Emily Ratajkowski has been a popular figure in the media since the age of 18 and the patriarchy has been on her ass ever since.
Emily Ratajkowski is a model, author, actress, podcaster, influencer, founder of Bitch Era, advocate, and a self proclaimed feminist. Although she is one of the most accomplished models of this generation, she is often reduced to being a “slutty valley girl”. She recently proclaimed on The Today Show that she has decided to enter her “Bitch Era” which she says consists of not caring as much about what others think, allowing her to regain control over her own life. It is a sexist take that being slutty is the only thing she is limited to being, especially after the release of her 2021 book titled “My Body” about the struggles she deals with being a model, the influence her mother had over her career, and being sexually assaulted on the set of the Blurred Lines music video.
With that said, her life has been a very public and extreme version of the patriarchal bullshit that women everywhere deal with on a daily basis. She has recently entered her thirties, and on her podcast High Low with EmRata talks about how she has done an amazing job of gaining confidence and her voice to talk about these issues as well as uplift others to talk about the injustices women face in any setting. I want to acknowledge that as a white woman she has the platform and privileges that black women and people of color might not have access to, and with this platform, specifically her podcast, she doesn’t offer the space to allow for many POC to share their stories.
Who is Emily Ratajkowski?
When I searched Emily Ratajkowski on google the top four suggested searches were as followed:
- Who is Emily Ratajkowski’s baby daddy?
- Why is Emily Ratajkowski so famous?
- Who is Emily Ratajkowski’s ex husband?
- What did Emily Ratajkowski say about Pete Davidson?
However when searching a very comparable male supermodel named Tyson Beckford who is also a actor the top four questions that come up are:
- Why did Tyson Beckford stop modeling?
- How was Tyson Beckford discovered?
- How much does Tyson Beckford make?
- What modeling agency is Tyson Beckford in?
Because this person is a man, he is seen through his job as a model, rather than being sexualized as a woman who models.
Although these are the suggested searches that go with her name, it is not solely who she is. She is an author, an advocate for women’s health, and a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood. Although some people argue that she is the opposite of a feminist because she profits off her beauty- I completely disagree. Ratajkowski is the definition of conventionally beautiful with today’s beauty standards. She has long hair, a slim figure with curves in “the right places”, and has sharp defined facial features. She is a model who got her start because of her beauty, however just because she uses this to her advantage and profits off of it doesn’t mean that she is on the other side of feminism. In 2016 in Women’s Wear Daily, she defined what being sexual is to her.
“And what is that message exactly? The implication is that to be sexual is to be trashy because being sexy means playing into men’s desires. To me, ‘sexy’ is a kind of beauty, a kind of self-expression, one that is to be celebrated, one that is wonderfully female.”
From Women’s Wear Daily
This quote stood out because it justifies her way of profiting off certain aspects of the patriarchy. Although she is making money off of being a model because of her beauty, she doesn’t post the pictures that she does for others, she does it to empower herself.
Using Sexuality as a Way to Reclaim Her Power
Through the recent years there has been a spike of women posting things that make them happy and confident rather than doing it for attention. She isn’t trying to be an activist, she’s just showing people how she reclaims her own body and the attention that is placed on it. In a 2023 Elle interview when asked if she is an activist she responded,
“I shy away from that word. I’m somebody who has a platform and I’m a celebrity who cares about political issues, but I’m not willing to label it as activism, just because I think that there are people who give their lives to this.”
From Elle
She acknowledges that she isn’t trying to become an activist to get people online to admire her, and is instead posting what makes her feel sexy and powerful. Ever since she was 18 and on “iCarly” she has been sexualized. Her character on the show was the “hot” and “unattainable” girlfriend of one of the main characters of the show. Ever since then she has played the roles of a mistress and the typical dumb hot girl. Because she has been sexualized for so much of her life she decided to own her sexuality by posting it first and embracing being sexy. Her idea is that women are almost always going to be sexualized by men and society in general, so they should take back their authority by owning their only sexuality.
In the above video the clip is cut off but after her character leaves the scene Sam says “I told you she was hot” and her friend Carly replies “yeah but you didn’t say she was that hot”. Although this might just sound like banter between friends, the only plot point of her character being the unbelievably hot girlfriend is very damaging and problematic, especially considering she was only 18 at the time and playing a young high schooler.
Using her words against her, the media makes her out to be a “bad feminist’ for using this to her advantage and reclaiming her own sexuality. Through gatekeeping who is and isn’t a feminist, we are pitting women against each other and making it out to be a competition. In reality, being a feminist is wanting equality of sexes, and by empowering herself she is also lifting up others to do the same.
Comments on Her Videos
While doing research for this article, I looked through a lot of TikToks and comment sections on those videos. During this time I realized that most of the videos circulating of her at this time are either about her past relationships or clips of her kissing Harry Styles on the street this past week. The comments under the videos of her kissing Styles are variations of “how is she with everyone?”, “so a new man each month?”, and “she’s really trying to put her name out there”. These comments were almost all negative with a few exceptions from fans saying that if they had the chance they would be doing the same thing. But, overall it is mostly hate comments indirectly calling her a slut or saying she’s only with him to get more famous.
Although it is a really shitty thing to see women tearing other women down for the amount of people they date, we have seen this time and time before with celebrities like Taylor Swift, and it is not nearly the end of the hateful comments on her videos.
She was recently on a podcast for Eileen Kelly where she talked about getting cheated on. After this video was posted pop culture social media accounts found it and edited it to make it sound like she said she was the “perfect woman”.
These videos are edited to either show her full monologue or cut out the context she needs to sound intelligent. Because of that the comments on one of the videos are completely different from the comments on the other. The comments on the first post consisted of positive comments like the following, “She is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever heard” and, “Her pain is very raw and real. May her story heal herself and those who need to hear it”, and “So appreciative of her being transparent and vulnerable”. On the second video that is edited to cut out the most important parts of what she is saying has these top comments, “There’s so much wrong with this”, “So she agrees that she is perfect”, and “Looks aren’t everything”. This is so telling of how the media sees a conventionally beautiful woman who owns up to being pretty and tears her down by turning her own gender against her.
I think it’s so easy to go online and say that women support women and that she’s uplifting others by uplifting herself. But the reality is that the trauma she experienced and still experiences is very real and the things that happen to her are happening to a real person. Not a character for others to observe, not an object for us to judge, but a very real individual who sees everything these men and women are posting. So what if she’s confident in her looks? That doesn’t mean that she’s vain or thinks she’s better than her own sex. In the world that we live in today, it is so easy for us to voice our judgment for others and the person it’s directed at to hear. But the reality is that she’s not a spectacle that exists for us, and men specifically, to look at. She posts pictures that she feels confident in because she owns her sexuality. She has a podcast to uplift the voices of women around her. She has somewhat public relationships. But why does that all of the sudden make her a bad person? She doesn’t do this for the critique of men or to be a “pick me” as so many people call her. She’s a person who owns her sexuality before someone can take it from her, and for that I have immense respect.
Journalism 2.0 