This is a lesson to all; don't turn your back on love no matter what package it comes in. God will send you who you need, not always who you want. Coz' true love is inspite of not because of. You don't need someone you can live with, you need someone you can't live without!
Ashley Graham's memoir, out Tuesday, reveals that the plus-size model isn't afraid to be a lightning rod for criticism and scorn, even from those close to her.
In A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like, she writes about her Nebraska family's initial negative (and racist) reaction to her future husband, Justin Ervin.
"Now, I should probably mention that Justin is black, and that I didn’t grow up around many black people. The sum total of what I learned about African-American culture in school was Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the Underground Railroad. This was more than my mom knew; she didn’t even see a black person in real life until she was 18 years old," she says in the book. (Glamour has the excerpt of that account.)
Graham naively didn't tell Ervin about her family's lack of exposure and didn't tell her family about his background. And when he finally met her grandparents, well, things didn't go as smoothly as she might have hoped. "My grandmother was cordial but cold. She greeted him and immediately walked away," she says in the book. "When it came time for them to leave, my grandparents didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead my grandmother looked me in the eye, with Justin standing behind me, and said, 'Tell that guy I said goodbye.' "
The model was taken aback. "I had never seen my loving, hard-working, and wonderful grandma be so hurtful and so racist. I was in shock."
Ervin told her that her grandmother likely only associated black men with the stereotypical portrayals on television and added, "She had probably never looked a black man in the face, let alone had a conversation with him, and now one was in her daughter’s home, dating her granddaughter."
But Ervin was able to get Grandma to warm up to him. All it really took was a phone call on her grandmother's 60th wedding anniversary. According to Graham, "he’s not a texter or an emailer; he’s a pick-up-the-phone-and-call-you person, and anniversaries are a big deal to him. Afterward, Grandma called my mom and said, 'You’ll never guess who called me.' And from then on out, she loved him. Loved him."
Graham and Ervin married in 2010.
CLOSE
The fact Ashley Graham's husband is black, hasn’t always been easy for Graham’s family.
USA TODAY
In A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like, she writes about her Nebraska family's initial negative (and racist) reaction to her future husband, Justin Ervin.
"Now, I should probably mention that Justin is black, and that I didn’t grow up around many black people. The sum total of what I learned about African-American culture in school was Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the Underground Railroad. This was more than my mom knew; she didn’t even see a black person in real life until she was 18 years old," she says in the book. (Glamour has the excerpt of that account.)
Graham naively didn't tell Ervin about her family's lack of exposure and didn't tell her family about his background. And when he finally met her grandparents, well, things didn't go as smoothly as she might have hoped. "My grandmother was cordial but cold. She greeted him and immediately walked away," she says in the book. "When it came time for them to leave, my grandparents didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead my grandmother looked me in the eye, with Justin standing behind me, and said, 'Tell that guy I said goodbye.' "
The model was taken aback. "I had never seen my loving, hard-working, and wonderful grandma be so hurtful and so racist. I was in shock."
Ervin told her that her grandmother likely only associated black men with the stereotypical portrayals on television and added, "She had probably never looked a black man in the face, let alone had a conversation with him, and now one was in her daughter’s home, dating her granddaughter."
But Ervin was able to get Grandma to warm up to him. All it really took was a phone call on her grandmother's 60th wedding anniversary. According to Graham, "he’s not a texter or an emailer; he’s a pick-up-the-phone-and-call-you person, and anniversaries are a big deal to him. Afterward, Grandma called my mom and said, 'You’ll never guess who called me.' And from then on out, she loved him. Loved him."
Graham and Ervin married in 2010.
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