A few days ago, Emily Ratajkowski reinvented herself as a The Cut’s editor, publishing a bold autobiographical report. She intimately narrates the ups&downs of her modeling career, narrating a few controversial episodes which emblematically draw the attention on crucial issues about modeling.
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She first spoke out about a paparazzo who sued her last year because she published on her stories a photo of her carrying a bunch of fresh flowers. Then she opened up about the Richard Prince’s affair. A few years ago, the well-known contemporary artist came out with a series on “New Portraits” depicting celebrities, including Emily. The paintings were worth 80k dollars, which was an astronomical price for Emily herself, who was paradoxically unable to buy an oeuvre for which she was not payed nor mentioned, and still was the subject and the muse of the famous artist. These two stories seem very nonsense, but they are sadly real.
Finally, Emily recollected all the memories of her shoot with Jonathan Leder. When she was only 20, moving her first steps in the modeling business, thanks to her manager, Emily was invited to Jonathan’s country house to shoot a few polaroids for a glossy magazine. The shooting felt kind of peculiar, considering that it was in the evening, they were basically alone, and Leder kept pouring wine in Emily’s glass. She confessed she felt the pressure of appearing as a confident model, and she kept on drinking to feel at ease. She posed wearing lingerie, and at a certain point she went naked and posed fiercely. After the shoot, Jonathan showed her the polaroids and started making kind of rude comments about her body, only to eventually sexually harass her on her sofa. Ratajkowski said she pushed him back, but it still seems all pretty blurry. And it didn’t stop there. During these years, Leder exploited Ratajkowski’s growing popularity by constantly publishing never-seen-before pictures of that infamous shooting. He also exhibited some of them in an art gallery, and even though Emily prayed her followers to boycott the event, Leder’s latest project was a huge success in terms of money and popularity. Once again, Emily found herself helpless, being publicly exposed without her consent, and without retribution.
Nowadays, Emily “bought herself back” by purchasing Prince’s expensive painting, which hangs in her LA cozy mansion. However, Ratajkowski admits that she still doesn’t feel protected nor reassured at all about the industry, and she still has to struggle in order to get recognition and respect. She denounced a dishonest system in which female models are still exploited, treated as bodies that exist only to please and be commodified. And whilst Emily’s lucky, being so popular and rich in order to affirm herself in the industry, many other girls are silent victims of this scheme.
She boldly narrated the fashion system’s paradoxical algorithm, which rotates around women, who literally make the fashion world go round, but it’s a men’s monopoly still. And these professional figures, such as artists and photographers, do not care at all about their so-called “muses”, they just want to exploit them, made them feel tiny and weak, in order to make as much money and fame as possible. We find ourselves in a society in which the female body is hypersexualized since a young age, and people don’t mind to be bother by the consequences of this commodity.
Ratajkowski’s aware that her work consists of showing off her curves and her beautiful face, and of course she doesn’t regret it, it’s her job and she genuinely loves it. However, she feels that the “my body, my choice” equation is not respected at all. She became more than once the victim of herself, unable to decide whether her photos should be published or not. We do hope that her precious narration will lead to a whole new reassessment of the fashion system, and of how women’s bodies should be respectfully treated.
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