*Full Figured superstar model Ashley Graham has got something g say about race and her black husband, Justin Ervin, in her newly released memoir, “A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty and Power Really Look Like.”
Glamour has published an excerpt and in it, Graham tells how she met Ervin at church. Interestingly, she admits that at first she didn’t think he was her ‘type’ and balked at going out with him.
“I joined a church. I didn’t go there to find a boyfriend; I truly wasn’t looking for anyone other than the person I wanted to be,” Graham wrote. “One Sunday my volunteer position was to stand in the elevator welcoming people, passing out candy, and pushing the button to the eighth floor. When two tall men walked in, I didn’t bat an eye. One nudged the other and said, ‘If you don’t talk to her, I will.’ His friend left the elevator, but he stayed on. I shrugged. This guy wasn’t my type. With his short hair, ill-fitting, baggy Old Navy jeans, white Hanes T-shirt, and Converse sneakers, he exuded a major nerd factor. But there was something sweet about Justin, and I was at church, so I had to be polite. He rode up and down with me a few times, and he seemed to be looking into my soul when we talked. He was smart and funny and had traveled the world. So I agreed to go out for coffee.”
After the date she must’ve pretty good about things so she invited Ervin to visit her family and that when she found out she and her grandparents weren’t on the same page as far as race is concerned
“I never told my grandparents that the man I was bringing home was black,” she said. “I naively hoped everyone would be color-blind—which is not what happened. 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.’ I had never seen my loving, hardworking, and wonderful grandma be so hurtful and so racist. I was in shock.”
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However, she paints a picture of Ervin working overtime to prove himself worth of being a member of the family and eventually won them over.
“As if his understanding wasn’t generous enough, Justin called my grandmother on her sixtieth wedding anniversary,” she wrote. “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.’”
Yep, l-o-v-e almost always wins in the end.
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