My Body by Emily Ratajkowski surprises me
Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body was a book I picked up reticently. A supermodel who built her career on semi-nude pictures on social media wrote a book – not exactly what I’d gravitate to. Especially since that is the exact sort of content that makes me cringe. It seems to me that every woman on Instagram has figured out a foolproof way to stay on top of the ever-changing algorithm – show some skin. In an opinion piece, I’ll even say this – I fail to see how it can be empowering. I am baffled at the amount of effort that influencers put in to get that perfect picture – the right lighting, angles, outfit, pose. An attempt to get ahead in a race with no real winners. Until I read ‘My Body’.
“It’s truly an almost poignant account of how someone has both benefitted and been reduced by the male gaze,” I told my friend. My friend who follows Emily on Instagram for the kind of content she is famous for, refused to believe me. ‘Look,’ he messaged as he shared her latest picture in a skimpy bikini, ‘this is not feminism, for God’s sake. She can’t seriously go on doing this and then complain about the reactions!’ It's tough to see it, I agree. One perceives a sense of unfairness at the asymmetrical wealth she has amassed just by using her body. But on some instinctive level, I see exactly what Emily wants to show us. Probably because I’ve done the exact opposite of what she does, and still been subjected to the same outcomes.
Emily’s book is an account of her rise to hyper fame. It starts with her days as an e-commerce model which subsequently led her to star almost nude in the music video that catapulted her to stardom – Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. Having capitalized on her near perfect body and pride regarding it, she soon became a sought-after model – and with that came a growing confusion regarding her body. At no point in the book does Emily deny enjoying the money, validation and power that came with her choice of career. She unapologetically admits to enjoying the financial freedom that came with it. However, she aptly writes - “whatever influence and status I’ve gained were only granted to me because I appealed to men”. She is well aware that her body was a commodity that she could use because it held value to men, and how she too was treated as a commodity as an extension of that.
When Emily writes about being groped on the sets of Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke – an occurrence meant to just establish who held the real power on the set, it is a reminder of countless similar situations in my life as well. The men in my life have often done things to prove who’s the boss, and gotten away with it by virtue of their gender.
She writes about being raped by a boyfriend, inappropriately touched by a friend’s partner, being aware of a gaze resting on her bare legs, amongst many other instances – many of these things that almost every woman has experienced in varying degrees. Her inability to say no, or retaliate, speaks of the age old shame that women carry around their bodies.
In the last chapter in the book, there seems to be an unnecessary account of her getting dressed for a party that she is only attending for her husband. ‘“I didn’t like the idea of appearing too dressed up or too sexy in a crowd of people who, I knew, would treat me like arm candy no matter what I wore.”. It starts to make sense in the end, when her husband’s agent makes a remark and likens her to Pamela Anderson – a comparison that depresses and humiliates her. The identity crisis that must exist in the mind of someone who has achieved fame due to her body (and continues to use it to that effect), and yet wants to be known for more – a disdain for the very industry she works in that she wants her husband to share, is brought to light here. It ends with – ‘You are the problem, I thought to myself. Something is wrong with you. And if you were taken out of the equation, everything would be just fine.’ I am reminded of a similar feeling – having to choose between the validation that comes with looking desirable and the chance that I might end up feeling ‘dirty’ in the end, or dressing simply to just avoid the stares and be known for more than how I look.
The book may simply be a recollection of the various encounters that Emily has had, but every account is a reminder of the unfairness of it all. I found myself feeling dejected on account of her and every woman alive. The most hard-hitting chapter though, is one that truly sums up the issue at hand – ‘Buying myself back’ (also a much-acclaimed essay). As renowned photographers and artists use her as a muse to create ‘art’, Emily finds herself in the position of buying back images of herself (and in the case of Richard Prince’s series of Instagram paintings, literally an Instagram post she posted herself). The fact that her body was not really hers but owned by people who could choose to use it in any manner of their liking, is a striking reality. Having no agency over images of her own body brings home the fact she writes about – ‘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.’
‘My Body’ is no literary masterpiece – in many places it almost feels like a jumble of information. But it is important information and the nuances in every incident that she describes are worthy of thought. Even though it may seem like she wants it all, she many a times calls out her innate hypocrisy too – something that makes you look at her in understanding.
Every account in this book leads to a revelation of the world we live in, and is a reminder of how far we still are from an equal world. A world where a supermodel could choose to expose her body as much as she likes and to who she likes, and still retain her dignity and agency. A world where consent is not assumed as given because of the profession one chooses, and where people can see beyond a body, however commoditized, and choose to address the person instead.