“I never signed anything. Did you?” I asked, trying to catch my breath. It’s fairly typical for agents to sign releases on behalf of models （a pretty unacceptable norm）， but I knew she wasn’t sloppy. Then again, she was the one who’d sent me to Jonathan’s home. I felt suddenly terrified. If I hadn’t been protected during my shoot with Jonathan, what did that mean for all the other thousands, maybe millions, of photos of me that had been taken over the years? I began to run through the countless shoots I’d done in my early career. It had been only two years since the 4chan hacking. I found myself touching the place on my scalp where my hair had fallen out.
“I’ll check my old email server,” she promised. “But I am almost a hundred percent sure I didn’t sign anything.”
The next day, she forwarded me an email sent in the days following the shoot, in which the agency had requested Jonathan’s signature on the model release. She wrote that she hadn’t found an email in response with the release signed by him. “And I didn’t sign anything he sent either!!!” she wrote. There was no release.
When my lawyer called the New York Times to let the paper know that whatever documents Jonathan and the gallery were claiming to have did not exist, he was informed that Jonathan had “supplied a copy of the release” signed by my former agent. I was shocked. My lawyer and I got on the phone the next day with the agent, who was sure she hadn’t signed it. “It must have been forged,” my lawyer announced. I felt my frustration grow. I knew I had never signed anything; I had never agreed to anything. No one had asked me.
“What can I do?” I asked again, but in a smaller voice. I was still holding on to a faith in our system, a system I had thought was designed to protect people from these kinds of situations.
The problem with justice, or even the pursuit of justice, in the US is that it costs. A lot. For the four days of letters and calls for which I had enlisted my lawyer’s services, I’d racked up a bill of nearly $8,000. And while I did have fame, I didn’t have the kind of money I’d told Jonathan I hoped to have one day. I’d heard from friends that Jonathan was a rich kid who had never needed a paycheck in his life. My dad was a high school teacher; my mom was an English teacher. I had no one in my life to swoop in and help cover the costs.
The next day, my lawyer informed me, on yet another billable call, that pursuing the lawsuit, expenses aside, would be fruitless. Even if we did “win” in court, all it would mean was that I’d come into possession of the books and maybe, if I was lucky, be able to ask for a percentage of the profits.
“And the pictures are already out there now. The internet is the internet,” he said to me matter-of-factly.
I watched as Emily Ratajkowski sold out and was reprinted once, twice, and then three times. “Reprint coming soon,” Jonathan announced on his Instagram. I tweeted about what a violation this book was, how he was using and abusing my image for profit without my consent. In bed alone, I used my thumb to scroll through the replies.
They were unrelenting.
“Using and abusing? This is only a case of a celebrity looking to get more attention. This is exactly what she wants.”
“You could always keep your clothes on and then you won’t be bothered by these things,” a woman wrote.
“I’m not sure why she would want to stop her fans from viewing these Polaroids,” Jonathan said in an interview. I had a desire to disappear, to fade away. My insides ached. I developed a new habit of sleeping during the day.
The gallery on the Lower East Side held an opening for the exhibition of Jonathan’s pictures of me, and I looked up photos from the event online. My name was written on the wall in black lettering. The place was so packed they had to leave the door open and let the crowd pour out onto the sidewalk. I saw photos of men in profile, gripping beers and wearing hipster jackets, standing inches from my naked photos, their postures slumped and their silly fedoras cocked back as they absorbed the neatly framed images. I couldn’t believe how many people had turned up despite my very public protest. Speaking out about the images had only drawn more attention to the show, the book, and to Jonathan. I blocked everyone on Instagram who was involved, but I didn’t let myself cry. When anyone mentioned the book or the show to me, I just shook my head and said softly, “So fucked-up,” like I was talking about someone else’s life. （When the fact-checker I worked with on this essay reached out to Jonathan about what happened that night after the shoot, he said my allegations were “too tawdry and childish to respond to.” He added: “You do know who we are talking about right? This is the girl that was naked in Treats! magazine, and bounced around naked in the Robin Thicke video at that time. You really want someone to believe she was a victim?”）