Happy Friday everybody! This past Sunday, The New York Times held an event at The New School as a part of a larger series called “Get With The Times”, in partnership with Her Campus, to discuss the beauty landscape with model, designer, author, podcaster, and television host, Ashley Graham.

According to the New York Times, Get With The Times is their live event series for college students, dedicated to exploring some of the most provocative and timely issues that students face today. The series pairs some of the New York Times’ top journalists with famous figures who share their stories and answer questions in front of a live audience. Each event takes place on a college campus and is broadcasted to watch parties, many of which Her Campus hosts, on other campuses across the country.

Reshaping Beauty with Ashley Graham

On top of being a multi-faceted, intelligent, and ambitiously successful supermodel, Ashley Graham is a body positive activist who is actively reshaping the fashion, media and beauty industries by encouraging everyone to celebrate their authentic selves — no retouching required. How amazing is that?

On March 31st, Ashley joined Joanna Nikas, The New York Times’ Fashion & Style editor, to speak in an unfiltered discussion about culture, business, beauty and the importance of empowerment — on and off the runway.

Watching Ashley speak about the body positive movement and hearing some of her personal stories about failure, lessons she’s learned, entrepreneurship, and her hopes for the future of beauty was extremely inspiring. What I appreciated most about Ashley’s efforts was how she keeps inclusivity at the forefront of everything she does. She is unafraid to speak up for those who may not have the same influence she does and works to bring equality to the table in more ways than one. Not only does she fight to make sure everyone feels beautiful and comfortable in their own skin, she is also very aware of the privilege her whiteness brings her and is not shy about bringing it to light. Ashley is more than just a body positive activist, she pushes for equality across the board.

I will definitely be keeping up with the rest of Ashley Graham’s moves and cheering her on as she continues to take on new challenges. The next event from this Get With The Times series will be with Alexis Ohanian on April 17th. As the co-founder of Reddit, Alexis has permanently shaped the landscape of the web. He’s funded over 200 start-ups as the founder of Initialized Capital and now he’ll share his advice for young entrepreneurs, as well as explore how issues like net neutrality, AI and start-up culture can shake up tomorrow’s world. This event will be held at Alexis’ alma mater, the University of Virginia, with New York Times business reporter Sapna Maheshwari.

I can’t wait to watch the next event and am looking forward to seeing how else the New York Times plans to disrupt our current landscape! Make sure to tune in and let me know if you end up watching!

xoxo, Arielle

This post is brought to you by The New York Times Get With The Times and Her Campus Media. All opinions are my own.