Ashley Graham Poses Nude in New Instagram Photo to Show Her 'Tree of Life' Stretch Marks
Ashley Graham, pregnant with twin boys, is edging closer and closer to her due date—and she has a picture to prove it. The day after giving followers a glimpse at her prenatal yoga routine, the model posed nude and showed off her bump. And with the photo, she celebrated the stretch marks she has earned.
"Justin says my stretch marks look like the tree of life," the 34-year-old body positivity advocate captioned the snapshot, referencing her husband, Justin Ervin. In the photo, she is posing with one arm behind her head and the other covering her breasts, putting her bump and its stretch marks on full display.
The photo was immediately met with praise from her friends and followers. "The female body is a miracle 😍," wrote fellow model and body confidence advocate Iskra Lawrence. "And yup [your husband is] right nothing more beautiful ❤️❤️❤️," Lawrence said in another comment, referring Ervin's comparison of the bump to the tree of life. Models Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington also acknowledged the beauty of Graham's latest photo, commenting with emojis of hearts and a tree. "Gorgeous," model Lily Aldridge wrote.
This isn't the first time Graham has flaunted her stripes. In February 2020, less than a month after giving birth to her first child, Isaac Menelik Giovanni Ervin, she shared a close-up shot of her stomach and its stretch marks with a short and sweet caption, "same me. few new stories." She also shared a postpartum video of her stretch marks later on that year, showing them love by holding her hands in a heart shape over the streaks.
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But Graham has long been an advocate for embracing all types of stretch marks—not just those from pregnancy. In March 2019, Graham revealed that people still try to "fix" her body by airbrushing her stretch marks. "This is the kind of conversation I'm still struggling to have on set: 'You see those red stretch marks on the inside of my thigh? Leave those. Those are new and those are real, and we need to talk about those.' People will take them out, but I'm not afraid to talk about it. I'm not afraid to show it on social media," she explained during a New York Times event that Health attended.
That body acceptance is something she's had to work at, though. During an older interview with Health, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover girl admitted that self-love takes practice, encouraging people to say "I love you" to themselves in the mirror every day. "It feels corny at first, and even fake," she admitted. "But you fake it 'til you make it!" She added that feeling confidant "doesn't come overnight, but if you keep working at it eventually you'll believe it."
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