My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
To Sly
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.
The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.
—John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Introduction
WHEN IT WAS released in the summer of 2020, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s viral single and music video “WAP” （an acronym for “Wet-Ass Pussy”） exploded, receiving 25.5 million views within twenty-four hours and debuting at number one on the US and global charts, becoming the first female collaboration ever to do so. Soon after, the internet was consumed with a debate about the hypersexual aspects of the lyrics and video. Many cultural commentators praised the song as a sex-positive anthem and claimed that, in rapping about explicit sexual details and their desires, Cardi and Megan were asserting their agency and enacting an overdue role reversal. Others argued that the song and video were setting feminism back a hundred years.
The last time a music video sparked such a heated debate around women’s empowerment and sexuality was in 2013, with “Blurred Lines,” cowritten and performed by Robin Thicke, Pharrell, and T.I. The video featured three women dancing around almost completely naked. I was one of those women.
“Blurred Lines” propelled me to overnight fame at age twenty-one. To date, the censored version, which partially conceals our nakedness, received approximately 721 million views on YouTube and the song is one of the best-selling singles of all time. The “uncensored” version was removed from YouTube soon after its release, citing violations of the site’s terms of service; it was restored and then taken down again, only adding to its controversial allure.
I and, more specifically, the politics of my body were suddenly being discussed and dissected across the globe by feminist thinkers and teenage boys alike. Critics condemned the video as “eye-poppingly misogynistic” because of the way my fellow models and I were objectified.
When the press asked me for my position on the video, I surprised the world by answering that I didn’t feel it was anti-feminist at all. I told reporters that I thought women would or at least should find my performance empowering. My statements about “Blurred Lines” came in the era of the feminist blogosphere, of Lean In and headlines such as “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” on the cover of major magazines but before the popular embrace of the term feminist, before Beyoncé danced in front of a giant neon FEMINIST sign, and before fast fashion companies began selling FEMINIST T-shirts. Many were outraged that the naked girl from the viral music video had dared to call herself a feminist, while others, mostly younger women, found my perspective refreshing. I argued that I felt confident in my body and my nakedness, and who was anyone to tell me that I wasn’t empowered by dancing around naked? In fact, wasn’t it anti-woman to try to tell me what to do with my body? Feminism is all about choice, I reminded the world, so stop trying to control me.
A few years after “Blurred Lines,” I wrote an essay entitled “Baby Woman” about growing up and the shaming I’d experienced around my sexuality and developing body. Even as a working model and actress, I claimed that I hadn’t experienced the sense of humiliation I’d felt when my middle school teacher snapped my bra strap to scold me for letting it slip out from beneath my tank top. To me, girls sexualizing themselves wasn’t the issue, as feminists and anti-feminists would have us believe, but shaming them was. Why were we the ones being asked to adjust? To cover up and apologize for our bodies? I was tired of feeling guilty for the way I presented myself.
My perspective was the result of an adolescence filled with mixed signals related to my developing body and sexuality. At thirteen, I’d been confused when my father quietly suggested that I “not dress like that, just for tonight” when my parents and I were getting ready to go out to a nice restaurant. I looked down at the pink, lacy top and push-up bra I wore. My mother always told me to take pleasure in the way I looked, and this particular ensemble brought me validating attention from both adult men on the street and my peers at school. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed by the very thing that was also a source of pride.
I hadn’t understood the time when my cousin, who was nearly twenty years my senior, came rushing into her living room, breathless, after leaving me alone with her male friend for a few minutes. I didn’t understand what she was afraid of, although I already instinctively knew what her friend’s body language meant—the way he reclined back on the couch, his hips jutting forward and his mouth forming a crooked, inviting smile. I was a child, but somehow already an expert in detecting male desire, even if I didn’t completely understand what to make of it: Was it a good thing? Something to be afraid of? Something to be ashamed of? It seemed to be all these things at once.