Reflections on a career that caters to the male gaze
Model and activist Emily Ratajkowski chronicles her life in new book
Ratajkowski seemingly navigates the spotlight with ease, making headlines with her chic outfits and unapologetic statements about feminism. But the reality is that this fame has come at a cost.
From nuanced misogyny to sexual assault, the 30-year-old model and activist chronicles her life and what it’s like to live in a society that both fetishises and shames female sexuality in her first book, My Body.
“I wanted to offer something that I can’t show on my Instagram: the complicated truths behind the power you receive as something to be looked at,” Ratajkowski says.
Despite the glamour of Hollywood, My Body explores the dark realities of a career that caters to the male gaze – including misogynistic comments following her Gone Girl stardom and the abuse of power she’s endured from predatory men in Hollywood.
“On a good day, I’d call people who condemned a woman for capitalising on her body. On a bad day, I’d hate myself and my body, and every decision I’d made in my life seemed like a flaring mistake,” she writes.
Looking back at her career, Ratajkowski reflects vulnerably on personal, specific incidents that inflicted trauma and anxiety. She accuses Robin Thicke of groping her bare breasts while shooting the controversial Blurred Lines music video and, in the essay “Buying Myself Back”, alleges photographer Jonathan Leder sexually assaulted her during a 2012 photo shoot.
She first wrote about Leder in a 2020 essay for New York Magazine’s The Cut. At the time, Heather Tynan, editorial director of Leder’s Imperial Publishing company, said he “completely denies her outrageous libellous allegations of being ‘assaulted’”.
She also writes that Malaysian fugitive businessman Jho Low paid her US$25,000 to attend the Super Bowl.
When asked about the decision to write about these encounEmily ters, Ratajkowski says it was “personally really clarifying to be able to name the experiences”, but admits she felt “pretty down” when outlets leaked the allegations earlier this month.
“I carefully thought about every second of the book and to watch things taken out of context and words put into my mouth, it was discouraging. I felt like, ‘Why did I write this book?’” she says.
“It didn’t feel like this rewarding moment of, ‘Oh wow, I told the truth about my experience.’ It felt like, ‘Oh, people have made up their minds about something they don’t even have access to read the whole thing, and that was really discouraging.”
My Body also shares her positive reflections about navigating Hollywood as a woman. In a world where “all women are objectified and sexualised (by men)”, she takes pride in the success and empowerment she achieved from selling her image for a living – on her own terms.
But this revelation wasn’t sudden. It took years of self-reflection, questioning and even a new politsexist ical awakening that required her to reconsider her “really strong political views”.
“It was sort of realising there were things that were incongruent or contradictory about how I felt about a certain situation vs the ideas that I said I really stood behind,” says Ratajkowski, who endorsed
Bernie Sanders in the 2020 US presidential election and, in 2018, was arrested alongside comedian Amy Schumer while protesting controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Ratajkowski adds that becoming a mother also provided a new perspective on how scary it can be to sexually develop in today’s society. (She and her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, welcomed their first child, Sylvester, in March, but initially didn’t share their child’s gender to impose “as few gender stereotypes … as possible”.)
“I do think there’s this way that men look at women where it’s like, you’re a little girl and you’re somebody’s daughter and then you’re a sex object, this hot thing then all of a sudden you’re someone’s mother and then you have grey hair and you’re not thought of in the same way as when you were younger,” Ratajkowski says.
“I think it can be super scary for a lot of women. Just like with everything particularly with women, there’s this draw that oversimplifies and puts women into one category or box.”
However, she’s rejecting this “outdated and linear” narrative and encourages other women to do the same.
“I don’t want to base my life around how men look at me and view me. I continue to have all the elements about me while also taking on this new identity of motherhood and I feel great about that.”
I don’t want to base my life around how men look at me and view me
EMILY RATAJKOWSKI