Actually, Emily Ratajkowski Does ‘Give a F*ck’

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | January 19, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | January 19, 2024 |

Emily Ratajkowski has been a lightning rod for criticism as long as she’s been famous, but when she published My Body, a memoir in which she positions herself as a feminist by exploring her experiences as a fashion model, her haters got a lot louder. “How can someone who continues to capitalize on the male gaze by objectifying her very conventionally ‘beautiful’ body call herself a feminist, or worse, a role model for young women?” went the rallying cry.

I read My Body before really knowing anything about Ratajkowski. I, of course, knew she was the naked gal from the “Blurred Lines” video, but I was one of those people who was creeped out by the video and Robin Thicke in general, so she wasn’t on my radar after that. In the vacuum of my consumption of her book, I enjoyed it for what it is: a woman working through her indoctrination into misogyny in real time and admitting she doesn’t have all the answers. She acknowledges the role the male gaze plays in her career, her life, and her head. I was surprised by the feminist critique of the book because it seemed to miss the point, which, to me, was that she was just as much a victim of the patriarchal system all women are subject to, whether she technically benefited from it or not. I, for one, find that conflict—someone who benefits from a broken system attempting to understand her impact on that system—to be compelling.

The backlash from the book was the main topic of conversation in Ratajkowski’s recent interview with Glamour UK. The article is titled, “Emily Ratajkowski doesn’t ‘give a f*ck’ what you think,” but makes it clear that Ratajkowski is a walking contradiction. She acknowledges and understands the criticism of her book and her feminism, but also tells writer Emily Maddick that “she has come to a stage in life where she doesn’t ‘give a fuck’ what people think of her,” while later admitting, “I’m so afraid of people not taking me seriously.”

What transpires is a back-and-forth between hyper-self-awareness and hyper-self-consciousness, and it’s clearly wearing on her. She’s a mother to a young son, and that very fact has elicited even more criticism against how she comports herself in her daily life. “It’s the classic thing that once a woman becomes a mother, that should be her identity solely, if she’s a good mother,” she said. Her position as a mother is called into question for the same reason her position as a feminist is called into question: she posts pictures of her body on the internet and she dates around. There’s a word at the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite think of it…rhymes with…smut-naming?

The attention on her dating life is especially damaging because she’s fighting for custody of her son against her ex-husband. “The recent thing that’s been killing me is that I somehow want people to know what’s going on in my personal life,” she said, frustrated that people boil her love life down to attention-seeking behavior. So, she hides.

“I have sort of accepted that there’s only so much I can do to keep my private life private. And I want to enjoy my life, and if that means that everyone has an opinion on what I’m doing, then so be it.”

Not caring what people think is just a coping mechanism for those who are subject to the court of public opinion and powerless against it. In other words, if everyone didn’t think about her so much, she wouldn’t need to give a fuck about what they thought of her.