When you check your phone mid morning and find a text from your cousin telling you they’re discussing Edwina Currie and Ashley Graham in the same breath on LBC radio you really do have to start questioning…
A. If you are truly awake and
B. Perhaps there has been some kind of mistake?
No it was true, Edwina Currie, former politician, the former fling of Prime Minister John Major was discussing what a poor role model Ashley Graham was and how of course, she was encouraging obesity.
Now my cousin was telling me to ‘get onto this’ (I imagine most people think that SLiNK is some kind of plus size crime fighting agency) but the truth was I had read this story, rolled my eyes, sighed and moved on. For if I had a pound (a fiscal one) for every time someone blasted plus size models, I’d quite frankly be pretty minted.
In the past few weeks, Ashley has once again set the world on fire, she has pretty much launched into 2016 the way she means to go on, by, let’s face it, taking over. Last night she even was part of the E! commentary panel for the red carper Oscars show – one of the most important fashion nights of the year!
It is beyond me how Edwina Currie could accuse Ashley Graham, a woman who is clearly very active and fit (after all her body is the tool of her trade and she looks after it) and has spoken tirelessly about not only the importance of being active and getting moving (just watch some of Ashley’s youtube videos) of being unhealthy and encouraging obesity.
Ashley is in fact simply a motivator for women to love themselves and their bodies and as Edwina is former member of parliament who once held the portfolio for Health it amazes me that she has managed to separate physical and mental health.
The key operative word there Edwina is health! By encouraging women and men to love themselves and strengthen their mental health we are in turn going to be able to improve on physical wellbeing. But if you can’t learn or be helped to love oneself then the drive to look after your body is not always possible.
Yes Ashley is a US 14 / UK 18 but Edwina needs to knuckle down and do a little research on HAES or just on Ashley for that matter. Health and bodies don’t come in one size – otherwise we would all for a start be the same height. Ashley is a fantastic role model for young women not because they will strive to be her size or eat more cookies to hop into a size 18 but because she represents that you can work hard and achieve. That it is ok to love yourself in a world of media that tells EVERY woman whatever their size is that they aren’t good enough. Ashley reminds us that beauty isn’t a dress size and that the world actually does know that we were just keeping quiet about it for a really long time. And for those that want to work out she represents that there isn’t a size barrier for fitness. This Edwina is the kind of encouragement and wisdom we need to teach our society. Not baseless bashing and assumptions because that will get us no where…
Why don’t you try this video Edwina and let us know how you get on. Because after all Ashley’s unhealthy right?