HEAT OF THE MOMENT

Model, actress, activist, swimwear and lingerie designer: Emily Ratajkowski is all these, and then some.

Model, actress, activist, swimwear and lingerie designer: Emily Ratajkowski is all these, and then some, writes Zara Wong. Styled by Jillian Davison. Photographed by Nicole Bentley.

Let’s get this out of the way. Emily Ratajkowski is beautiful. I feel a bit conflicted opening this story in this way, because summarising someone who has a lot of interesting, thought-provoking things to say with a statement about her physical appearance … well, that doesn’t seem to be fair. Reductive, even. But that’s what she’s all about it, isn’t it? Ratajkowski is the living embodiment of what it’s like to be a woman and to be judged on physical appearances, although she is confident and proud of where it’s taken her in her career. My reasoning has twisted back on itself, because for most of us – for whom physical appearance isn’t the basis of our currency – this is a conundrum. Is it the right thing for me to talk about how she looks? I bring that up during the interview and she diplomatically bats it away. “It’s not all about that,” she says sheepishly.

The model slash actress slash activist slash swim and lingerie designer had greeted me in her hotel room in a white bathrobe, white sneakers and a diamond tennis necklace. In person she is the cool girl’s girl. Just the right mix of nonchalance and affability. “I always like when women interview me, to be honest,” she warmly offers. She’s thrilled that she’s made the most of her Sydney trip by spending time with her best friend from high school, who now lives in Australia – they met in San Diego when they were 15 years old. Plus she is here to be presented with the International Woman of the Year award at the GQ Australia Men of the Year event.

Ratajkowski knows how this is going to go. “In profiles about me, the tone comes off that I take myself really seriously, because people want to be like: ‘She was smart when I met her’ but they don’t want to say that because it sounds kind of rude,” she says with a knowing laugh. “So the articles are all like: ‘We talked about all these really cool important ideas’ but then there’s no silliness or fun, which is okay. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all, and I’m proud of that, because it means that I have cool things to say.”

At best, there’s a sense of curiosity when one encounters the combination of beauty and intellect. At worst, there’s a tension between the two, or a questioning. I posit this carefully. She knows what I’m getting at. “Everyone reacts to everyone else’s physical appearance, and I think that happens more with women,” she lobs back. “It’s a constant thing where you’re proving yourself.” She herself is a vessel for discussion on the politics of feminism. Can you talk about feminism when you’re wearing a bikini and sporting smoky eyes? (When I tell friends I’d met Ratajkowski, the first question concerns her looks. The second, her intellect. I responded affirmatively on both counts. There’s disbelief that someone can look like that and say those things.) “It’s a contradiction,” she agrees. “Firstly, I think it’s sexism. I think in general people don’t really want to hear women talk about these kinds of things, and especially women who make money on how they look: they especially resent them using their voice.”

Ratajkowski is proud that she’s become known for being outspoken, and is wise enough to acknowledge when she changes her mind. “Conversations around feminism and political ideas evolve. There were things that I thought when I first voted for Obama that I feel differently about now. That’s okay, and people in the public space should have a conversation. I don’t ever want to sit on a high horse and be like: ‘This is the one thing that everyone should believe in.’ No, if anything, I just want to talk about it.”

In the early days of her career, she would be shushed when she brought up politics. “People were not happy about me wanting to take the conversations there.” Now talking about these big issues is, as she puts jokingly it, “too cute”, her voice heavy with irony. “I almost feel people are like: ‘Of course, she’s talking about feminism!’” she continues with a put-on eye roll. “I’m not necessarily against the ‘cute’ feminism, because I think that any political idea to become popular and effective has to be [seen as] kind of cool. My dream, if I’m not being cynical, is that people will start to think about the ideas that they’re sharing on social media or talking with their friends about, that they’ll investigate them more deeply and solidify those beliefs and organise beyond that.”

This ‘cute feminism’ as she calls it – mainstreamed, palatable pop-cultured feminism – is also a way, as Ratajkowski sees it, to encourage conversation between generations. “I feel like there’s some ageism, because people want to dismiss Millennials and Generation Z as surface-level, narcissistic, and I don’t think that’s true.”

She’s heard the criticisms of herself, and has considered them. “The only argument that I think is sort of interesting is the conversation that somehow I’m playing into a patriarchal society by looking the way I look and capitalising on my sexiness,” she says with a shrug. “But I don’t really care if me wearing a crop top is somehow playing into some patriarchy, because it makes me feel good about myself, and I shouldn’t be limited on that. Making rules as to what a feminist should look like or wear is insane to me.” It’s a thought she will touch upon again at her speech at the GQ Australia Men of the Year awards, where she was acknowledged for her activism – that she can wear a string bikini and have a stand on politics, too. “No-one should be shaming anyone, and women especially should not be shaming other women.” She probes further: “I think there’s a whole other level of women who are sexy and are promoting their sexiness or are comfortable with their sexinesss; they especially don’t want to hear it from them.”

Suffice to say, the London-born, Californian-raised Ratajkowski falls into the latter category. Ratajkowski grew up with acting in her sights. When her family was living in London, her parents would take her to the theatre rather than the movies. What seemed like an overnight success story took years of toil. Her parents had spent years driving her two hours to Los Angeles for auditions – stints included a role on Nickelodeon’s Icarly, but she found she was often typecast as the ‘bitchy cheerleader’ or given girlfriend roles. Her modelling career was a side-effect of her acting, and at a young age she was attracted to the glamour of it; she left her art studies at UCLA for modelling.

Appearing in the video clip for Blurred Lines made her name – she danced almost nude alongside Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams. Ratajkowski has since said that when hearing the song in a bar her first instinct is to run away. It was a role she initially turned down before she met the female director, Diane Martel, who told Ratajkowski, along with the two other female models (who have not had the same career explosion that Ratajkowski has had, it must be said), it was a power move to be in the clip, to subvert the male gaze by looking directly at the camera rather than coyly glancing away. More Édouard Manet’s Olympia than a Renaissance female nude. Unlike other celebrities who appear to have a more fraught relationship with their physical beauty, Ratajkowski seems to have firmly grasped the opportunities hers have presented, in perhaps the quintessentially modern sense of feminism.

Her attitude to her modelling career has ebbed and flowed. “At one point, it was just a job,” she says, describing herself as a “workhorse model”, doing high-paying but less prestigious commercial jobs

“Making rules as to what a feminist should look like or wear is insane to me”

that, while financially rewarding, were less creative. “I would be like: ‘Great, this is incredible money given what most people would work for in a nine-hour day – my friends were working in coffee shops. It’s evolved. As I’ve gotten older I really enjoy collaborating with photographers.”

It was when she was a “workhorse model” that she set up her social media accounts, and she now has followers in the multi-millions. “I was feeling sad about being ‘just a model’ who showed up on set and was used like a mannequin, so Instagram was a fun way of taking control. From there, I started to realise the more I’m sharing this with people and expressing, the more I’m getting not only feedback, but I’m controlling the narrative, which is exciting.” Her Instagram account is filled with flattering photographs of herself – she once called it her own “sexy feminist magazine”. It’s a different kind of Emily I’m meeting now. Does she look at Instagram Emily and see a different person? “Totally. Sometimes, I’m like: ‘Who is this person?’” she says with a laugh. “It’s sort of one big self-portrait. One thing I definitely wish is that there was a better way to show on such a curated platform as Instagram all the sides of me, but it’s just too hard. There are a lot of sides, and Instagram is just a visual platform.”

In the past few years Ratajkowski has launched the swimwear line Inamorata and has an upcoming lingerie line, M/Rata. “I have so many things to do. And so much money to make,” she remarks laconically with faux acidity – she’s joking. “No, listen, I’m so happy for where my career has gone, even in the last year working with Paco [Rabanne] and starting my own brand. I love the creativity in my career. I have so much more to do.”

Ratajkowski consistently maintains direct eye contact when she speaks. “At the end of the day, I want to be happy with the decisions I make – a big part of it is that no-one else has to live with those decisions in the same way. Ultimately, you’re the person you wake up with and go to sleep with and you need to be making yourself happy.”

We take a break to let Ratajkowski get changed for the red-carpet event. As the face of the Paco Rabanne fragrance Pure XS, she’s donning a Paco Rabanne outfit, and, as usual, she has done the red-carpet make-up herself. In the car on the way to the event, I ask about her parents – John David Ratajkowski, a contemporary artist, and Kathleen Balgley, an English professor, who “would hand me books as I was growing up and say: ‘Emily, you’re at the age for this one.’” In third grade it was To Kill a Mockingbird – “the classics” – and later, Wuthering Heights. She has shared old family photos and you feel a twinge of sentimentality at seeing a young Emily Ratajkowski smiling proudly alongside her parents on holidays. “I think my parents taught me ideas about feminism and politics and I just drove them to the edge. That’s how life should be, and how the world should evolve generation to generation.”

Ratajkowski grew up without a television; family discussions revolved around novels and films. “In books, I’m drawn to symbolism, subtlety, a voice – a really strong voice. Voice is a huge thing for me,” she says. I comment that she’s ever the English professor’s daughter. “I’m being honest, though,” she says. “When I finish reading a book, it’s that voice that stays in my head for days after.” Now, while she doesn’t have a chance to read as much, she stays up to date with The New York Times and podcasts like NPR’s This American Life, and follows that show’s Chana Joffe-Walt. (She doesn’t use Facebook.) “I’ll read articles that I don’t necessarily agree with, but it helps you understand more what you believe in,” she says. “In the US and in Europe, there’s this really divisionary left versus right. I think fundamentally people want the same things, they’re just looking at the other side as this evil thing and completely missing the point.”

Much has been made of her intellectual parents and how they encouraged in her a love of the arts; while her embrace of her naked body stems from family holidays to nude beaches in Spain. Many of her friends from university are now artists; she’s a regular at galleries, and collects contemporary art. “People think a lot of who I am is where I came from and it definitely is a huge influence, but my parents are completely normal and funny and they’re not like strict, fancy intellectuals at all. They love cheap white wine, you know?” she says with a smile. “My parents think I’m fancy sometimes! Right now I’m doing a Vogue interview in a Paco Rabanne outfit as someone tailors it, with security. They’re like: ‘What the hell is this life?’ It’s surreal. But they’re very, very supportive, and they’re so happy that I’m doing something where I can be creative and travel.”

As we drive through Sydney’s Pyrmont, she swipes on some lip gloss (Pat McGrath’s Lust in Blitz Gold) and adjusts her dress. “I’ve always loved clothes. I loved the idea of putting together an outfit and taking on the world and sending a message, thinking of it as a costume,” she says. “It can be really empowering to dress how you want, whatever your role is. It’s the way you represent yourself. Being able to change the way you dress or look with make-up or clothes is a great way to aid that.”

For someone who revels in the use of social media, she is careful not to reveal everything – not her dark sense of humour, nor her self-deprecation. “I don’t share it with the public,” she says. “I think we’re in a very strange place when it comes to dark humour and what we can see and what we can’t say.” She’s been burnt before, having quotes taken out of context. “We live in the world of clickbait,” she deftly summarises.

For all her social posts – from shots in bikinis to updates on her protesting against US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in Washington (for which she was subsequently arrested, alongside friend Amy Schumer), there is a hint of a wry sense of humour. A photo of her in a cropped T-shirt revealing the underside of her breasts is captioned “Laundry day” – even if said humour might be lost on a distracted audience. We debate whether one can really share everything about themselves on social media. “It’s very hard to connect with and appease everyone,” she muses. “Also, it’s very fun to curate a specific world. The truth is, even the people who seem to be sharing it all are still really curating what they’re showing.”

In this brief talk we’ve canvassed topics from politics to literature. She’s quick to respond and is articulate and concise when she speaks, gracefully not giving into the temptation, like so many other celebrities have, to pad her answers for the sake of it – she did speech and debate in school. “I loved it a little too much; it was going to become the thing that was everything for me, so I just stepped away from it,” she explains. “And also, I know the things that I want to talk about.” The conversation focusses on greater world affairs rather than the intricacies of her personal life. “I just can’t let everyone know everything about me. Who I am and what my image is are very different things, you know? I’m okay with that. I like that,” she says, as she shimmies into the mesh Paco Rabanne skirt overlay and quickly checks her phone. A few moments later, she will step out of her car to saunter along the red carpet to be Emily Ratajkowski, model, actress, activist. I take in the moment, waiting till she’s out of sight before quietly sliding out the other side of the car to avoid the flashing cameras.

“I just can’t let everyone know everything about me. Who I am and what my image is are very different things”