Ashley Graham might have just become a victim to the same unrealistic beauty standards she's spoken out against time and time again.
The supermodel covers Elle Canada's October issue, in it speaking candidly about how she's come to accept herself just the way she is. Graham tells the mag, "I have cellulite. I have back fat. I've got a thick stomach. But I work my body like I don't because I don't know any other body. I don't know how to feel thin. I just know how to feel like Ashley."
And while her interview focuses mostly on her unabashed self-confidence in shutting down the body shamers ("Nobody has the perfect body. There's no such thing"), the magazine has come under fire for the accompanying photospread that depicts the bombshell in a seemingly different light from the unretouched version of the shoot.
Ahead of the issue's release, paparazzi photos taken of Graham posing for the shoot surfaced, prompting the Sports Illustrated cover girl to touch on the commentary surrounding the snapshots. "Someone once told me my thighs were 'cellulite city'. But I now realize these thighs tell a story of victory and courage," Ashley wrote on Instagram alongside the au-natural pictures. "I will not let others dictate what they think my body should look like for their own comfort, and neither should you."
In the same image used by Elle Canada, the 28-year-old appears in black-and-white instead of color as she hangs from metal fitness rings with one leg in the air. Comparing Graham in either photo, her thighs look to have been smoothed of any natural imperfections with an airbrush tool.
Of the attention she got from onlookers during the shoot, she said, "Those were muscle guys, and those are the types of guys you don't think like curvy women, but they love them. Girls my size are like, ‘Oh, I could never get a guy like that.' Actually, you could, girlfriend! I'm living proof that you can have whatever you want in spite of what people say is a ‘flaw.'"
E! News has reached out to Graham and Elle Canada for comment.