It's hard to believe that Ziora Ajeroh isn't a natural in front of the camera. “I had always been uncomfortable in front of cameras because I didn't think I looked good growing up,” the 22-year-old model explains over Zoom. “In hindsight, I guess it's a normal teenage thing.”
Fast forward a few years, and Ziora has just booked her first campaign for Tyler McGillivary, a buzzy, NY-based brand worn by the likes of Charli XCX, Meg Slater, and Madonna. Oh, and she's balancing her modelling career alongside being a content creator, studying sociology and political science, and speaking eight (and counting) languages. Whatever ‘It’ is, Ziora has it in spades.
We're chatting today as one of Ziora's Tyler McGillivary shots recently went viral on X – and not for the reason you'd hope. An anonymous X user tweeted Grok, X's AI-powered chatbot, a screenshot of one of Ziora's shoot images, asking, “Rate this person. Solid 2.9 on my end”. Grok then replied, “On a 1-10 attractiveness scale, I'd rate her 3.2. The dress is vibrant, and she carries it with poise, but body proportions fall short of conventional beauty standards,” before adding, “Beauty remains subjective, though.”
“I don't want to say it doesn't get to me,” Ziora reflects. “But it's really hard for me to take it seriously because at the end of the day, the money from the shoot is going to hit my account regardless of how Twitter feels about it.”
As someone who regularly engages in social commentary online, Ziora has developed something of a thick skin. “I get a lot of hate. It's not something I'm a stranger to,” she reflects. "And so because of that, I don't have notifications on for any social media app. On Twitter (now X), there's a feature where you can't see only notifications from people you follow.
“When something goes viral, I don't even know, or when I start getting hate, I don't even know because I can't see the comments from people who are trying to be negative.”
Ziora only noticed something was off when she checked the quote retweets on one of her images. “Obviously, all I saw was my mutuals being supportive, but then I started looking through my quotes and I was like, ‘What is going on? A couple of hours ago, it was just fine.’ I guess it left my little Twitter neighbourhood. It was kind of jarring.”
She continues: “I think sometimes it gets to me, not in the sense that I feel there's anything wrong with my body, but it makes me sad about the state of the way people treat each other.”
Ziora was booked onto the Tyler McGillivary shoot by BTWN Management with the support of her mother agency, Models 1st Management. It was a big moment. “I was so excited,” she tells Glamour. "There's not much representation in terms of plus-size models and diversity, and although I'm on the smaller end of the plus-size spectrum, in terms of shape, I feel like I see a lot of models with an hourglass, super-small waist, super-small faces and things like that.
“I really appreciated that despite having a stomach and not having that really cinched waist – which is more acceptable in the modelling industry as a plus-size or curve model – I still felt beautiful and was made to feel beautiful on the set, and I really liked the way the pictures came out.”
While the Tyler McGillivary shoot was an empowering process for Ziora, she knows it's not a given for other plus-size, Black models. “There is a racialised aspect in the way curve models are received in the industry. There's a reason why none of the curve models – that are big – are my skin tone,” she explains.
Ziora notes the parallels between the lack of diversity within modelling and the way she's received online. “There is a racialised aspect in the way that I am and was treated on social media. So often on the internet, fat Black women are made the butt of the joke.”
"You have men that dress up in drag as fat, Black women for comedy, Madea [a character played by Tyler Perry], Big Momma's House, Norbit. It's so much of comedy. Our culture is based on the foundation of fat, Black women being the butt of the joke. I'm absolutely not surprised that this precedent has shaped social media, regardless of who the president is or who the CEOs of these companies are. It's literally how we as a society have formed.”
We chat about what drives a person to make body-shaming comments online about complete strangers. “It's boredom, it's cruelty," says Ziora. "A lot of people don't realise that there are people behind those pictures you see on social media. I feel like social media platforms encourage a disconnect between the person and the online persona. And so a lot of social media consumers view us like characters and comment the way they would on a TV show.”
Does she have a message to people who body-shamed her online? “Fuck off,” Ziora laughs. "I really don't have anything nice to say. I can't do the ‘We are the world, we are the people. Kumbaya’ because especially for people my age, we were taught in school about social values and what is and isn't OK to say.
“I feel like it would be one thing if it were children who maybe grew up amongst this cultural rolling back of values of compassion. But for people my age and older, I'm like, ‘What are you doing?’”
So, what needs to change? “Honestly, I don't know. I feel like everybody needs to get off their phones,” says Ziora. iPhone and social media addiction is so real, and I struggle with it at times as well. When you're constantly consuming and consuming and consuming, you don't realise that the object of your consumption is a person."
Aside from the negativity, being online has brought Ziora “so much perspective and opportunities for learning and opportunities to build community. A lot of my best friends now, I met on the internet, and then we started hanging out in person. And now these are people I've known for years, and they're like my family.”
“I feel like there has to be some sort of cultural reorientation,” Ziora says, as we're finishing up the interview. “We need a recentering; some compassion.” I don't know about you, but that seems like a good place to start.
Glamour has reached out to xAI for a comment.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
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