you.
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I'm going to choose to love you
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even though you want to take over my whole bottom half,
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but you're a part of me.
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I love you.
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It's true, honestly.
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I felt free once I realized I was never going to fit the narrow mold
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that society wanted me to fit in.
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I was never going to be perfect enough
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for an industry that defines perfection from the outside in.
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And that's OK.
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Rolls, curves, cellulite, all of it.
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I love every part of me.
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My name is Ashley Graham,
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and I'm a model and body activist.
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Over the last 15 years,
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I've come to the conclusion that there is no one perfect body.
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Because I, like you, possess a wonderfully unique and diverse physique.
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Now, the fashion industry may persist to label me as "plus size",
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but I like to think of it as 'my size'.
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In fact, did you know
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that the plus size fashion industry actually starts at a US size 8?
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And it goes up to a US size 16.
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So basically what I'm saying is that the majority of this room right now
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is considered plus size.
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How does it make you feel to be labeled?
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I really feel like we need to start looking
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beyond the plus size model paradigms
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to what it actually means to be a model in 2015.
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My journey begins in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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I was 12 years old and scouted in a mall.
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At 13, I signed with a major modeling agency
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and was traveling the world.
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I was shooting big campaigns,
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and before I even graduated high school,
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I had been to multiple different countries.
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At 17, I graduated and moved to New York,
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and while most kids are going through their self-discovery stage in college,
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my self discovery stage was in the midst of catwalks,
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catalogs, and casting calls.
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I was working as a full time plus size model.
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Back in Nebraska, I was known as the "Fat Model".
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The girl who is pretty for a big girl.
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I always hated answering that question: "What do you do for a living?"
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I would see that person's eyebrow raise as I would reply: "I'm a model!"
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I'd have to quickly qualify with: "Well, I'm a plus size model."
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In fact, here is my very first editorial for YM Magazine.
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And, you are reading it correctly, "cantaloupes-large breasts".
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I was helping women across America at the age of 15 dress their big boobs.
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But you know what the first thing
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that someone in middle school pointed out to me
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besides-- well, besides the obvious?
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Was that fold above my knee.
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That fat fold above my knee.
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As a young model,
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my confidence was tugged at and pulled in all different directions.
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I struggled to achieve true confidence.
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I would go home and look in front of the mirror
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and only hate what I saw.
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And to fill the void on the inside,
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I began to cave to all the vices being thrown my way.
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Between the parties, the men, the alcohol,
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I was looking for self love, for affirmation from somebody,
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when in reality, I didn't love who I was,
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and I couldn't seem to get a handle on regulating my own weight.
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I began to face my insecurities head on.
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And instead, I was filling my life with temporary fixes.
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I, like so many young women, have struggled to love who I am.
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And Dove's global report on attitudes towards beauty
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actually did a survey with thousands of women in ten different countries.
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And you know what the most striking result was?
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That only 2% of women find themselves beautiful.
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2%!
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We need to work together to redefine the global vision of beauty.
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And it starts with becoming your own role model.
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As a curvy woman it was the assumption
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that I should look up to Marilyn Monroe or Jennifer Lopez
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mainly because they were two of the most notable curvy women in the public eye
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that were being praised for their curves.
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But these weren't my role models.
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In reality, the woman I looked up to the most was my mother.
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She told me I was beautiful,
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and she never devalued herself.
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So why would I?
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She told me and taught me
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that true beauty comes from within
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and that validation and self worth must also come from within.
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In my lowest moments of insecurity
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this is when I realized
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that I had to reclaim my body and its image as my own.
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Plus-size fashion is an 18-billion-dollar industry.
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And now IMG, the world's number one modeling agency,
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has signed me and other models that are not defined by their size.
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My body, like my confidence, has been picked apart,
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manipulated, and controlled by others who didn't necessarily understand it.
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I had to learn to reclaim my body as my own.
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And in reclaiming my body as my own,
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I understood as a woman that I had a greater purpose.
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I had a greater purpose to redefine beauty.
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The feminine beauty.
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Curvy models are becoming more and more vocal
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about the isolating nature of the term plus size.
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We are calling ourselves what we want to be called:
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women with shapes that are our own.
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I believe beauty is beyond size.
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With so much emphasis on the body and external,
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it's no wonder that we all suffer so much internally.
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But you know, people in the fashion industry actually told me
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that I would never be in magazines let alone the covers of them.
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Well, I guess we've proven them wrong.
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Five covers in a little over a year.
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And I was one of the very first curvy models to be featured
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in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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Never let anybody tell you that you can't.
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I have achieved, and I'm still achieving what was seemingly impossible.
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My goal is to give a voice to young women.
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To give a voice to young women who struggle
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to find someone they can look up to.
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For girls who struggle to look inside the mirror and say, I love you.
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For women who feel uncomfortable expressing their confidence
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they've locked away inside themselves.
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For women who have relinquished their rights to someone else.
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It is critical that both men and women create a body positive environment.
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Uplift the important women in your lives.
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Create a safe space for them to express their body and their beauty
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for who they are not because of who they're not.
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Be you. Be real. Be authentic.
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Be your favorite kind of woman.
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Don't let anybody else take that job.
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And remember this is the generation of body diversity.
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The current is changing.
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I now invite all of you to #TEDxBV15
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with your own self-affirming words.
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There may not be a full-length mirror in front of each of you today,
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but I want to challenge you
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to think about what you would want to say to yourself in the mirror
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with your own self-affirming words.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)