Emily Ratajkowski became the heroine of the December issue of Australian Vogue and starred in a cover story for the publication. The model gave an interview to the magazine, where she spoke about the lack of privacy, motherhood and the stigma of divorce.
32-year-old Emily says that there is no privacy in her life: the model daily becomes the object of attention of the paparazzi, who distribute her photos without permission. “I feel like I’m being photographed every day of my life. Because even if I wasn’t being photographed by the paparazzi, I work so hard as a model. To be documented so much is just wild.”
“I think women now have so many digital images that are being shared without their permission and it’s completely offensive. So I don’t think it’s unique to models. I mean, how many stories do you know about schoolgirls whose photos spread on the Internet?
The model has been fighting for many years against the illegal publication of her photographs by photographers in order to earn money. So she condemned photographer Jonathan Leder, who has already published three books of nude Polaroids of Ratajkowski, taken during a shoot in 2012, when she was under 21, without her permission. (Leder denies the allegations.) She created an NFT using Richard Price’s artwork of her Instagram photo, again without her consent. Against this backdrop, Emily’s best-selling memoir, My Body, explored the relationship between femininity and the commercialization of sexuality.
“A model is what you do. You take pictures, and you get paid for being photographed. But at the same time, I was faced with the fact that, especially from male photographers, they considered these pictures to be theirs,” says Ratajkowski. I had no rights or control over these images. I also experienced this when artists used my image. It was a very hard lesson: “Wait, what I’m building a business on isn’t really mine at all.”
Ratajkowski published My Body in 2021 while she was expecting her son Sylvester with her husband Sebastian Bear-McClard, whom she divorced at the end of 2022. Motherhood and pregnancy, according to Emily, completely changed her. “I wasn’t someone who always knew I was going to be a mother. In fact, I always pictured myself much older when I became a parent. I think the great thing is that I didn’t have any preconceptions.”
Now that the model is divorced and has become a single mother who is fully responsible for the future of her child, she is thinking about the stigmatization of divorce. “I can’t believe that I am 32 years old, and I live in a family with one source of income and a child for whom I am fully responsible. All my decisions are now, his future depends on them, and this is an incredible responsibility and burden. But this is what present”.
“I can’t believe there aren’t more books about failed first marriages,” Ratajkowski continues. “I read a lot of literature on divorce, but it tends to focus on families falling apart after the children are grown. I really think a lot of people women are getting divorced at a younger age and it’s such a taboo and there’s such a stigma around it.”
She believes that the world has long changed, and women have long been “earning, if not as much, then more than their partners,” but they have much more emotional and physical responsibility, including housework. “Marriage isn’t always the fair deal it used to be, or at least the way it should have been. I’m not sure it was ever fair, so it shouldn’t be a shame for women to walk away from this shitty deal. I would I wanted to write more about it.”
Emily intends to continue to fight for the rights of freedom and voice, privacy and property. She hopes to see broader changes in the industry, which she is excited to be a part of. What is her ultimate solution to the systemic imbalance at the top? “Fire all white men. You can quote me,” the model replies.
