25 Surprising Facts About Abigail Ratchford
Clutching her phone, encased in a $1,180 Louis Vuitton eye trunk, in her right hand, lingerie and swimsuit model Abigail Ratchford reaches out to shake hands with her left, offering just her manicured fingertips rather than a whole palm. Despite the reserved greeting, the Internet star, who has 8.3 million Instagram followers, is candid about everything from her priciest grooming habit - $2,000 hair extensions - to her unlikely beginnings.
"I feel like I've been really lucky - I've gone from small-town Pennsylvania to this crazy life in LA," the 26-year-old Scranton native, who relocated to the West Coast about four years ago, tells Cosmopolitan.com during a recent trip to New York. Here's what else you need to know about the influencer:
1. Her family is HUUUUGE. Abigail is the fifth of seven children - three girls and four boys. Her mom is one of nine kids. "Each of her siblings has five to seven children. I think I have like 54 cousins," Abigail says, although she's not positive.
And yes, all of Abigail's siblings (and her mom) follow her on Instagram. "When I post things that are a little sexy, I'm like, 'Mom, thank god Dad doesn't have Instagram,'" she says.
2. As a kid she wanted to be a veterinarian. Unfortunately, she realized later she's deathly allergic to cats and dogs. "All dogs aggravate me a bit, so the veterinarian dream went out the window," says Abigail, who also battled asthma throughout her childhood. She was hospitalized at age 5 but luckily she rarely needs to use the inhaler she carries almost everywhere.
3. She attended Catholic school. As an elementary student, she attended Our Lady of Peace School, then went to Scranton Preparatory School for high school, where she says she was a cheerleader.
Photo courtesy of James Thompson.
4. She won the high-school superlative, "Most Likely to Star on Desperate Housewives." "At the time, I was like, 'Is there a compliment in there somewhere?'" she says. "Is this a good thing or a bad thing?" Now, she errs toward the former. "I really want to land a reality show!" she says.
5. She attended University of Scranton, but ducked out before graduation. Lacking direction during college, she worked for her uncle's dentist office as a secretary, bartended, and helped her dad, a defense attorney, with paralegal work all without completing her college degree. Then, in 2013, a friend proposed a photo shoot. "My friends were like, 'What's the worst thing that can happen? Just go with this,'" she says. "I did it completely on a whim."
Afterward, the photographer posted the photos on Instagram. Within weeks, Maxim, Sports Illustrated, and Barstool Sports picked them up, according to Abigail, who started an Instagram account three months after the session and began networking with local photographers to set up more shoots.
6. She lost the Miss Pennsylvania pageant at age 20. After accepting an anonymous nomination, she got a personal trainer and raised $2,000 to enter. "It was a fun experience but very humbling," says Abigail, who was a semi-finalist. "So many of those pageant girls live, eat, [and] breathe the pageant - they get coaches to help them speak on stage and walk.
"I'd never done a pageant before. Now, the girls who beat me will DM me or send messages on Facebook, and say, 'It's so cool to see someone from the Miss Pennsylvania pageant killing it! Remember me?'" she says.
7. She's open about artificial enhancements. Abigail says she's received CoolSculpting fat-reduction treatments on her arms and on the backs of her thighs to smooth cellulite; lip fillers; and Botox in the corners of her eyes and on her forehead. She gets a spray tan every week - "I'm super crazy about skincare - I wear 45 or 50 SPF even in the winter" - and has tape-in hair extensions to add several inches of length and volume. (They cost about $2,000 every eight weeks.)
Overall, Abigail pegs her monthly maintenance costs at about $2,500 per month for products and services. "It's not really ideal, but the main part of the job is to look a certain way," she says.
8. She swears by eyelash strips and drugstore mascara. She's had eyelash extensions before, but her allergies got in the way. "I'm always rubbing my eyes, so when I got them, I'd rub and find like five lashes on my hand. They literally last for three days." Instead, she relies on Lilly Lashes and L'Oreal Carbon Black Mascara.
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9. She doesn't pretend to be perfect. What's not altered IRL is tweaked before posting: "I've always perfected my photos before I put them in front of 8 million people," she says. "Otherwise, people will nitpick. They'll be like, 'Oh my God, your spray tan is blotched!' or stupid things like that." Abigail edits both her skin and figure using FaceTune. "I just feel like you always want to put your best face forward on social media," she says.
Look 1 from today’s cover shoot for @jmglifestyle 🐯
A post shared by ⚡️ A R ⚡️ (@abigailratchford) on Apr 19, 2018 at 3:12pm PDT
10. She wants women to embrace their own bodies rather than strive for hers. Because Abigail considers herself transparent about the effort she puts into maintaining her image, she's not concerned about setting the bar too high for female followers: "I'm in no way somebody to look up to for body stuff," she says. "When you see this image, it's been altered, it's been perfected. This is not real life ... embrace what you have, and go with it."
11. She earns six figures annually. She estimated her Instagram earnings at $170,000 last August when she had nearly 8 million followers, according to a New York Post article. Since moving to LA, she says she's grossed nearly $700,000.
"The more followers you have, the more you get paid," says Abigail, who has charged $6,000 per permanent Instagram post and recently increased her rate to $8,500. (She also charges $3,500 for a post that goes up for 48 hours before being deleted, and $1,500 for three Snapchat posts.) She'll do #ads for products such as the clothing company Pretty Little Things or Fashion Nova but prefers not to endorse products such as slimming teas and Shredz supplements she sees on other influencer's feeds. "They're so oversaturated, everyone else posts them," she says.
She says her custom merchandise - specifically, a paper calendar featuring her in different poses each month - grossed about $200,000 last year.
12. She posts whenever she wants. "I'm really relaxed about it," she says. "Lots of girls in the same Instagram bracket as me have things planned to a science. I just post what I like. If I have a really good shoot, I'll have content to post daily for the next 10 days. If I have other things going on in my life and don't have a shoot for a week, I'll do a throwback on Thursday. I'm all over the place with my stuff," she says, adding that she doesn't push herself to post daily.
13. She spends roughly 95 percent of her day on her phone. "I only check Instagram every now and then, but I'm on my phone a lot with e-mails and text. My life revolves around my phone," she says, adding that although she has two cars - a BMW X5 and a Mercedes G-Wagon - she prefers to Uber so she can stay connected. "I'm always respond responding to things and don't want to be on my phone while I'm driving."
Photo courtesy of James Thompson.
14. She prefers canned soup to caviar. "I'm addicted to soup," she says. "I love the Progresso low-sodium chicken noodle soup. I have it like every single day."
Photo courtesy of James Thompson.
15. She's a Pilates girl to the core. "I can't go to the gym - I start working out for 20 minutes then get distracted by my phone," says Abigail, who finds group classes anxiety-inducing. Instead, she goes to Carrie's Pilates in LA three times a week, schedule allowing.
A post shared by ⚡️ A R ⚡️ (@abigailratchford) on Nov 12, 2015 at 5:16pm PST
16. She has a second closet just for freebies. It's a walk-in, and it's full of lingerie, underwear, and swimwear she receives.
17. She's not that into news - unless you count TMZ, which she reads "just to see what's going on," she says. "That's pretty much it. I don't really have time to keep up."
18. She's a bath lover. Four to five times a week, you can find Abigail chilling in her tub with music and a glass of white wine. "It's my little pre-sleep ritual," she says, adding that she spends up to 35 minutes to washing her face and "undoing the day's glam."
19. She was cast on Parks and Recreation but left on the cutting-room floor. After she moved to Los Angeles in 2014, Abigail says she delivered about three lines for a scene on the rooftop of a W Hotel in Los Angeles. She posted about her experience without realizing her lines could be cut, which they were. "The casting director was like, 'I know you're new to LA, but maybe don't post things until you're sure it's going to come out,'" she says.
20. She loves a good dad bod. Although rumors suggest she may have dated at least one athlete, Abigail claims to "hate guys who are in perfect shape. It's never turned me on - I don't know why."
She cites Vince Vaughn in the '90s comedy Swingers as her celebrity crush: "I like the dad bod, Leonardo DiCaprio-grownup-frat-boy body type. I need somebody who's funny - that's so important to me." Right now, she's single, having recently ended a long-term relationship.
21. She's not inclined to date an influencer. "Me and my girlfriends always talk about it - we're such hypocrites," Abigail says. "That would be such a deal-breaker if a guy was posting these thirst-trap photos of himself."
22. She's a total scaredy cat. "I'm deathly afraid of clowns, heights, scary movies, roller coasters, and escalators. I've taken like five minutes to get on escalators since I was little, when I heard you can get your shoelace stuck in there," she says. "It scarred me forever."
23. She's a true Aquarius. While Abigail, whose birthday is Feb. 12, doesn't give astrology too much stock, she admits she's a true water sign: "I'm definitely super creative - I'm always doing some kind of interior design project." Her next update involves installing a hot tub on the roof of her condo.
Photo courtesy of James Thompson.
24. She's a Head's Up champion. At a February party, she says she found herself playing the app-based trivia game with French Montana and The Weeknd. "It came down to me and The Weeknd, and I beat him," she says.
25. She aspires to be a Kardashian. "I used to get sh*t for saying I look up to Kim Kardashian, since everyone says she has this whole career without being talented. But she took her 15 minutes of fame and ran with it, giving herself and everyone in her family these huge careers."
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