Ashley Graham says controversial 'too risqué' TV ad 'put me on the map'

In Ashley Graham’s Vogue cover story for the publication’s January issue, the 32-year-old reflected on the early start of her career when she was discovered in a mall in Omaha, Neb., at the age of 12. It was then that she started modeling bras for a Midwestern brand and was immediately thrown under the “plus-size” category. “If you would have asked me then if I felt plus-sized, I would have said, ‘Well, I’m 12 years old and a size 10.’ I had no correlation with that word,” she told the magazine. “And as I grew up in the plus-size industry, it was like everybody was trying to do away with that label — get rid of it!” But it was the plus-size sector of the industry that led Graham to her biggest break — not that it didn’t come without controversy. Namely, the young model’s appearance in a 2010 Lane Bryant ad that was “dubbed ‘too risqué’” for television.