5 minute read
Emily Ratajkowski
When she first burst onto our smartphones in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video, many were quick to assume Emily Ratajkowski was nothing more than a pretty face, but five years later the stunning model turned-actress is making waves both in cinema, and in her role as an advocate for female empowerment.
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it’s hard to pin down emily Ratajkowski. an independent-minded young woman with the body of goddess, she’s generated massive controversy over her penchant for posing nude or nearly so in magazines and social media. While in the process of establishing herself as a serious actress in the 2014 david Fincher thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben affleck, Entourage, and We Are Your Friends with zac efron, the london-born, California-raised Ratajkowski has maintained a parallel presence as a revisionist feminist model anxious to celebrate her cleavage at every opportunity.
And why not? a strong case could be made that she possesses the best breasts in show business and flaunting those assets has already won her over 17 million instagram followers, numerous modelling campaigns for the likes of dKNY and Kérastase hair care products, and forays into fashion design, the most recent of which is a collection of fine Jewellery with Spinelli Kilcollin.
Cultivating a reputation as one of the sexiest women alive, whose appearance in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video turned her into an instant YouTube sensation, Ratajkowski has adopted a Kardashianlike approach to mass Selfie-exposure and parlayed that into a burgeoning film career. This summer sees the polish-american provocative co-star in two films - I Feel Pretty opposite Michelle Williams and amy Schumer, and Welcome Home, a thriller set in Tuscany in which she shares top billing with Breaking Bad star aaron paul.
“That’s basically my strategy,” said Ratajkowski, who recently wed actor and producer Sebastian Bear- McClard. “I’m so grateful I have modelling and so many other things that I’m doing – because if I didn’t have other ways of making money, I’d be like, ‘OK, I guess I’m doing the bathing-suit-girl role.’ You really have to prove yourself in this industry and I’m very much up for the challenge. It takes a really long time to not only prove yourself, but also prove that you’re more dynamic than just this one part of you that they see.”
She’s also had to confront the contradiction that comes with having rocketed to fame on the basis of her physical charms yet wanting to be taken seriously as an actress. Ratajkowski has turned down numerous projects that are purely exploitative of her beauty but at the same time directors and casting agents have rejected her because her looks would be too distracting.
Sighed emily: “There’s this thing that happens to me: ‘Oh, she’s too sexy’. It’s like an anti-woman thing, people don’t want to work with me because my boobs are too big. What’s wrong with boobs? They’re a beautiful, feminine thing that needs to be celebrated. Who cares? They are great big, they are great small. Why should that be an issue?”
during the past year she’s effectively proclaimed herself a naked feminist warrior by asserting that a woman’s embrace of her body - nude or otherwise - is an act of empowerment. it takes a certain amount of gumption or ballsiness to chart such a course in the current age of manic political correctness.
She opens herself up to accusations of reckless self-promotion and self-exploitation from women’s movement hard-liners, while also inviting ridicule from media pundits such as the curmudgeonly piers Morgan who labelled her a “global bimbo” after she appeared in a love Magazine video clad in her undies and lathered in pasta and olive oil. Cons counters that kind of criticism as “sexist” and “stigmatizing,” arguing that there shouldn’t be any limits to a woman’s right to (sexual) self-expression.
“I think a lot of people really feel that the idea of a woman being sexual or being sexualized is the opposite of feminism,” declared Ratajkowski.
“To start saying that certain people need to have a licence to be feminist is insane. Emma Watson said feminism isn’t some kind of tool to beat other women with, it’s supposed to be a freedom of choice.”
“And I believe in sexuality. I think it’s a wonderful thing and, if anything, I want women to understand their own sexuality outside of a patriarchal male gaze. We’re the core of sexual beings, and I think that’s something that should be celebrated rather than attacked.”
Such statements prove that Ratajkowski is anything but a naive ingenue looking to instagram her way to the top. She’s very much aware that weaponising her body is risky business and has led many people to be both sceptical and dismissive, consigning her to the Kardashian heap of sublime superficiality. emily admits that her greatest fear is that her attention-grabbing nudism will ultimately prove self-defeating.
She worries about “not making anything of life and not doing anything that’s important...I’m really scared of that. Especially because I chose this as my career, this superficial thing.”
Certainly, her naked antics can be distracting, but dig a little deeper and it’s clear that Ratajkowski has always displayed a natural flair for creativity. She loved to draw as a child and was encouraged by her father to pursue her artistic sensibilities until her stunning adolescent beauty landed her a contract with Ford Models at age 14. Four years later, she enrolled at UCla where she studied art history before dropping out after her third semester to concentrate on her burgeoning modelling career. Yet she continues to collect art and has amassed an impressive collection of paintings and sculptures by up-and-coming american artists in her los angeles loft.
She explains that it’s not always been easy being objectified from such a young age, recalling how as a young woman she was constantly being pursued by men and grew uncomfortable with the attention and relentless stares and pick-up lines. “It was really difficult for me to understand and to come to terms with – that identity, people’s perception of me... It’s hard for a 12-year-old girl, who is basically feeling like, ‘Why don’t you just leave me alone’, because I don’t see men having to justify what they wear or how they express themselves.”
This year it will be interesting to see whether Ratajkowski’s mass appeal will translate into a sustainable Hollywood career. She’s had a difficult time following up her work in Gone Girl and We Are Your Friends with anything remotely interesting since. But working opposite Michelle Williams and amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty has been a “big step forward” and could trigger similar studio projects down the road, despite the project receiving tepid reviews.
in the meantime, she intends to continue teetering on the edge of controversy while remaining true to her brash self, saying: “People try to put women in boxes and stereotype them as one thing. There’s a need, even as a woman, to become a certain “type” of girl. But I feel extremely multifaceted.”
“One moment I can be super-silly with my friends, and the next minute I feel like the sexiest woman in the world. And that to me doesn’t change what my core ideals are, or what I have to say. Just because someone can be sexual doesn’t mean they can’t be serious!”
