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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
" My Body offers a lucid examination of the mirrors in which its author has seen herself, and her indoctrination into the cult of beauty as defined by powerful men. In its more transcendent passages . . . the author steps beyond the reach of any 'Pygmalion' and becomes a more dangerous kind of beautiful. She becomes a kind of god in her own right: an artist."
--Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review
A "MOST ANTICIPATED" AND "BEST OF FALL 2021" BOOK FOR * VOGUE * TIME * ESQUIRE * PEOPLE * USA TODAY * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * LOS ANGELES TIMES * SHONDALAND * ALMA * THRILLEST * NYLON * FORTUNE
A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time
Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture's commodification of women is the subject of this book.
My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski's life while investigating the culture's fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women's sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse.
Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.
Author Notes
Emily Ratajkowski is a model, actress, activist, entrepreneur, and writer. She has starred in David Fincher's Gone Girl , among other films. Ratajkowski has also appeared on the covers of multiple magazines and walked the runway for numerous high fashion brands. Her 2020 essay for New York magazine, "Buying Myself Back," garnered over one million views within twenty-four hours, was hailed as a landmark, and was the magazine's most-read piece of the year. My Body is her first book.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Model and actress Ratajkowski debuts with an intimate and accomplished essay collection that tackles big questions about internalized misogyny, the male gaze, female empowerment, and the commodification of sexuality. She describes her "defensiveness and defiance" when questioned whether dancing naked in the 2013 music video for Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" was "anti-feminist," and admits that her viewpoint on being a "so-called sex symbol" has changed in the ensuing years. Ratajkowski calls out men who have simultaneously taken advantage of and dismissed her, including Thicke, who grabbed her breasts without permission during the filming of the music video, and photographer Jonathan Leder, whom she accuses of sexually violating her during a photo shoot and then releasing a book of explicit images without her approval. Throughout, Ratajkowski reflects on her craving for men's validation "even when it came wrapped in disrespect," and examines the limits of succeeding "as a thing to be looked at." She also recounts an early sexual experience that she later realized qualified as stalking and rape, and documents her struggles to deal with her mother's serious health problems. Enriched by Ratajkowski's insider perspective on the modeling industry and her willingness to wrestle with the power of the male gaze rather than outright rejecting it, this is an astute and rewarding mix of the personal and the political. (Nov.)
Guardian Review
I am not a model or a celebrity, but my image has been stolen from me. When I was 17, a high school boyfriend disseminated the nude pictures I had sent him to what felt like everyone I had ever met, as well as a number of people I hadn't. The prurient Facebook messages that flooded my inbox were daily reminders that my body was not my own. It belonged to men on the internet; I only lived inside it. What happened to me also happened, albeit on a much grander scale, to the famously desirable model and actor Emily Ratajkowski. As she recounts in her debut essay collection, My Body, a fashion photographer who took nude pictures of her when she was young, drunk and vulnerable persists in selling books of the Polaroids. He is far from the only man to profit from Ratajkowski's beauty: as she explains in Buying Myself Back, perhaps the best piece in her thoughtful and accessible book, the artist Richard Prince featured one of her Instagram pictures in his so-called "Instagram Paintings" series, which consists of "images of Instagram posts ¿ printed on oversize canvas". In order to recover the photo, Ratajkowski had to purchase the artwork; ultimately, she found herself in the bizarre position of buying herself - or at least the image that had usurped her self - back. Few women are this prominent, and even fewer turn out to be unwilling fodder for celebrated artists - but on the whole, what is striking about My Body is not how different a renowned supermodel's experiences are from those of an everywoman, but rather how continuous. At first, I suspected this made the book boring. My Body is more of a non-linear memoir than a compendium of essays - though Ratajkowski's musings are nominally organised into discrete sections, they seem to bleed into a more general autobiographical jumble - and many of Ratajkowski's reminiscences date back to her adolescence. She recalls her fixation on Britney Spears, her childhood home in San Diego, and, above all, her relentless objectification at the hands of various romantic interests and employers. As I rifled through accounts of inappropriate advances and catcalls, I wondered why Ratajkowski chose to devote so much space to relatively common degradations, rather than focusing on the more exotic indignities that she endured as she became famous. But as I read on, I realised that the depressing familiarity of the abuses that Ratajkowski chronicles is precisely the point. The anecdotes in My Body dramatise what is always true, if often implicit: that women can neither fully escape nor fully inhabit bodies that men are bent on appropriating. Though Ratajkowski grasps that her allure is a form of power, she also understands that "whatever influence and status I've gained were only granted to me because I appealed to men". Her body is valuable only insofar as it functions as a commodity, "a tool I use to make a living as a model". When she strips for a shoot, she "disassociates": "I don't even really recognize my body as me." Still, for all her self-awareness, Ratajkowski stops short of exploring the full implications of her alienation. The very phrase "buying myself back" presupposes women's bodies are products designed to entice male buyers. Ratajkowski's appearance is just that - a product - yet she writes, for the most part, as if it were a natural endowment, a gift that has been "passed down" to her by her mother like a "piece of bequeathed jewelry". "I haven't done anything to earn my beauty," she concludes. But of course, like all models, she has done a great deal. For one thing, she has dieted, a fact she mentions only sporadically throughout My Body. At one point, she remarks offhandedly that she booked more shootings after contracting the flu and losing 10 pounds in one week; later, she notes in passing that she "started smoking cigarettes and skipping meals to maintain a tiny waist". As the former model turned sociologist Ashley Mears writes in her incisive ethnography of the fashion industry, Pricing Beauty, a model's "work - and the work of her agents, clients, their assistants, and their whole social world - gets juggled out of sight." What My Body neglects to explore is Ratajkowski's elaborate stylisation and its social foundations. As she explains in a mesmerising tutorial video posted on Vogue's YouTube channel (but fails to discuss in her book), her everyday makeup routine involves 15 steps and the application of 11 products. In other words, she wears more makeup to dinner with her friends than I have worn in my entire life. My point is not to shame her - on the contrary, I admire and envy her artistry, to say nothing of her patience - but rather to note that, in a book about female desirability and injustice, it is worth emphasising that beauty requires time, skill, money and effort. In other words, being beautiful takes work. For many women, it feels compulsory, and for most of us, it is unremunerated. Models or not, we have no choice but to see ourselves through the prism of our bodies; we are all forced to endure the conflation of self with appearance; and we are all at pains, in one way or another, to buy ourselves back. The rub is that many of us still cannot afford to.
Kirkus Review
The international model embarks on a nuanced investigation of her body and identity. Ratajkowski's exploration of fame, self-identity, and what it means to be a "beautiful" woman is surprisingly engaging. Originally thrust into the spotlight in 2013 due to her scantily clad appearance in the music video for Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," the author eventually became known for her stances about beauty and sexuality and how they are commodified. Now that she is a wife and mother, she writes, "I feel a tenderness toward my younger self. My defensiveness and defiance are palpable to me now. What I wrote and preached then reflected what I believed at the time, but it missed a much more complicated picture. In many ways, I have been undeniably rewarded by capitalizing on my sexuality….But in other, less overt ways, I've felt objectified and limited by my position in the world as a so-called sex symbol." This short book includes the juicy tidbits that avid celebrity-memoir readers seek, and the author shares how she really felt about the video shoot and how the aftermath affected her. Beyond that, the book is a reflective coming-of-age-in-the-industry tale, a story that is never maudlin but contains a few thick, murky sections. Ratajkowski attempts to break down the construction of her identity and sexuality in relation to the ever present male gaze as well as her relationships with the women in her life. The charm of this book lies in the author's largely relatable writing, which shows the complex emotions and confusion of a young woman experiencing her sexual development and maturation into a capable adult. Admitting that the "purpose of the book is not to arrive at answers, but honestly to explore ideas I can't help but return to," Ratajkowski grapples directly with a host of thorny issues. A refreshingly candid, fearless look into a model's body of work and its impact on her identity and politics. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ratajkowski was launched into stratospheric viral fame when she appeared dancing nearly nude in Robin Thicke's 2013 music video for "Blurred Lines." Since then, she has made an astounding fortune modeling and acting and has learned a thing or two about how her body operates in the world. In this memoir, she shares her experiences existing inside said body: her comfort with nudity, the times she dissociates from her body, and how people have treated, exploited, and cared for her body in the past. The book provides a glimpse into the world of contemporary modeling: the inappropriate behavior of photographers, the obscene wealth, and the oftentimes hollow experience of being merely the muse instead of the artist. One particularly interesting factoid readers will glean is that the "Blurred Lines" music video set was run by a majority of female creators. Having recently given birth, Ratajkowski shares that story here, too, and throughout her writing has a sweetness and even an innocence. Ratajkowski leaves readers sure that she remains in awe of her body and excited about all that the future holds. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Ratajkowski's memoir is both personal and universal, and so great is her celebrity, a huge print run is planned.
