Ashley Graham and husband Justin Ervin are one of our favourite couples on Instagram, with the plus-size beauty regularly sharing sweet updates declaring her love for her videographer beau.
However behind closed doors, the body positive model has stuggled with her own family's racist attitude towards her husband, who is of African American origin.
Speaking in her new book, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like, she described the surprising and upsetting reaction of her elderly grandparents to her husband when she bought him home for the first time.
'I brought Justin home to Nebraska. 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,' she says. 'This was more than my mum knew; she didn't even see a black person in real life until she was 18-years-old.
'When my grandparents met Justin, my grandmother was cordial but cold. She greeted him and immediately walked away. 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.'' she explains. 'I had never seen my loving, hardworking, and wonderful grandma be so hurtful and so racist.'
However, it turns out her husband was more understanding than the model, explaining that rather than simple racism, it was also a case of different generations.
'Justin made me understand that someone like my grandma only saw black men depicted on television in situations involving guns, rape, and violence—situations that perpetuate racist stereotypes against black people in general and black men in particular,' she said.
Luckily, the relationship between Justin and his in-laws has dramatically improved since those first awkward days, with the pair now firm friends - thanks to an olive branch on Justin's part.
'Justin called my grandmother on her 60th wedding anniversary. 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,' she explained.
'Afterward Grandma called my mom and said, 'You'll never guess who called me.' And from then on out, she loved him ... Loved him.'
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