Quotes from Barbie Ferreira

People try to sell a fantasy with beauty campaigns. Overly Photoshopped, perfect, white, thin figures are a standard that most people still hold as beautiful because the industry says so.

I rarely got retouched when I started modeling, and it was crucial to me to show an accurate, realistic picture of me because that's beautiful, too.

I never thrived in high school.

'Fat' was a terrible, terrible word for me growing up. When I was able to reclaim it and call myself fat and identify with it, that was the best moment ever. That was the moment I really started to feel free.

I used to diet all the time as a kid. I started dieting in, like, kindergarten. I don't recommend it, but I also don't judge people who want to do things with their body.

The way I move, the way I think, the way I handle myself - it might be by accident, but it's who I am, and I've just learned to own that.

I just think dieting is something that is run by a billion dollar - a multi-billion dollar - industry that isn't always looking out for your heath. There's healthy ways to do it.

I'm a big runner, and I like to lift heavy. I'm not one for those little two-pound dumbbells - my goal is to be super-muscular in my 40s.

I hate workout classes... Every time I go into one, my anxiety is really high. I leave immediately - like, before the warm up!

Knowing that girls are inspired to not have the burden of self-hate, even if it's a tiny way, makes me happy to no end. It gets me up in the morning and softens a lot of the blows I get.

I used to have a recurring black-and-white dream where I would drive in on a hover car and raid the shoe closets of this huge mansion. I don't know what that means at all, to be honest.

Seeing someone that you can relate to in the media is everything as a child, and a lot of people are not granted that luxury.

Not everyone relates to being a blond girl with blue eyes and is proportioned so she could barely walk if she was a real person.

I like forming connections with people who follow me on social media because they make me feel like everything is worth it.

I have a ton of guy friends who talk to me about their bodies, too. But boys are often left out of the body positivity conversation.

Every day, I feel different. Sometimes I don't put on any makeup, and other times, I put on a ton.

Curvy and plus-size models will just be models once it becomes more normalized and we get more representation and people are used to it and not shocked by it.

I think representation is the most important thing in the world. People who are young look up to the things that they see in the media. They want to relate and to be able to say, 'Wow, I can be successful.'

I started my modelling career by sending my pictures to American Apparel and eventually meeting my friend Petra Collins, who started shooting me for magazines around New York. I ended up signing a modelling contract with Wilhelmina Models a couple of years later.

I don't really listen to the media or anyone's perception of beauty, so it makes me almost immune to silly comments about my body.

When I was younger and really interested in acting, I would look at all the women on TV, and even the ones who were supposed to be 'geeks' or 'less attractive,' they all looked similar because they were extremely attractive and their bodies were all a certain way.

Looking at magazines and being someone who wanted to act, as a kid, I was very much influenced by things I saw.

People are so influenced by the media that they really believe a 38-24-45 plastic-surgery body is normal, and they can't understand why a body would possibly have cellulite or bumps.

I used to be insecure about my butt, but I no longer think of clothes as something to make me look skinnier.