Quotes from Philomena Kwao

Health management is my passion, and I hope to further my career in that area in the future.

I grew up in the U.K. and now reside in the United States, and my family is from Ghana.

Sometimes you never realise how much of an effect you're having on people until you're told, and the fan mail I receive has made me very aware of the positive effects I have on other people.

I believe I'm beautiful because I'm me. I also believe that if you can find beauty in everything, you can allow that to change your mind-set, and doing so makes you a happier person.

You cannot determine someone's health by the BMI alone. There are many factors that contribute to the health on an individual. If we're going to start using BMI to police straight size models, what's next? The plus size industry? To be honest, if it was down to BMI alone, most plus size models - including myself - wouldn't be working.

I'm from Ghana, in West Africa, and all the women in Ghana absolutely love shea butter. We use it for everything, head to toe. I've used it all my life.

It's refreshing when plus-size styling is exciting and pushes boundaries rather than safe and boring.

Women are hit especially hard in regions of ongoing conflict. Before, during, and after conflict, women bear the brunt of the consequences of war. They are left as the providers and guardians, responsible for rebuilding their country one family at a time.

I am from Ghana, and although Ghana is celebrated as a relatively peaceful country in a historically war-torn region, the issues of development and recovery are still apparent.

Put on your bikini, put on whatever you want to wear, and don't worry about what other people are saying.

Magazines don't go far enough to be inclusive and have at least have one model representing every major skin tone.

Growing up, I had body confidence issues, not really so much because of size but my skin color. I had trouble recognizing that the depth of my skin tone is really beautiful because whenever people referred to a beautiful black-skinned woman, you'd see Beyonce and Rihanna.

I think that the plus-size industry has been great with size diversity, but it hasn't really been great for skin tone diversity.

Much noise has been about size diversity but not enough about skin tone diversity. It's time for this to change.

When I started, there was only one other girl that I could name that was even close to my shade. I didn't understand why there weren't more black plus-size models with darker skin tones. It feels like the final frontier of beauty is to be black, to be plus, to have natural hair.

You can't say you're inclusive when you only have one plus-size, hourglass white model.

I try not to assign labels to myself. Sometimes I shop in the plus section, and sometimes I don't. I feel we attach too much significance to labels, and ultimately, it doesn't really matter.

I think the real problem is all the negative connotations people have with that term. They think, 'Oh my God! I don't want to be 'plus-size!'' But people attach too much significance to terms. We can't let these terms define us or our beauty.

For me, diverse beauty is an affirmation of every single person in his or her own skin.

My mom and my sisters have helped me to be comfortable with who I am. It's a process of loving yourself as you are. I can say that it's been a journey. I see the changes little by little.

My mother was born in Ghana, but she moved to the U.K. when my sisters and I were born.

Women of all ethnicities, complexions, and sizes want to be able to wear makeup and nice clothes. No one wants to go out and feel like they're substandard or that there's only one mold that they don't fit.

I think the fashion industry and the media industry in general have a responsibility to make sure that they celebrate the rich differences in all our backgrounds to make sure we don't fall into the trap of reducing beauty to one specific mold.

It's refreshing to see plus women being treated as part of the fashion community as a whole and not just a separate piece or separate different thing.