My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
Review of My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski (2021). Published by Metropolitan Books.
I had seen this book all over social media when it first released, and I imagine there were many valid reasons. First, Ratajkowski is a popular figure on social media, as she’s a pretty popular model nowadays. There is also the fact she was addressing some pretty juicy parts to her life, and people do love to gossip, especially when it comes to public figures.
I had first known of Emily not because of her modeling, but because of the articles she wrote about being in the modeling industry. I remember reading a piece about how a photographer had her posing nude and then selling her image awhile back, which reappears in this essay collection.
First, before we begin this review, I want to make my stance on celebrity memoirs clear: I tend not to be a fan of them. I feel the need to make this disclaimer because as someone in the industry, a lot of memoirs are ghostwritten or extremely heavily edited because quite a few celebrities do not know how to write in a way that’s compelling for audiences.
Emily’s book has its strengths, but it also fails in some part. Let’s begin this review.
My Body reflects on Ratajkowski’s career as someone who began modeling at a young age, thus exposing her to sexism.
My Body is a series of essays—it’s not a novel, not a memoir. These are a comprehensive collection of essays that are tied around Emily’s experiences as a model, one who specifically started when she was a teenager and then found herself blowing up after appearing in the music video for “Blurred Lines”; a music video in which she was heavily sexualized, especially by the singer himself.
That is one of the most common threads behind these essays: the notion that young women are being sexualized and exploited in the modeling industry.
Modeling as an industry is fairly problematic, and while Emily does extensively discuss about how her body has been commodified in the name of being quote-on-quote aesthetic for the male gaze, I find that she really drives in this point home.
One of the strongest essays in this collection is the one I had previously read before, the one about the photographer selling her image and thus the contemplation about Emily doesn’t actually own her appearance. Besides that, I didn’t really find the essays to be too memorable.
Yes, they drive in a good point. Her writing is fairly to the point, not too flowery, and thus it does not detract from her main messaging overall. I do not think I came into this book with a bias against Emily, but it simply was not memorable to me. I think this is a book that people will remember, but they will not remember specific parts of it if you ask this about them—or, unless, they’ve read it multiple times cover to cover. the messaging is what they will end up walking away with.
Perhaps my concern is that we are only seeing the word feminism through Ratajkowski’s eyes. We have to remember that she is a white model in a world where she made it—that does not diminish her experiences at all, but she is the epitome of privilege here.
There is also so much more about the modeling industry outside of the fact that it commodifies bodies to the point where women are basically seen as sexual objects. What about the racism that plagues the industry? What about the fact that the fashion industry is literally killing the earth? What about the fact she’s profiting off of said environmental racism?
Something about the essays is charming in this regard: it humanizes her. It does a good job of this, making her into a real person with real feelings. I’ll give the book that. But fails to truly address intersectional feminism in a way that is productive, thus making this something that just cycles around her personal experiences and seemingly validating her own thoughts.
Overall Thoughts
I think My Body is an important book to read, as it offers a first hand account about what happened to Emily during her modeling career. While it does validate her experiences and what she went through, I think I simply wanted something more about this book—I tend to prefer these kinds of books that connect to the broader, harder facts about this means about us as a society.
What I’m getting at is that perhaps I’m not a fan of how we are chained to Ratajkowski’s head for the the entire time, although her truth and reality are also important to know—balance is the key word I think I’m trying to get at.
I had a similar problem with Crying in H Mart; while it is relatable and something many people can relate to, I want to be able to walk away with an understanding directly about how this impacts everyday people. Ratajkowski is only one of the few that is able to speak up, and I’m glad she did.
