my body essay

The Problem With Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body

The model and actor’s new book of essays is a fascinatingly solipsistic portrait of the tension between empowerment and objectification.

Rewatching the music video for “Blurred Lines,” the totemic Robin Thicke song, is an interesting project. In 2013, when it was released, the song spawned a new microeconomy of commentary denouncing it as a distillation of rape culture , or fretting over whether enjoying its jaunty hook was defensible . (“I know you want it,” Thicke croons presumptively over and over, even though honestly, no, I do not want it at all.) In the video, directed by the veteran Diane Martel, three models dressed in transparent thongs peacock and pose with a baffling array of props (a lamb, a banjo, a bicycle, a four-foot-long replica of a syringe) while Thicke, the producer and one of the co-writers Pharrell Williams, and the rapper T.I. dance, goofy and fully clothed, around them.

As an artifact of its time, it’s a remarkably deadened and nonsensical thing. But what most surprises me now is how pitiable the men seem, pulling at the models’ hair and playing air guitar for attention, less musical superstars than jejune dads who don’t exactly know what to do with the women they’ve paid to be naked. This is the raw power of the female body, and yet what kind of power is it, really? At one point, Thicke seems to push the model Emily Ratajkowski against a wall, hollering into her ear while she gazes away from him, a picture of barely suppressed disdain.

“Blurred Lines” instantly made Ratajkowski a star. She commands the video in both the PG-13 and unrated versions like a supernova, a vortex of pulchritude and screen presence and sticky red lip gloss. “They were the talent; we were more like props,” Ratajkowski writes of the men in her new book, My Body , and yet the women are the ones viewers can’t look away from. They’re so casual in their nudity, so composed, so unperturbed by the antics of the men objectifying them. Their sexuality seems to exist somehow outside the range of the camera’s gaze, outside the atmosphere of mortal men. But, of course, it doesn’t. In My Body , a collection of essays in which Ratajkowski scrutinizes the blessing and the curse of her physical self, she writes that Thicke groped her during filming that day, and that she said nothing; the incident was, in her eyes, a reminder of “how limited any woman’s power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at.” (Thicke has not publicly responded to the allegations.)

This book is Ratajkowski’s attempt to come to terms with her existence as a person who is, in the words of Derek Zoolander, really, really ridiculously good-looking. This experience is, she knows, particularly fraught for women and girls. Starting in middle school, Ratajkowski writes, she received mixed messages about her body—whether it provoked offense or pleasure, was too big or too small, made her strong or vulnerable. Commodifying it as a model at first brought her satisfaction. She writes: “All women are objectified and sexualized to some degree, I figured, so I might as well do it on my own terms. I thought that there was power in my ability to choose to do so.” Now? She’s not so sure, but nor has she entirely changed her mind.

Read: The unending assaults on girlhood

My Body sits in this liminal space between reappraisal and self-defense. It’s a fascinating work: insightful, maddening, frank, strikingly solipsistic. Ratajkowski admits in her introduction that her awakening is still a half-finished one, and that the purpose of the book wasn’t “to arrive at answers” about the contradictions of selling her own image as a model, actor, and Instagram influencer with 28.5 million followers, but rather to “examine the various mirrors in which I’ve seen myself.” She senses, maybe, that she’s caught in an age-old quagmire (what the academic Sandra Bartky called “the disciplinary project of femininity”), but not that she’s become, by virtue of her fame and self-presentation, potentially complicit in the things she critiques. Writing, for Ratajkowski, seems to let her assert the fullness of her personhood and interiority, a rejection of the world’s determination to make her an object. But the narrowness of her focus—her physical self, essentially, and everything it’s meant for her—is limiting. Even her title, My Body , suggests conflicting things: ownership and depersonalization. What do you do when the subject you know best, the topic upon which you are the ultimate authority, is the same trap you’re trying to write your way out of?

The day I read most of this book was also the day that Ratajkowski uploaded to Instagram a series of photos published by the French magazine M . In the first, she holds a flesh-colored lollipop against her tongue. The third reveals her midriff, her nipple, and her leopard-patterned nails, but not her face. The cover line for the shoot reads: La Feminité à l’Offensive , with faux cils et ongles longs in smaller type, just to clarify that the aesthetic for the revolution is false eyelashes and long fingernails. Ratajkowski’s waist is tiny; her ribs are visible; her lips are pursed.

She has the right to find these pictures, this self-presentation, empowering. (“I love these images so much!” her caption reads.) But we also, as observers, have the right to interpret them—to wonder if doubling down on archaic tropes of female sexuality and the “tyranny of slenderness,” as Bartky put it, is actually good for anyone else. In her book’s epigraph, Ratajkowski pulls a quote on vanity from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing , a seminal BBC series and book that, among other things, crystallizes the bind women find themselves in as objects to be surveyed. The M pictorial made me think of a different Berger argument: Portraits are organized to reinforce the hierarchical status quo, and the women within them are arranged, he wrote, “to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.” Whose appetite is the lollipop feeding? Does it matter?

Ratajkowski doesn’t say much in the book about how women and girls might respond to images of her. That myopia is frustrating, because she’s so astute on the subject of how her body is interpreted by men. The project that became My Body began as an essay published last year in New York . In “ Buying Myself Back ,” the magazine’s most read story of 2020 (not exactly a quiet news year), Ratajkowski wrote about being sued by a paparazzo who took a picture of her on the street after she subsequently posted the photo on her Instagram, and buying half a Richard Prince “Instagram painting” based on an image of herself. She also alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a photographer who later published a book of nude photos of her without her consent. (The photographer denied the accusations to New York , saying, “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?”)

The essay was bracing and sharp. It distilled in careful prose the absurdity and powerlessness of being a product in the internet age. “I have learned that my image, my reflection, is not my own,” Ratajkowski writes. To cope, she starts to think of herself in split form: the “real” Emily and the one whose picture is appropriated by men in ways she can’t control. If Marx were alive, he might refer her to his theory of alienation: Under capitalism, Ratajkowski has essentially lost control of the work she produces, and her sense of self is fragmenting as a result. (Even Marx might be stunned by the audacity of Prince charging $80,000 for a picture he ripped right off Instagram and modified merely with the addition of his own sleazy comment.)

That Ratajkowski’s response to so much injustice might be to seize back control (and the means of production) for herself is understandable. But burning down a house that you are still very much inside is hard, which is maybe why so much of the rest of My Body feels impotent. It’s less a rallying cry for structural change than a dispassionate series of observations by someone who still sees themselves primarily as a commodity. Its tone is measured and numb. In the essay “Bc Hello Halle Berry,” the author develops headaches during a stay in a luxury Maldives resort paid for by a Qatari billionaire (in return for some Instagram uploads). As she posts a photo of herself wearing a bikini from her own line, only slightly mollified by the hundreds of thousands of likes it receives in under an hour, she ponders the ethics of using her body for profit. “Money means power,” she thinks. “And by capitalizing on my sexuality I have money. The whole damn system is corrupt and anyone who participates is just as guilty as I am … I have to make a living somehow.”

Read: The dark side of fitness culture

It seems uncharitable to point out that she’s drawing a false dichotomy—that there are options in between trading pictures of herself for free vacations and starving on the street. But that’s not the point. The issue that kept sticking with me as I read was that Ratajkowski so clearly wants to have it all: ultimate control over the sale of her image; power; money, yes; but also kudos for being more than an object, for being able to lucidly communicate how much she’s suffered because of a toxic system—and is still suffering because of her ongoing participation. It is, as they say, a lot to ask.

To her credit, Ratajkowski seems to occasionally sense the innate hypocrisy of her desires, her impulse “to have my Instagram hustle, selling bikinis and whatever else, while also being respected for my ideas and politics and well, everything besides my body.” In the essay “Beauty Lessons,” a recollection of how her priorities and self-esteem were shaped in part by a mother with her own internalized misogyny, Ratajkowski recalls learning as a child that the suffering attractive women endure at the hands of the world “was actually a good thing, a consequence of being beautiful and having access to male attention.” The world, she realizes, “isn’t kind to women who are overlooked by men.” When she starts modeling, she can’t remember ever actually enjoying the process of it, but she does enjoy the money she’s able to make, and the things she can buy. But the industry and its nebulous edges also present new compromises. In the essay “Transactions,” Ratajkowski writes about being paid $25,000 in 2014 to go to the Super Bowl with a Malaysian financier, a deal brokered by her manager at the time. She’s troubled by the “unspoken task I’d been hired to perform: to entertain the men who had paid me to be there.” To be a beautiful woman, she seems to conclude, is to exist in the hustle between obligation and power, this particular “spectrum of compromise.”

Becoming an author allows her to reject this setup. Writing a book that’s effectively a literary portrait of your own physical self, though, is to risk reinforcing all the preconceptions anyone has ever had about you. Ratajkowski is a graceful and thoughtful writer, and as I read her book I longed for her to turn her gaze outward, to write an essay about marriage plots or coffee or landscape architecture or Scooby-Doo . Or, beyond that, I wanted her to risk fully indicting modeling as a paradigm—to not merely note that her career took off after she lost 10 pounds from stomach flu and kept the weight off, but to probe what looking at images of so many skinny bodies all day does to girls as delicate and unformed as her own teenage self. To wonder not just how the inherently flawed bargain of modeling has damaged her, but how it damages everyone. To risk letting herself feel or uncover something that might be a catalyst for not just observation, but transformation.

What would that kind of growth cost her? At the very least, perfection. In her final essay, “Releases,” Ratajkowski writes about how she has long resisted anger because she sensed that anger makes women physically repulsive. “I try to make anything resembling anger seem spunky and charming and sexy,” she writes. “I fold it into something small, tuck it away. I invoke my most reliable trick—I project sadness—something vulnerable and tender, something welcoming, a thing to be tended to.” Thinking about women’s emotions being modulated by the primacy of staying sexy isn’t exactly new, but it’s dismaying all the same. If Ratajkowski still can’t get angry, unpleasantly angry, even in writing, for fear of sacrificing her power, what about the rest of us?

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Emily Ratajkowski Is a Work in Progress

With her debut essay collection, “My Body,” the model and influencer takes stock of what she’s gained and lost from selling her image for a living.

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By Lauren Christensen

On a September morning in SoHo, the airy, light-filled Inamorata office was filled with women. Beside racks of bathing suits and “city sets” (matching crew necks and bike shorts bearing versions of the logo also found on the hand towels in the bathroom), they sat around communal tables, cooing over a baby.

Sylvester is the 8-month-old son of the apparel company’s founder and chief executive, Emily Ratajkowski . He and her giant Husky mix, Colombo, were the only boys around.

“As you see, you’re in my safe space,” Ratajkowski said, sitting on a pink velvet couch facing the room where her team was tending to her child. “Having your own company, you’re the one who decides what the images are of your body that are going out in the world.”

Control is big for the supermodel. Ever since 2013 , when she became famous for dancing seminude in Robin Thicke’s “ Blurred Lines ” music video, images of Ratajkowski have diffused across the internet. From David Fincher’s “ Gone Girl ” to paparazzi photos to fashion ads to her own social media posts, her face is so ubiquitous she said she even gets tagged in tattoos.

In 2018, when she was at the height of a modeling career she’d thought would be temporary (she dropped out of U.C.L.A. in 2010 and needed the money), her mother, Kathleen Balgley, a former English professor, was diagnosed with amyloidosis, a chronic, abnormal protein buildup in her hands.

Around then, Ratajkowski said, “I felt like something was really missing.” Alone in Los Angeles while her husband, the movie producer Sebastian Bear-McClard, was working in New York, Ratajkowski began to write.

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Emily Ratajkowski's quest for honesty led her to write My Body

In her debut essay collection, Emily Ratajkowski puts internet culture, power dynamics, body image, and her own feminism on trial.

Emily Ratajkowski has been looking for agency. After launching her career in 2012, the modeling and acting gigs that followed — roles as Ben Affleck's mistress in Gone Girl and Vinnie Chase's girlfriend in the Entourage movie, features in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues — left her wondering whether empowerment had morphed into objectification. "It never felt like enough to just be a body," she says. Now Ratajkowski, 30, is reclaiming her narrative with My Body, a new book of essays that chronicle her awakening and search for wholeness.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The book explores your changing relationship to your appearance and validation, but also details some moments of trauma. Did you choose to include those as a means of getting closure?

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI: I did not. I didn't even really know what I was going to write about. I had some thoughts and ideas about experiences that I felt a huge amount of shame around, and I was embarrassed by that shame. As I started to say, "Well, why did that happen to me?" writing about it became a cathartic experience.

How did you decide that now was the right time to write a book?

I always wanted to write and it felt really self-aggrandizing and ridiculous to give it a shot, but eventually I realized it was going to bring me joy and I wanted to make something. I sent essays to writers I admired to get a sense of: Am I working towards anything or is this just something I should call a hobby? Some responded and some didn't, but it's how I found my book agent. I insisted on sending him a ton of writing before we even met, because I didn't want an agent to work with me just because of my celebrity.

You're published by Metropolitan, which doesn't often do "celebrity" books…

I think of myself as a pretty political person and they have published Noam Chomsky and Edward Snowden, so that appealed to me. I think there's a danger in every industry where people are just thinking about money. I didn't want to think about that; I wanted the book to be the best it could possibly be. So I chose an editor who made me feel like that was what she cared about too.

Are you seeking to be, or feel, understood by readers of your book? Or is exploring what you wanted to and putting it out in the world enough?

Oh God, I wish I was that enlightened. I'm not. On a good day, I have those thoughts exactly like how you just said. That's how I should feel. It should be enough. But I want to be taken seriously. This is my attempt at becoming a full person. I think I wrote the book because it felt like the medium that would allow for me to have the most agency. When something is in your own words, nothing can beat that. But more than anything, I want to start conversations. There are so many unspoken power dynamics in our culture, and the language for the way we talk about those dynamics is limited and has no nuance. If my book could encourage a change, that would be really exciting.

In 2020 your essay "Buying Myself Back," about reclaiming ownership over your own image, was a sensation. Did that bolster you?

The response was really encouraging and I rode that high for quite a while — it helped me finish the book. Now, on the cusp of publication, I don't know if it's impostor syndrome or if I'm superstitious, but I have this sort of feeling of like, oh no, what if that was the only essay of mine people will like?

You write about your evolving relationship to social media and your desire to untether yourself — where do you stand with Instagram now?

I think everyone can relate to [social media] addiction and the validation that Instagram gives — 10 likes and a million likes aren't that different, it still can mean the same thing to a person. But obviously my relationship is more complicated because it's attached to my livelihood and my public image, and what people think of me — and it's on a larger stage. I now have a timer for Instagram and I try to keep [my use] to an hour [per day]. I have a child now and the idea of sitting around on my phone all the time doesn't feel good with him.

What is your writing process?

It's really strange. I wish I was one of those people who journals. I've always been too critical of myself to be able to do that. So what usually happens is I'll have a thought about something — maybe I'm having a conversation with a friend at dinner — and I can't articulate how I feel or what I want to share about it. And then in the middle of the night I'll wake up and have a voice in my head and I'll start writing notes in my phone. Sometimes it's five sentences and sometimes it's 1,000 words.

How do you see the balance between being really honest and vulnerable in your storytelling, versus needing to have boundaries for your own sake?

Let me think about this out loud because it's a really great question. There are things I chose not to write about. I did draw that line. But now that the book is coming out I'm realizing just how vulnerable I am in it. That is just my desperation for honesty; I'm so desperate to convey reality and give a clear picture of things that happened to me, so people can make up their minds about things on their own. There were also things that I considered leaving out but ultimately decided to include, because I felt like I would be publishing something incomplete and dishonest if I didn't.

Do you worry about some of that honesty getting mined for headlines?

I didn't when I was writing, because if I had then I wouldn't have written one single word. Literally, not one word. After I sold the book I had moments where I thought, "Oh God, what am I doing?" I will say that after eight years in the public eye, I'm very used to clickbait headlines and things getting blown up on the internet and taken out of context. I am also prepared for people to feel all kinds of things about this book. I don't mind. I don't mind people criticizing me, or disagreeing, as long as they 're engaging with the book and my ideas.

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My Body, by Emily Ratajkowski: furious, conflicted and frustrating

Who’d be as beautiful as Emily Ratajkowski ? My Body - the model ’s first essay collection - is a quietly furious disquisition on flesh and capitalism , and the queasy commodification of women ’s bodies, by a woman whose perfectly proportioned one has won her fame, acclaim, piles of money - and in turn, a fragmented, dissociative relationship with it. Extraordinarily perhaps, it is (often) sympathetic, (fairly) self-aware - and in an age of simplistic outrage, (quite) nuanced.

Ratajkowski’s reputation precedes her, of course: the cartoonishly beautiful Californian model who - as she notes - went from jobbing catalogue clothes horse to fetishised icon after starring in the Blurred Lines video , a now-cancelled song which treats consent as merely an obstacle to be sidestepped (‘you know you want it’). They were different times, the early 2010s. In it, Ratajkowski danced in very little. Eight years later, she has 28.5 million Instagram followers, her own bikini range, a contract with L’Oreal and - now - a book deal.

Ratajkowski seems tortured by how much of her fame, her career, her money she feels she owes to Robin Thicke, a man whom she alleges in her opening essay, also called Blurred Lines, groped her on the set of the video. (He has not responded to the allegation.) That essay, one of the strongest in the collection, is her attempt to explain the video and her gradual, horrified realisation that behaviour she’d considered to be empowering, was perhaps not straightforwardly so. “In my early twenties, it had never occurred to me that the women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place,” she writes. “Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over”.

Call her naive, though she was barely out of her teens in the Blurred Lines video, and her agency was complicated by the fact she was a pawn for an actual modelling agent. Anyway, this complicated equation between empowerment and exploitation is the theme of the book and the admission, that she feels complicit in her own commodification, is by turns fascinating and frustrating. Modelling is her resistance, sometimes her ruin; she can’t seem to reconcile it herself. Though sometimes, she is more straightforwardly unsympathetic. See: the free holidays to exotic resorts in exchange for a few sunset Instagram photos. It is also at points galling to have a beautiful white woman talk about how difficult it is to be these things.

Still, she seems truly tormented by how her looks can also limit her and longs to be seen as more than just a “piece of ass”. Dismiss her and you feel complicit too; mostly, the book left me confused and very affected by her vulnerability. She has been treated appallingly by men at all stages of her life, from a toxic, abusive high school boyfriend to noxious (male) model agent after noxious (male) model agent. In Buying Myself Back, the best essay of the collection, a version of which was published in The Cut last year - she recalls dealing with male photographers (and their fans) who have abused her trust and her body. I’d defy anyone not to see her as the victim. Her honesty when discussing the complicated high of male attention feels blazingly taboo. You feel keenly that she came of age in the noughties (Ratajkowski was born in 1991) - a child of California in the era of Britney and Lindsay Logan, an era when young women were objectified and ridiculed and hounded by paparazzi.

Many of the essays tread similar ground; some of them feel gauzy, pondering and over-written, and don’t quite fit into any coherent narrative. She is at her best when she is clear-eyed and angry. Beauty Lessons is about how she internalised the notion of beauty as a prize - in part thanks to her parents - and how this set her up for a life of seeking validation. Transactions spotlights the seediness of Hollywood, a # MeToo montage that is by now feels depressingly old hat but finds power in its sleazy, specific details (being paid $25,000 to go to the Super Bowl; a druggy, compromised trip to Coachella) and in Ratajkowski’s own complicated feelings about it all. I was reminded that we’re still in the aftershock of #MeToo, working through it and what it means and how it can actually effect change that changes anything for real women. Ratajkowski is acknowledging that ambiguity.

Time and again, she wonders how much she gained and how much she lost from her career. “On a good day,  I’d call people sexist who condemned a woman for capitalising on her body; on a bad day, I’d hate myself and my body, and every decision I’d made in my life seemed like a glaring mistake.”  Knowing something is complicated does not absolve you from being complicit in complicating it, and the collection never really comes up with an answer to this. But perhaps there isn’t one.

My Body is out now (£16.99, Quercus)

Emily Ratajkowski claims Robin Thicke touched her breasts in Blurred Lines video

The Londoner: Emily Ratajkowski adds to body of writing after viral success

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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 grey area between consent and abuse.

Nuanced, unflinching, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a fierce writer brimming with courage and intelligence.

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Free sample, 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.

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Why I love it

Stephanie Danler

Author, Sweetbitter and Stray

I had the fortune of coming to Emily Ratajkowski’s writing without knowing much about her. I didn’t know her definition within our cultural lexicon, and I didn’t know why she was famous. This is a blessing that most readers won’t have—to meet her on her own terms—but that’s also what makes My Body even more impressive. A woman with so much visibility and influence has put herself into such an honest space. Her essays take down the artifice of celebrity and reveal a curious and unflinching human being asking hard ethical questions of society and herself.

While none of us can imagine what it’s like to be Emily Ratajkowski, what’s so remarkable about her essays is that her story is relatable. Ratajkowski takes us through her childhood and adolescence and shows us the confusing titillation of navigating sexuality and power. In “Beauty Lessons” I found myself wondering: When did I first learn about the male gaze? In “Toxic” I asked myself: When did I first internalize that gaze? And in “Transactions” I asked, When did I become complicit in it? Reading “Men Like You” and “Buying Myself Back,” I recalled the times I’ve said “No,” and it wasn’t clear enough or loud enough or it didn’t matter. In Ratajkowski’s stories there was my own young person’s naivete about the systems that bind us—but also the evolving relationship to my body and to my voice and how I want to use them within those systems. These are big topics, questions of a lifetime, and Ratajkowski isn’t insinuating that she has an answer. I think one of the gifts of this book is that she seems to know this work is never finished. The growth is in continuing to try.

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My Body Hardcover – November 9, 2021

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.

• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Metropolitan Books
• Publication date November 9, 2021
• Dimensions 5.25 x 1 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 1250817862
• ISBN-13 978-1250817860
• See all details

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Praise for my body by emily ratajkowski.

Editorial Reviews

" 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 smart and glittering collection of essays . . . It’s thrilling to sit with Ratajkowski in the roiling surf of her life, in elegant stories written with uncomfortable honesty. It’s revelatory, too, to explore digital life and body politics through the eyes of a person whose body shapes a discourse, and unexpectedly moving to see the bruises left behind." ―The Guardian "[ My Body ] challenges an either-or fallacy of womanhood: that Ratajkowski can’t have both a body and a brain, can’t be both appealing and incisive, can’t have both a brand and a book . . . Most of the essays oscillate between pride and disenchantment with Ratajkowski's own beauty, especially as a means of making money and attaining a restricted kind of social capital." ―The Washington Post "No stranger to discourse and scrutiny over women’s bodies, Emily Ratajkowski brings nuanced insight to questions about empowerment versus commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality. Blending cultural criticism and personal stories, My Body is smart and powerful." ― TIME "Raises thought-provoking questions . . . By unpacking the paradoxes of capitalising on the male gaze in the Instagram era, Ratajkowski offers a fresh perspective on an age-old problem." ― Financial Times "In My Body , Emily Ratajkowski reflects on her fraught relationship with the huge number of photographs of her body that have come to define her life and career . . . If Ratajkowski is complicit in being looked at, the crime is ours for looking." ―Andrea Long Chu, The New York Times Magazine "Thoughtful and accessible . . . 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." ―Becca Rothfeld, The Guardian " My Body chart[s] a sinuous path through coming-of-age stories and meditations on capitalism and power, female friendship, and finally motherhood. Ratajkowski writes with an incisive vulnerability that can give way to images of striking beauty." ― Larissa Pham, The Nation "A fascinating work: insightful, maddening, frank . . . So astute on the subject of how her body is interpreted . . . Ratajkowski is a graceful and thoughtful writer." ―The Atlantic "My Body is a memoir, but it’s also a slow, complicated indictment of a profession and the people who propel it. Ratajkowski doesn’t so much direct blame at any one person or organization as paint a personal picture of what it was like for her to be young, naive, ambitious, and smart―and to feel reduced, far too often, to a collection of body parts." ― Vogue "Exacting . . . prescient . . . It’s good business for models to be aware of how they appear, but few have interrogated the political implications of their body for them and for those who consume it in the form of a book . . . [ My Body ] is a descent into complication." ― Vanity Fair "Soul-searching, revealing, and personal . . . A fascinating memoir of objectification and misogyny [and] a searing work of cultural criticism about sexuality, power, fame, and consumption, My Body is the brilliant debut of a fearless multihyphenate from whom we're eager to hear more." ― Esquire "Scalpel-scarp . . . Ratajkowski’s raw book of essays will change the way you see the supermodel. And, just maybe, yourself." ―ELLE "An unflinching look at the commodification of female sexuality―and one woman's fight back." ― People "Nuanced, perceptive, and brave as hell . . . A worthwhile read that proves the author is here to stay." ―Shondaland "A provocative curve ball, with absorbing essays on beauty and consent." ― The Chicago Tribune "A set of complex, ambivalent, sometimes funny, very sharp, and also cold and dark meditations on representation and sex, embodiment, and capitalism . . . A very finely honed and controlled literary object." ― Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex, Interview magazine "I devoured My Body , a book describing an adolescence so contrary to my own . . . Ratajkowski's honesty is refreshing . . . A wonderful collection of essays, and not just because a model wrote a book." ―Sarah Hagi, Gawker "Relentlessly brave . . . so important . . . The conversation [about women and commodification and sexual violence] is so heavily nuanced. And we, as a country, usually shy away from nuance. My Body should be required reading." ―Lisa Taddeo, ELLE "Make no mistake, My Body is excellent . . . Ratajkowski writes with curiosity, intellect, and an acute awareness, even celebration of, the thorny, messy web of contradictions that make up our relationship with female bodies." ― Harper's Bazaar "Deeply honest and upsettingly familiar . . . My Body is no "gotcha" of a memoir―it's a measured, introspective study of a woman who, like many, has been perceived as an object for as long as she can remember . . . It's also a gift to anyone who's spent hours analyzing their reflection in the mirror or allowed their preconceived notions of someone else affect their own self-esteem. Jealous girls, this one's for you." ―InStyle "Fascinating . . . There are no neat resolutions in My Body , but rather Ratajkowski weighing up where exploiting her image has got her and confessing―with striking vulnerability―the agony and ecstasy of being idolized." ― CNN Style " Ratajkowski’s clean, clear writing . . . wrestles with what it means to be conventionally attractive, both the good and bad . . . There’s hope in the positive thoughts about how strong her body can be, how much it can do, how it’s a beautiful tool. But it’s a tool nonetheless." ― Buzzfeed "Anyone who says they aren’t at least curious about Emrata’s memoir is lying." ―NYLON "Compulsively readable, digestible, and genuinely page-turning . . . A must-read." ― theSkimm "Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body has the urgency of a note slipped through the bars of a gilded cage. A collection of 12 essays, discrete memoirs colliding the personal and the political, the book is a reckoning with a success that has brought its author pain as much as pleasure. It is a critique of the ways we commodify the female body, written by a woman whose body is among the most lucratively commodified in the world." ― Esquire UK "An intimate and accomplished essay collection that tackles big questions about internalized misogyny, the male gaze, female empowerment, and the commodification of sexuality . . . 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." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Nuanced . . . engaging . . . a reflective coming-of-age-in-the-industry tale . . . The charm of this book lies in [Ratajkowski's] relatable writing, which shows the complex emotions and confusion of a young woman experiencing her sexual development and maturation into a capable adult . . . a refreshingly candid, fearless look into a model’s body of work and its impact on her identity and politics." ― Kirkus Reviews "Thought-provoking . . . Ratajkowski doesn’t shy away from situations or thoughts that might paint her in a negative light and it’s this raw honesty that helps to create a self-portrait of Ratajkowski as a whole, flawed person―something that she has perhaps never been fully seen as before . . . In My Body , Ratajkowski seems to have found a power that is finally all her own." ―Sydney Morning Herald “These powerful essays mark a blazing, unexpected literary debut. Emily Ratajkowski interrogates beauty, sex, power, objectification, fame, and betrayal, by both self and others, with lucidity and scorched-earth honesty. I read these pages, breathless with recognition and the thrill of reading a new voice telling it like it is.” ― Dani Shapiro , author of Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love "Forget what you know about Emily Ratajkowski. In My Body , she investigates the double bind of sexuality and power with a skillful eye for nuance and a noteworthy fearlessness. These essays don’t cut corners―we are all implicated in this web of misogyny and objectification, even Ratajkowski herself. For all the ways in which Ratajkowski’s life is extraordinary, or the way in which these stories will shock readers, My Body thrives on moments when her experience as a woman―with its triumphs and missteps―is resoundingly universal." ― Stephanie Danler , author of Sweetbitter "Emily Ratajkowski’s first essay collection needs to be read by everyone. She explores body politics―and the politics of her body―through a uniquely feminist lens in stories that are both page turning and moving as hell." ― Amy Schumer , author of The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo "Reading My Body is to accompany an extraordinary individual and activist, one who is deeply passionate and thoughtful, as she navigates the joys and pains of life in a digital era. Our experiences may be different, but Emily Ratajkowski’s presentation of diverse perspectives forges a path towards understanding." ― Tamika D. Mallory , co-founder, Until Freedom "In prose that is by turns honey smooth and vicious, uproarious and wounded, Emily Ratajkowski has captured the complicated terrain of having a body people want to sell while having her own agenda she refuses to give up. She knows the pain that lives in every woman and she isn’t afraid to link arms and say she’s been there, and that it hurts. This is the book for all women trying to place their bodies on the map of consumption versus control, and all who want to better understand their impulses. It left me much changed." ― Lena Dunham , author of Not That Kind of Girl

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Metropolitan Books (November 9, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250817862
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250817860
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 8 inches
• #401 in Feminist Theory (Books)
• #722 in Essays (Books)
• #2,351 in Women's Biographies

About the author

Emily ratajkowski.

Emily Ratajkowski has established herself as a multi-faceted talent -- entrepreneur, writer, actress, model and activist.

Most recently, Ratajkowski was commissioned by New York Magazine for a self-written essay entitled "Buying Myself Back,” which led to wide-spread public discourse on image ownership. Immediately following, she landed her first book deal, an essay collection called “My Body,” which will be published by Metropolitan Books in 2021.

Since 2017, Ratajkowski has successfully translated her 26 million+ followers on Instagram into a successful direct-to-consumer business via her apparel line INAMORATA, alongside her business partner Kat Mendenhall and a small team of all female employees. What started as a line of bathing suits has since expanded into a multi-category swim, lingerie and ready-to-wear brand that is designed and marketed exclusively by Emily. In 2019, her success was recognized by The Daily with the prestigious Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

In recent years, Ratajkowski has also seen exponential success in her modeling career, where she has claimed the covers of Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Vogue Italia, Vogue Australia, Vogue Spain, Vogue Germany, Madame Figaro, GQ, and Glamour Magazine, as well as InStyle’s British, Australian and American editions. She has worked with countless international brands, walking in the Versace, Marc Jacobs, Dolce and Gabbana and Miu Miu fashion shows. She is currently the face of L’Oréal’s hair care line Kerastase and formerly of Paco Rabanne’s fragrance Pure XS. She has become a subject of choice for renowned fashion photographers including Inez and Vinoodh, Mert & Marcus, David Sims, Mario Testino, and Giampaolo Sgura, among others.

On the acting front, she has appeared in multiple films. In 2018, she appeared alongside Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. In 2016, she was seen in Joe Swanberg’s anthology series Easy for Netflix. In 2015, she starred in two films for Warner Bros – opposite Zac Efron in coming-of-age drama We Are Your Friends and as Adrien Grenier’s love interest in Entourage: The Movie. She was seen in her first major movie role in 2014, playing Andie in Gone Girl, the David Fincher-directed adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling mystery novel. It was released nationwide by 20th Century Fox and New Regency in October 2014, to critical, award and box office acclaim.

Ratajkowski is also outspoken politically, continually using her platform to advocate for her political beliefs. She has been affiliated with Planned Parenthood since 2013. She campaigned for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. In 2018, she was arrested in Washington D.C. for protesting the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

She was born in London and raised in Encinitas, California. Her parents are both artists; her father a painter and her mother an English professor and writer. Their careers afforded Ratajkowski the opportunity to live and travel throughout Europe at a young age, spending much of her time in Ireland and Spain. She spent one year studying Art at UCLA before leaving to pursue her career.

Currently, she splits her time between Los Angeles and New York City.

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Customers find the book well-written and easy to relate to their own life issues. They also describe the emotional resonance as honest, unflinching, and memorable. Readers appreciate the authenticity and content as raw and honest. They describe the content as relatable, important, and truthful.

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Customers find the content relatable, insightful, and emotional. They also say the book has real moments of empowerment and is extremely important. Readers also mention that Emily is the most innocent and transparent soul they've ever come across.

"... Engaging essays & I loved the refreshing feeling of reading a new story after the last." Read more

"...It’s unpretentious and highly relatable, yet very enlightening ...." Read more

"...Ratajkowski’s novel is honest, unflinching, emotional , & memorable. I never felt like her writing was contrived or overly stylized...." Read more

"...Emily is most probably the most innocent and transparent soul that I’ve ever come across. A highly recommended read - if you dare" Read more

Customers find the book well written, easy to read, and interesting. They also say the essays are raw, real, and relatable. Readers also say everything the author wrote resonates deeply.

"...It kept me flipping the pages, really enjoyed the flow & inviting writing ...." Read more

"...She is a natural writer , and the atmospheres that she creates are palpable, and although we’re worlds apart as people, it’s not hard to see yourself..." Read more

"...Overall, this is a very well-written & entertaining look into an even more interesting life. Job well done, Ms. Ratajkowski!" Read more

"...So beautifully written and so easy to read ! I looked forward to coming home and reading this book every single day!" Read more

Customers appreciate the raw, honest, and genuine feel of the book.

"...snippet in NY mag, I found the book to be very sharp, vulnerable, and honest ...." Read more

"... Ratajkowski’s novel is honest , unflinching, emotional, & memorable. I never felt like her writing was contrived or overly stylized...." Read more

"...The book is raw , emotional, and feels genuine, it feels like it was written to get some of her feelings down on paper, and also not just to make..." Read more

"The essays were raw, real , and somehow relatable despite our lives having no similarities on paper, the words she wrote hit close to home." Read more

Customers find the writing quite strong throughout the book. They also say it's not pretentious or snobby.

"...to reading her snippet in NY mag, I found the book to be very sharp, vulnerable , and honest...." Read more

"...Ratajkowski’s novel is honest, unflinching , emotional, & memorable. I never felt like her writing was contrived or overly stylized...." Read more

"...popular culture right now, but her writing, which is actually quite strong throughout , is not pretentious or snobby...." Read more

"...I appreciate that she's vulnerable and honest about her need for male validation, even as she realizes that's a monumentally bad idea...." Read more

Customers find the book moving, engaging, and thought-provoking. They also appreciate the flow and inviting writing.

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Emily Ratajkowski Is Taking Control

The author of My Body discusses her ever-evolving feminism, her advice to young models, and her commitment to telling her own story.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

"What is the power of my body?" wonders Emily Ratajkowski in her new collection of essays. "Is it ever my power?"

This is the animating question of My Body , a blistering debut by the superstar model, entrepreneur, actress, and now author. Ratajkowski explodes onto the literary scene with this collection of twelve soul-searching essays, each one a revealing and personal exploration of what happens when a woman’s body becomes a commodity. In "Blurred Lines," Ratajkowski remembers her time on the set of the Robin Thicke music video that catapulted her to superstardom, evaluating how at 21 years old, she mistook exploitation for empowerment. In "Buying Myself Back," she muses on the bifurcation between "the real Emily" and "the high-art Emily," unpacking the violations that occur when her image is sold and shared without her consent. In "Men Like You," she pens a scorching open letter to a lecherous photographer, excoriating the predatory men who gatekeep the modeling industry. All the while, as she considers her exploitation, Ratajkowski evaluates her own complicity on this "spectrum of compromise," remarking at one point that her own hypocrisy gives her a headache.

Collected together in My Body , these essays make for a gutting memoir of the objectification and misogyny Ratajkowski has experienced, both personally and professionally, as well as a searing work of cultural criticism about sexuality, power, fame, and consumption. But if you're looking to Ratajkowski for answers, she doesn't have them. "I don't know how to solve patriarchy," Ratajkowski told Esquire . "I don't know how to solve capitalism. I wish that I had the answers." My Body isn't a manifesto, but rather a portrait of a person sorting through the questions of a lifetime about politics, power, and selfhood. It's also the awakening of a fiercely talented writer.

Ahead of My Body 's release, Ratajkowski spoke with Esquire by Zoom to discuss her ever-evolving feminism, her advice to young models, and her commitment to telling her own story.

Esquire: Tell me about your awakening as a writer. When did you start writing essays, and how did it change you?

Emily Ratajkowski: Writing was always something I loved. At one point, I considered going to school for it. Then I decided to do visual art and later dropped out of college, but it was always something I loved. At a certain point in my life, I did have an awakening. My mom got sick when I was 26 or 27. I wanted to understand experiences that I had a lot of shame around. I also wanted to understand what I believed about being a woman and about my politics. Writing felt like the way to do that. I couldn't really do it in conversations with friends. I couldn't formulate the ideas or explain the nuances and complexity in my point of view without writing. For awhile, I was writing for myself. Then eventually, I had enough that I thought it could be a book.

ESQ: A recurring theme in these essays is your desire to be in control, and to have agency. Evaluating your trajectory in Hollywood, you write, "I knew I was a whole and complex person with thoughts and ideas and things I wanted to make and say. I wanted so desperately to prove them all wrong. I just hadn't gotten the chance yet." Now that you've written My Body , do you feel you've gotten that chance to prove people wrong, or that you've been able to express that whole and complex part of yourself?

ER: Yes. I definitely feel like I've gotten a chance to make something—and to make art, that feels so good. I feel like the book is an expression of who I am. Whether it will be received as such remains to be seen. I don't know how people are going to take it, but certainly for me, it's been an accomplishment that's made me feel like so much more of a whole person. That’s really gratifying.

ESQ: Speaking of the reception, it strikes me that we live in a world that resists nuance, especially when it comes to activism. There’s not a lot of room to be on a journey as an activist, even though we all are, of course. Getting it wrong or being incomplete in our thinking can be a fraught thing, especially in public. In My Body , you take us along on your journey as a feminist. As you were writing the book, thinking about bringing it out into the world, how did you grapple with that question of publicly growing in your activism? Were you nervous about revealing that journey?

ER: In my ideal situation, people would read the book in its entirety, but I know that that's not always going to happen. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night, a little bit. That being said, I start the book off by saying, “This is what I so adamantly believed for a very long time, and my opinions have changed. Here’s the book about why they've changed.” I hope we someday live in a world where that becomes more acceptable. I do think that right now, it's like you're either on the bad team or the good team. Especially on the left—it's like you have to get everything right. That’s not been my experience. I'm a growing, developing person; I might look back at this book in ten years and think, "Actually, I have a completely different idea about my experience.” I think that evolution is so important, because it contributes to the conversation. Ultimately that evolution is a great thing, but it's also scary to put yourself out there thinking you’re right, knowing also that perhaps everything will change.

ESQ: The book often comes back to the idea of empowerment, and your changing relationship to that term. You write, "What does true empowerment feel like? Is it feeling wanted? Is it commanding someone's attention?" We see you wrestle with this at every stage of life. What does true empowerment feel like to you now?

ER: It’s hard to talk about empowerment. That word gets thrown around so much that I feel we lose what it even means in the first place. I’ve gained undeniable power, having the status that I do as a model. There's financial success in that. There's even the ability to talk to you about this book, or to have the book published—that comes from being a famous woman. I gained that fame by capitalizing off my body, which is important to acknowledge, because the book could lead you to think that I'm not aware of that. I hope it doesn't lead anyone to that impression, but it focuses on other parts of my understanding of power. While I have that power through who I am, it was really through writing, through being able to control my story by making and creating something, that I understood the meaning of empowerment.

ESQ: You often write about dissociating from your body. What makes you feel embodied or present in your body?

ER: I'm still working on that. I’ve lived a life of dissociating, and of having a hard time feeling like I’m inside of my body. I find joy in walking around New York City. I find joy in eating. Certainly, pregnancy and giving birth to my son has given me a new respect for my body. That helped me let go of the need to control my body and feel like I'm in charge of it. But I think it's still a work in progress for me, and I don't know that it ever won't be.

Want More Interviews With Great Writers?

ESQ: Speaking of motherhood and pregnancy, that final essay about giving birth just left me feeling so raw. It's so beautiful and primal. You write about how men tend to have a very reductive view of the stages of a woman's life. You argue that men shuttle a woman along from sexy to mother to invisible. How has becoming a mother changed your outlook on this?

ER: I'm still new at all this. My son is not even eight months old. At one point, I resisted the urge to write about motherhood, because I don't think I have enough of a perspective on it yet. That being said, I think I have a new understanding of the role that a woman can play in the world. I gave birth to my son, but I also published this book. Becoming someone who's not only responsible for another human's life all the time, but also telling my story and making something… both of those things have given me a new appreciation for the life cycle of a woman that goes beyond what our culture offers.

ESQ: In “Buying Myself Back,” you write, "Up until then, Instagram had felt like the only place where I could control how I present myself to the world—a shrine to my autonomy.” Your fraught relationship with social media is a through-line in the book. So many of us share that struggle. How are you thinking about social media, these days?

ER: It’s difficult. I still feel like Instagram is a place where I can have control. I get to decide what the caption is, what the post is, what the crop is—anything. How I share my personal life or how I'm promoting this book is something I navigate day by day. I have a timer set for an hour on Instagram. More often than not, I find myself going past that. I feel grateful to have it as a medium; I think about women in the past who didn't have this way to represent themselves that was just theirs. That being said, the internet is a place where women lose control over their image. You don’t have to be famous to worry about revenge porn. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. I’m still trying to figure it out.

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ESQ: One of the essays I found so interesting is “Men Like You.” Most of the book is written in first person, directed inward as you evaluate your own thoughts, but “Men Like You” strikes a stylistically different note. In this essay, you switch into direct address. It feels very distinct from the other essays in the book. What did writing in that different perspective afford you?

ER: I was almost finished with the book when I received an email from a photographer I'd worked with. I got really pissed off and wrote a pretty sassy, angry email back. At that point, I thought maybe this needed to be an essay, because I didn’t get to say all the things I wanted to say to this person. With the book, I was so careful and intentional not to direct punishment or anger toward people who came into my path. If I was angry with myself, I wrote about it very clearly, but I really made sure not to be punishing toward anyone. There was some part of me that felt exhausted by that. I wanted to ask myself the question, “Why are you so afraid of being angry at someone?" Maybe it's okay to be angry. Maybe the anger is bigger than that person. How could I share that in a piece of writing?

ESQ: I’m reminded of what you write about women crying when they’re angry: “I know women cry out of shame. We are afraid of our anger, embarrassed by the way it transforms us. We cry to quell what we feel, even when it’s trying to tell us something, even when it has every right to exist.”

ER: I didn’t realize that I cry when I get angry until I thought about it as I wrote. I think it’s a way of softening ourselves. We make ourselves feel like should be tended to rather than be something scary. Sometimes it's okay to be angry. There are reasons to be angry.

ESQ: So many women will see themselves reflected in this book. As you write, "Model or influencer or actor or not, all women know what it's like to use their sexuality for security in some capacity." But I'm curious how men will receive the book, and what they’ll see of themselves reflected on the page. What do you hope men take away from My Body ?

Sometimes it's okay to be angry. There are reasons to be angry.

ER: I want it to open their eyes to the female experience. As much as this is a book written for women about the female experience, in many ways, the reason I felt so compelled to write it was my frustration with how little men could relate or understand my experiences. Men that I've dated, or male friends of mine. I wondered, “How can I get you to understand my experiences?” I hope that when men read it, they'll have a better understanding of what it means to live in a female body in the world.

ESQ: To your earlier point about growth as an activist, maybe the book could be a way station on their journeys as feminists.

ER: I just did this Time 100 panel with Tarana Burke and Anita Hill. They said, “How many more women have to cut themselves open and tell these incredible, vulnerable stories before we acknowledge that gender violence and sexism are problems?” That being said, I have hope that somehow this book will open some eyes.

ESQ: Were there any of those narratives of women cutting themselves open that were impactful for you as you wrote this book?

ER: I really recommend The Reckonings , by Lacy M. Johnson. She wrote about the insane experience of a former boyfriend kidnapping her. This book is about justice and change—what does that look like? How do we heal from terrible things that happen to us? She goes everywhere from climate change to talking about how we offer condolences to very personal experiences with her daughter. That book tore something open in me. At first, I thought, “There are so many books. What else can I offer the world?” But seeing the places she went and the nuances she was able to get at inspired me in a real way.

Scribner The Reckonings: Essays on Justice for the Twenty-First Century

ESQ: What’s your advice to a young woman coming up as a model or an actress today? You write in the introduction about feeling such tenderness toward your young self. Do you feel that same tenderness toward young women following in your footsteps?

ER: I feel a lot of tenderness. I think we're so hard on young women. We look at a 22-year-old’s Instagram page and judge her for the way she represents herself, rather than thinking, "Why would this woman want to represent herself this way?" I would never tell a young woman not to model. There's real success that can happen there—it opens doors in all kinds of ways. I'm very grateful for my career and where it's led me in life. That being said, it would totally be wrong for me to say that it's just all flowers and roses and power. I write in the book that I felt like I was a hustler; I was savvy and I was working the system. A lot of young women can feel that way. In our relationships with older men, we think we’re the ones in charge, because these power dynamics are really shrouded by our culture. We work hard to make it seem like women do have power by being young and beautiful, but it's just not that simple. I would hope that young women give themselves a break instead of being so hard on themselves. I hope they think about these relationships and these dynamics, and understand how scary they can be.

ESQ: My Body offers no manifesto about how you want modeling or Hollywood or the world to change. You write in the introduction that you’re a work in progress, and that you don’t have all the answers. Was there ever a version of the book that included a roadmap for change, or did you want to avoid that?

ER: It's something I wanted to stay away from, because I don't know how to solve patriarchy. I don't know how to solve capitalism. I wish that I had the answers. Even if I had the answers, we all have to agree what the problems are before we can work towards a solution. That’s what I hoped to achieve with this book: to make the unspoken, fuzzy, unclear situations feel very clear, by laying them out as simply as I could. I want men and women to understand all the factors playing into these interactions, whether they involve a model or a young girl who’s just hit puberty.

ESQ: So many women don’t realize that something terrible has happened to them until someone else tells them the truth of it.

ER: That was my experience. I dated a boy in high school that I write about in the book. It felt like an embarrassing relationship—it didn't make me feel safe, and there were all kinds of things about it that left me feeling uneasy. It wasn’t until I talked with a female friend about it that I realized what was really going on. I've had a few people read the book say to me, "That was stalking." I'm writing about something that happened to me fifteen years ago, and having someone use the word “stalking” felt like a huge relief, all these years. I thought, "Oh, that's right. That was stalking." You can learn so much about yourself and gain perspective from writing.

It felt really important to me to write my own story.

ESQ: One of the most beautiful passages of the book is this rallying cry toward the end: "I want more for myself. I will proclaim all of my mistakes and contradictions for all of the women who cannot do so: for all the women we've called muses without learning their names, whose silence we mistook for consent. I stood on their shoulders to get here." We talked about what this book could mean to young models or young actresses, but what do you hope it means for women from more everyday walks of life?

ER: My experience is only my experience. I didn't want to try to write about what I thought other people's experiences were. I don't know what it's like to be raised in a religious household where modesty is something that's important. That wasn't my experience. I hope that this book shines a light at some of the core ideals that we have in our Western culture, specifically around beauty and objectifying women. I hope that women who have lived a completely different life, whether by choice or what they were born into, can recognize the universality in the female experience.

ESQ: Is there another book in you? Are you working on another one already?

ER: I'm not right now, partly because it's so hard to be talking about a book while having the free space to think about what you want to say next. That being said, I certainly plan on writing more. I definitely hope that this is the first of many books.

ESQ: Do you have any interest in writing fiction?

ER: After this book, which is so exposing and vulnerable, comes out, I'm going to think, “Maybe I should write some fiction, dammit.” It felt really important to me to write my own story. I don't think fictionalizing it would have been as impactful. That being said, maybe I will decide to fictionalize things in the future.

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Esquire Book Club

Teddy Wayne Knows What Makes the World Go Round

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What to Do If You're 'Divorce-Curious'

The Western Renaissance Begins With This Novel

The False Promise of Driverless Cars

Tim O'Brien Knows What Makes for a Good Lie

Double Trouble

Booksellers Are At the Vanguard of Culture Wars

Colson Whitehead Knows the Secret to Reinvention

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An Oddly Compelling Case to Ditch Your Car

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My Body, Emily Ratajkowski review: Candid essays on the fetishisation of girls, women and female beauty

In her book of essays, the model, actor and entrepreneur tries to evaluate the impact of modelling on her identity and politics, article bookmarked.

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As Emrata, model, actor and entrepreneur, Emily Ratajkowski is the gold standard of social media influencer, having amassed nearly 30 million Instagram followers. In her book of essays, Ratajkowski, now 30, tries to evaluate the impact of modelling on her identity and politics. Most of the headlines preceding the book resulted from an allegation in an essay called “Blurred Lines”, named after the objectifying video for Robin Thicke’s song of the same name, in which Ratajkowski starred. She alleges that Thicke, displaying a “goofy grin”, groped her breasts – although this particular essay is more about the wider destructive problem of why some women are treated as nothing more than hired mannequins.

Ratajkowski, who at 16 was posing for a surfing magazine as their “Taste of the Month”, is well placed to write about the fetishisation of girls and female beauty. She is candid about her own compromises, her desire to make money out of her looks and the reality of desperately craving male validation.

There are oddities to her story, especially her curious relationship with a schoolteacher mother who encouraged her narcissism (“when she watched me, she was often calculating: examining and comparing,” admits Ratajkowski), but you feel she is genuinely trying to make sense of why she was driven to “hustle” her way to the top. She also offers her views on Britney Spears , Halle Berry, Pamela Anderson and her own topless role in Gone Girl . A lot of men come out of the book very badly. The most horrific revelations are about Ratajkowski’s experiences of being sexually abused, raped and exploited.

Emrata’s voice presumably carries huge weight and one can only hope that her critique of “a value system that revolves around men and their desire” has some impact on the minds of her young Insta fan base.

‘My Body’ by Emily Ratajkowski is published by Quercus on 9 November, £16.99

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Buying Myself Back

When does a model own her own image.

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

My mother’s ex-husband , Jim (who, until I turned 8, I’d thought was my uncle), had Google alerts set for me. Every time my name appeared in the news — if you can call gossip websites “news” — he was notified immediately via email. Jim was well meaning but an alarmist; he wished to maintain a relationship with me, and these alerts provided him with perfect opportunities to reach out.

I was walking through Tompkins Square Park with a friend and her dog and sipping a coffee when Jim’s name lit up my phone. “See you’re getting sued. My advice …” he began. Jim was a lawyer, familiar with people calling him up to ask for legal advice and therefore used to doling out his opinion even when it wasn’t solicited. “I guess this comes with the territory of being a public persona,” he wrote in a follow-up text.

I guess, I thought.

I sat down on a bench and Googled my name, discovering that I was in fact being sued, this time for posting a photo of myself on Instagram that had been taken by a paparazzo. I learned the next day from my own lawyer that despite being the unwilling subject of the photograph, I could not control what happened to it. She explained that the attorney behind the suit had been serially filing cases like these, so many that the court had labeled him a “copyright troll.” “They want $150,000 in damages for your ‘use’ of the image,” she told me, sighing heavily.

In the photo, I’m holding a gigantic vase of flowers that completely covers my face. I’d purchased the flowers for my friend Mary’s birthday at a shop around the corner from my old apartment in Noho. The arrangement was my own; I’d picked flowers from various buckets around the shop while telling the women behind the counter that my friend was turning 40. “I want this bouquet to look like her!” I’d said, grabbing a handful of lemon leaves.

I liked the shot the paparazzo got but not because it was a good photo of me. I’m completely unrecognizable in it; only my bare legs and the big old-fashioned tweed blazer I was wearing are visible. The wild-looking flowers substitute for my head, as if the arrangement had grown skinny legs and thrown on dirty white sneakers — a bouquet hitting the concrete streets, taking a walk out on the town.

The next day, after I’d seen myself in the picture online, I sent it to Mary, writing, “I wish I actually had a flower bouquet for a head.”

“ Ha! Same,” she wrote back immediately.

I posted the image to Instagram a few hours later, placing text on top of it in bold white caps that read mood forever. Since 2013, when I appeared in a viral music video, paparazzi have lurked outside my front door. I’ve become accustomed to large men appearing suddenly between cars or jumping out from behind corners, with glassy black holes where their faces should be. I posted the photograph of me using the bouquet as a shield on my Instagram because I liked what it said about my relationship with the paparazzi, and now I was being sued for it. I’ve become more familiar with seeing myself through the paparazzi’s lenses than I am with looking at myself in the mirror.

And I have learned that my image, my reflection, is not my own.

While we were together several years ago, my boyfriend befriended a guy who worked at an important international art gallery. The gallerist said we might want to take a look at its upcoming show of Richard Prince’s “Instagram Paintings.” The “paintings” were actually just images of Instagram posts, on which the artist had commented from his account, printed on oversize canvases. There was one of me in black-and-white: a nude photograph of my body in profile, seated with my head in my hands, my eyes narrowed and beckoning, an image that was taken for the cover of a magazine.

Everyone, especially my boyfriend, made me feel like I should be honored to have been included in the series. Richard Prince is an important artist, and the implication was that I should feel grateful to him for deeming my image worthy of a painting. How validating. And a part of me was honored. I’d studied art at UCLA and could appreciate Prince’s Warholian take on Instagram. Still, I make my living off posing for photographs, and it felt strange that a big-time, fancy artist worth a lot more money than I am should be able to snatch one of my Instagram posts and sell it as his own.

The paintings were going for $80,000 apiece, and my boyfriend wanted to buy mine. At the time, I’d made just enough money to pay for half of a down payment on my first apartment with him. I was flattered by his desire to own the painting, but I didn’t feel the same urge to own the piece as he did. It seemed strange to me that he or I should have to buy back a picture of myself — especially one I had posted on Instagram, which up until then had felt like the only place where I could control how I present myself to the world, a shrine to my autonomy. If I wanted to see that picture every day, I could just look at my own grid.

To my boyfriend’s disappointment, his gallerist friend texted him only a few days later to say that a big-time collector wanted it.

I knew of the gallerist through a bunch of different people and had met him once or twice, so it didn’t take long to find out what actually happened to the piece. The giant image of me was hanging above the couch in his West Village apartment.

“It’s kind of awkward,” a friend of mine said, describing the painting’s placement in the gallerist’s home. “He, like, sits under naked you.”

But it turned out Prince had made another Instagram painting of me, and this one was still available. The piece was a reproduction of a photo from my first appearance in Sports Illustrated. I was paid $150 for the shoot and a couple grand later, when the magazine came out, for the “usage” of my image. I hated most of the photos from that spread because I didn’t look like myself: The makeup was too heavy, there were too many extensions in my hair, and the editors had kept telling me to smile in a fake way. But I did like a few of the images of me in body paint and had posted one of those pictures, which Prince then reused for this “painting.”

Prince’s comment on that post, included among several others at the bottom of the painting, alludes to an imagined day he has spent with me on the beach: “U told me the truth. U lost the [anchor emoji]. No hurt. No upset. All energy bunny now that it’s sunny,” it reads. I liked the comment he left on this one far better than his comment on the black-and-white study, where he asks, “Were you built in a science lab by teenage boys?”

When I realized we had the opportunity to procure this one, it suddenly felt important to me that I own at least half of it; we decided to purchase it directly from the artist and split the cost down the middle. I liked the idea of getting into collecting art, and the Prince seemed like a smart investment. But mostly, I couldn’t imagine not having a claim on something that would hang in my home. And I knew my boyfriend felt like this was some kind of conquest; he’d worked hard to get it. I should be appreciative, I thought. Just split it with him. Besides, I was 23; I hadn’t made enough money to comfortably spend $80,000 on art.

When the piece arrived, I was annoyed. I’d seen online that other subjects of the Instagram paintings were being gifted “studies,” the smaller drafts of the final works. My boyfriend asked the studio, and some months later, a 24-inch mounted black-and-white “study” arrived. It was a different shot than the large piece we had purchased, but I still felt victorious.

When our relationship ended, about a year and a half later, I assumed he wouldn’t want the canvas — a giant picture of me, now his ex — so we began to make arrangements to divide our belongings, including the artwork we had bought together. In exchange for two other pieces of art, I received ownership of the Prince.

A few weeks later, I realized — sitting up straight, half-asleep in my bed with my jaw clenched in the middle of the night — that I hadn’t collected the black-and-white study the studio had gifted to me. My ex told me he “hadn’t thought about that” and told me he’d moved the piece into storage. We went back and forth via email until he told me I needed to pay him $10,000 for the study, a price he’d arrived at from his “knowledge of the market.”

“But it was a gift to me!” I wrote.

I reached out to Prince’s studio. Could they offer some clarity or assistance? Help me get him to back off this ridiculous ransom? Through my contacts, I was assured that they would reach out to him to confirm that the study had been a gift from Prince to me and me alone. He didn’t respond well to this assertion.

All these men, some of whom I knew intimately and others I’d never met, were debating who owned an image of me. I was considering my options when it occurred to me that my ex, whom I’d been with for three years, had countless naked pictures of me on his phone.

I thought about something that had happened a couple of years prior, when I was 22. I’d been lying next to a pool under the white Los Angeles sun when a friend sent me a link to a website called 4chan. Private photos of me — along with those of hundreds of other women hacked in an iCloud phishing scam — were expected to leak onto the internet. A post on 4chan had compiled a list of actresses and models whose nudes would be published, and my name was on it. The pool’s surface sparkled in the sunlight, nearly blinding me as I squinted to scroll through the list of ten, 20, 50 women’s names until I landed on mine. There it was, in plain text, the way I’d seen it listed before on class roll calls: so simple, like it meant nothing.

Later that week, the photos were released to the world. Pictures meant only for a person who loved me and with whom I’d felt safe — photos taken out of trust and intimacy — were now being manically shared and discussed on online forums and rated “hot” or “not.” Rebecca Solnit wrote recently about the message that comes with revenge porn: “You thought you were a mind, but you’re a body, you thought you could have a public life, but your private life is here to sabotage you, you thought you had power so let us destroy you.” I’d been destroyed. I’d lost ten pounds in five days and a chunk of hair fell out a week later, leaving a perfectly round circle of white skin on the back of my head.

The next day, I wired my ex the money. I didn’t think I could survive going through what I’d been through again. I exchanged the safety of those hundreds of Emilys for one image — an image that had been taken from my platform and produced as another man’s valuable and important art.

I hung the giant Instagram painting, the image from the Sports Illustrated shoot, on a prominent wall in my new home in Los Angeles. When people visited, they’d rush toward it and yell, “Oh, you got one of these!”

My guests would cross their arms and study the painting, read Prince’s comment, and smile. They’d often turn back to me to ask if I knew what the comment above Prince’s, from some unknown user, said. “Is it German?” they’d ask, squinting.

Eventually, after enough people asked, I decided to translate the comment myself.

“It’s about how saggy my tits look,” I told my husband, whom I now share a home with. He came over and put his arms around my back, whispering, “I think you’re perfect.” I felt myself stiffen. Even the love and appreciation of a man I trusted, I had learned, could mutate into possessiveness. I felt protective of my image. Of her. Of me.

The next time someone asked about the German comment, I lied and said I didn’t know.

In 2012, my agent told me I should buy a bus ticket from Penn Station to the Catskills, where a photographer named Jonathan Leder would pick me up and reimburse me for my fare. We’d shoot in Woodstock, for some arty magazine I’d never heard of called Darius, and I’d spend the night at his place, she said. This was something the industry calls an unpaid editorial, meaning it would be printed in the magazine and the “exposure” would be my reward.

I had been working with my agent full time for about two years. She had known me since I was 14, when I landed my first modeling and acting jobs, but she began to take my career more seriously when I turned 20. I began to take my career more seriously, too: I dropped out of UCLA to pursue modeling and was working quite regularly. I opened an IRA and paid off my first and only year at college with the money I’d made. I wasn’t doing anything fancy or important, mostly e-commerce jobs for places like Forever 21 and Nordstrom, but the money was better than what any of my friends were making as waitresses or in retail. I felt free: free of the asshole bosses my friends had to deal with, free of student-loan debt, and free to travel and eat out more and do whatever the hell I pleased. It seemed crazy to me that I had ever valued school over the financial security that modeling was beginning to provide.

When I looked up Jonathan’s work online, I saw a few fashion editorials he’d shot on film. A little boring, I remember thinking. Hipster-y. His Instagram was mostly pictures of his home and a few strange, retro images of a very young-looking Russian woman with obvious breast implants. Kind of weird, I thought, but I had seen weirder. Maybe this is just the stuff he puts on his Instagram? His work on Google looked celestial and pretty. Legit. I didn’t bother to investigate further. Besides, my agent was in full control of my career: I did what she told me to do, and in return, she was supposed to expand my portfolio so I could book more paid jobs and establish myself in the industry. As promised, Jonathan picked me up from the bus stop in Woodstock. He had a small frame and was plainly dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He seemed distinctly disinterested in me and didn’t meet my eyes as he drove us in a vintage car over streets lined with tall grass. He came off as a nervous, neurotic artist type. He was very different from the other “fashion” photographers I’d met up to that point, men who tended to be L.A. douchebags with strategically placed highlights in their hair who smelled like sweet cologne.

I was wearing a tank top that I’d tucked into the front of high-waisted shorts, and as we drove, I watched the soft blonde hairs on my thighs glisten in the sunlight. Jonathan never looked at me directly, but I remember feeling watched, aware of our proximity and my body and how I might appear from his driver’s seat. The more disinterested he seemed, the more I wanted to prove myself worthy of his attention. I knew that impressing these photographers was an important part of building a good reputation. Does he think I’m smart? Especially pretty? I thought about all the other young models who must have come to this bus station in the Catskills and sat in this car.

When we arrived at Jonathan’s home, two children were sitting at the kitchen table. I stood awkwardly at the door in my short shorts and felt embarrassingly young — unwomanly even, like a kid myself. I noted the time from a clock on the wall: How are we going to shoot today if it’ll be dark in just an hour and a half? Maybe we’ll shoot very early tomorrow, I figured. I brought my hands up to the straps of my backpack and shifted my weight from side to side, waiting for instruction. I felt relief wash over me when a makeup artist arrived at the house and proceeded to set up on the kitchen table next to Jonathan’s kids. She was older than me and quiet. I felt more comfortable upon her arrival; the pressure was off me to know how to be and how to compensate for Jonathan’s strangeness now that another adult was there and a woman.

The makeup artist finished setting up and began working on my face while Jonathan cooked dinner. He offered me a glass of red wine, which, in my nervousness and desire to seem older and wiser than I was, I accepted and drank quickly. I took deep sips as the makeup artist painted a thick, black, wet liner onto the tops of my eyelids. I opened my iPhone’s selfie camera in my lap to check her work. She was making me look pretty, transforming me to fit Jonathan’s aesthetic vision. When he laid out old-fashioned lingerie on a kitchen chair, I began to grasp what type of girl he wanted me to be. My agent hadn’t mentioned that the shoot would be lingerie, but I wasn’t concerned; I’d done countless lingerie shoots before. I could imagine her writing to me the next day, “Jonathan loved you. Can’t wait to see pics! Xx,” as she had on other occasions.

Jonathan’s kids were picked up by someone who did not come inside the house, while the makeup artist finished preparing my face. When he was done cooking, Jonathan, the makeup artist, and I all sat around the kitchen table eating pasta, as if we were a small family. He talked about his “crazy” ex-wife and his affair with a “crazy” actress, now 21 (a year older than me, I noted). He told me about his marriage’s undoing; that the actress, whom Jonathan had cast for a short film he’d been making at the time, came to live with them. He showed me naked pictures, Polaroids, he’d taken during their affair. She seemed so vulnerable in Jonathan’s photos, even though I could tell she was trying to look strong and grown up from the way she held her face square to the camera, chin up, her hair falling perfectly over one eye.

“No one has shot her better,” he said over his shoulder, as I continued to riffle through the Polaroids.

Something switched inside me then. As I looked at the images, I grew competitive. This guy shoots all these women, but I’m going to show him that I’m the sexiest and smartest of them all. That I am special. I chewed on my lower lip as I handed the neat stack of Polaroids back to Jonathan.

I wondered where he normally kept these Polaroids. Were they all meticulously labeled in a giant filing cabinet somewhere in his attic, the names of young women written in ink on their assigned drawers? The image of a morgue came to mind.

It was dark, and my hair was still in rollers as I finished my third glass of wine, my mouth stained purple. I was used to unusual setups on shoots, but I’d never been in a situation like this before. I made sure not to eat too much, while Jonathan silently refilled my glass and I kept drinking. In the industry, I’d been taught that it was important to earn a reputation as hardworking and easygoing. “You never know who they’ll be shooting with next!” my agent would remind me. We finished our meal relatively quickly, and I helped bring dishes to the sink as Jonathan washed them. “Thank you, that was so good,” I said politely. I turned and leaned against the counter, opening my phone. Jonathan sneered. “You girls and your Instagram. You’re obsessed! I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head and drying a plate with a dish towel.

The makeup artist painted on a bright-red lipstick, and I changed into a high-waisted pink lingerie set. We headed to the upstairs bedroom to begin shooting. I sat up on an antique brass bed frame, my knees pressing into the faded floral-print sheets. As Jonathan shot the first Polaroid, I explained that modeling was just about making money for me. “When the economy crashed and I started to get more opportunities to work, it just made sense that I’d pursue this while I could,’’ I said. I was used to defining myself with this explanation, to men especially. “I’m not dumb; I know modeling has its expiration date. I just want to save a lot of money and then go back to school or start making art or whatever.”

Jonathan frowned as he inspected the Polaroid. “You girls always end up spending too much money on shoes and bags,” he said. “It’s not a way to save real money.”

“I don’t buy bags,” I said weakly, but I began to doubt myself. I was dumbfounded by his easy dismissal of my life’s plan, and began to panic. What if he was right? What if at the end of this I really would have nothing?

He paused then and turned, silently walking back downstairs to the kitchen. I followed behind, shoeless and in my lingerie set. He spread the Polaroids out on the table and scratched his head, inspecting them. I peered at the pictures from over his shoulder. “These are just kind of … boring and stiff,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe take off the red lipstick, fuck up your hair.” He waved his hand at the makeup artist and went to the counter to open another bottle of wine, pouring fresh glasses for himself and me. The makeup artist rubbed her nails roughly into my scalp, loosening my curls. I could feel the acidic burn of alcohol in my chest as we proceeded back upstairs.

He was turned away from me when he said, “Let’s try naked now.’’

I’d been shot nude a handful of times before, always by men. I’d been told by plenty of photographers and agents that my body was one of the things that made me stand out among my peers. My body felt like a superpower. I was confident naked — unafraid and proud. Still, though, the second I dropped my clothes, a part of me disassociated. I began to float outside of myself, watching as I climbed back onto the bed. I arched my back and pursed my lips, fixating on the idea of how I might look through his camera lens. Its flash was so bright and I’d had so much wine that giant black spots were expanding and floating in front of my eyes.

“ iCarly, ” Jonathan said, smirking as he shot. Only his mouth was visible, the rest of his face eclipsed by his camera. That was the name of the Nickelodeon show I’d been on for two episodes while in high school.

I put my lingerie back on, and we made our way back downstairs, Jonathan in front of me, gripping the Polaroids in his fists before dropping them on the kitchen table. My face was hot from the wine, and my cheeks glowed and throbbed. He was excited as he scrutinized the pictures, holding one up close to his face and then letting it fall again.

“You know, I thought you would be bigger. A big girl,” he said, his brow furrowing as he picked up another Polaroid for inspection. He told me that when he Googled me prior to our meeting, he’d seen a particular shoot that left him with this impression.

“You know, big-boned. Fat.” He half-smiled.

“Yeah, no,” I said, laughing. “I’m like really, really tiny.”

I knew what pictures he was referencing, from early in my career. I hated them, and I hated the way I’d felt while shooting them. I hated the way the stylist had made comments about my body, about how I could never be a fashion model. I also knew, even though I never would have admitted it, that I’d been less concerned with my weight at the time of that shoot. Freer. I enjoyed food more and didn’t think so much about the shape of my ass. I didn’t have to; I wasn’t relying on modeling as much then.

I sipped my wine. “What should we shoot next?”

Time warped in the glow of the warm yellow lamps of Jonathan’s living room, the vintage lingerie draped over the musty, floral-printed armchairs. As the night went on, I became sweaty and exhausted and bleary-eyed. But I was still determined. I liked to check out the first few Polaroids Jonathan took with each new “look” and adjust my pose and body accordingly before we continued. I could feel him bristle as I exclaimed, “Oh, I like that one!”

“This one, though,” he said, holding the stack of Polaroids to his chest and flicking one around so I could catch a quick glance of it. “This one is so good because of your nipples. Your nipples change so much from hard to soft. But I like them when they’re gigantic,” he said, opening his phone to show me a vintage pinup of a woman with oversize nipples. “I love when they’re giant,” he told me. “Giant and exaggerated.” He looked back to his phone, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. I said nothing and nodded, confused but somehow feeling that he meant to insult me. I felt my stomach turn.

I had no sense of what time it was when the makeup artist announced she was going to bed. I can’t remember if we had stopped shooting and were just looking at the pictures together or what. I’m sure she was sick of my posturing with Jonathan. I remember the way she sighed as she turned away from me, vanishing. I stiffened as her presence dissolved from the living room. I was upset with her for leaving me, but I didn’t want to admit to myself that her presence had made a difference. I can handle him alone, I thought. She was a buzzkill anyway. I sat up, erect. I started talking faster and louder. I was pumped full of so much sugary wine that I felt wide awake, albeit very, very drunk.

The next thing I remember is being in the dark.

The yellow lights were switched off, and I was cold, shivering, and huddled under a blanket. Jonathan and I were on his couch, and the rough texture of his jeans rubbed against my bare legs. He was asking me about my boyfriends. My mouth was chalky, but I remember I was still talking a lot — about my dating history, which guys I really loved, which ones were whatever. As I spoke, I absentmindedly rubbed my feet against one another and against his for warmth. He told me he liked “that foot thing you’re doing,” and I remember this moment more clearly than anything else. I hate that Jonathan commented on something I’ve done throughout my life to comfort myself. I hate that sometimes, even now, when I rub my feet together because I’m cold or afraid or exhausted, I think of Jonathan.

Most of what came next was a blur except for the feeling. I don’t remember kissing, but I do remember his fingers suddenly being inside of me. Harder and harder and pushing and pushing like no one had touched me before or has touched me since. I could feel the shape of myself and my ridges, and it really, really hurt. I brought my hand instinctively to his wrist and pulled his fingers out of me with force. I didn’t say a word. He stood up abruptly and scurried silently into the darkness up the stairs.

I touched my forehead with the coolness of my palm and breathed in through my nose. I felt the bristled texture of the old couch against my back. My body was sore and fragile, and I kept stroking parts of myself with the back of my hand — my arms, my stomach, my hips — maybe to calm them or maybe to make sure they were still there, attached to the rest of me. An intense headache began to beat into my temples, and my mouth was so dry I could barely close it.

I stood up carefully, pressing my bare feet against the floorboards. I climbed up the wooden stairs and into the room where we’d shot at the beginning of the night, then lay down on the thin, flowery sheets. I shivered uncontrollably. I was both confused as to why Jonathan had left without a word and terrified that he would come back. I listened for a sign of him as I watched the blue light of dawn peek in through the window. I thought about Jonathan’s daughter. Does she normally sleep in this bed?, I wondered.

Later in the morning, I woke with a vicious hangover. I dressed quickly in the clothes I’d been wearing the day before and noticed that my hands were shaking. Downstairs, Jonathan was making coffee, and the makeup artist was already up and dressed and sitting hunched over a mug. Jonathan didn’t react much to my arrival. “You want coffee?” he asked. My temples pounded. “Sure,” I half-heartedly chimed, opening Instagram. Jonathan had put up one of the Polaroids from the night before.

He had captioned it simply “iCarly.”

It was only as I sat on the bus headed back to the city that I realized Jonathan had never paid me back for the fare.

A few months later, my agent received the oversize, heavy magazine with the Polaroids printed in its pages. Of the hundreds we had shot, only a handful were included, mostly black-and-white ones.

A couple were favorites I’d pointed out to Jonathan on the night of the shoot. I was relieved to see that he’d done a tasteful edit, and I went as far as to think he might have chosen the images he remembered I liked. Years passed, and I tucked the images and Jonathan somewhere deep in my memory. I never told anyone about what happened, and I tried not to think about it.

A few years after my photo shoot, I received a call from a well-known magazine asking if they could help promote my new book of photographs.

“What book?”

By then, I’d appeared in David Fincher’s Gone Girl and on the covers of international magazines. When the news broke of a book being sold with my name on it — the cover was completely white and read only EMILY RATAJKOWSKI in bold black lettering — several media outlets reached out to me directly, thinking they were being generous by offering their support to a new project of mine.

Confused, I searched my name online. There it was: Emily Ratajkowski, the book, priced at $80. Some of the images were posted on Jonathan’s Instagram, and they were among the most revealing and vulgar Polaroids he had taken of me.

I was livid and frantic. New articles about the book, accompanied by images, were popping up hourly. My fingers went numb as I read the comments from eager customers on Jonathan’s page. His followers were skyrocketing, as were the followers of @imperialpublishing, a “publishing company” — I realized after just a few moments of research — that Jonathan had personally funded and set up solely for the purpose of making this book.

I wondered what kind of damage this would do to my career as an actress. Everyone had told me to shy away from being “sexy” in order to be taken seriously, and now an entire book containing hundreds of images of me, some of them the most compromising and sexual photos of me ever taken, was available for purchase. And from what was being said online, a lot of people believed the entire situation had been my doing. I, after all, had posed for the photos.

My lawyer sent cease-and-desist letters: one to Jonathan’s makeshift publishing company and one to a gallery on the Lower East Side that had announced it would be holding an exhibition of the Polaroids. My lawyer argued that Jonathan had no right to use the images beyond their agreed-upon usage. When I agreed to shoot with Jonathan, I had consented only for the photos to be printed in the magazine they were intended for. The gallery responded by going to the New York Times and telling the paper that it had a signed model release from me. By that time, I’d stopped working with my agent, who’d quit the industry, but reading this, I called her in a panic.

“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 100 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 U.S. 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,” he 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 story 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?”)

Years passed, and Jonathan released a second book of my images, then a third. He had another show at the same gallery. I looked him up online occasionally; I almost felt like I was checking in on a part of me, the part of me he now owned. For years, while I built a career, he’d kept that Emily in the drawers of his creaky old house, waiting to whore her out. It was intoxicating to see what he’d done with this part of me he’d stolen.

I found an extensive new interview with him, and my chest tightened when I saw the headline: “Jonathan Leder Reveals Details of His Emily Ratajkowski Shoot (NSFW).” The article began with his description of how we’d come to shoot together. He managed to make himself sound like a sought-after photographer and me some random model who had been desperate to shoot with him. “I had worked with over 500 models by that point in my career,” he said. “And I can tell you that Emily Ratajkowski … was one of the most comfortable models I had ever worked with in terms of her body. She was neither shy or self-conscious in any way. To say she enjoyed being naked is an understatement. I don’t know if it empowered her or she enjoyed the attention.”

I felt dizzy as I wondered the same thing. What does true empowerment even feel like? Is it feeling wanted? Is it commanding someone’s attention? “We had a lot of discussions about music, art, the industry, and the creative process,” Jonathan said in the interview. “She was very pleasant to speak with, and very intelligent and well-spoken, and cultured. That, more than anything, in my opinion, set her apart from so many other models.” I felt myself on the carpet of Jonathan’s living room, the texture of it rubbing into my skin as I posed and talked about art-making and felt a deep twinge of shame. I promised myself that I wouldn’t look him up anymore.

At the end of last year, Jonathan published yet another book of the photos, this one hardbound . I’ve often stood in my kitchen and stared at myself in the large Richard Prince piece, contemplating whether I should sell it and use the money to sue. I could try to force him to cease production of his books; I could tangle him up in a legal fight that drains us both, but I’m not convinced that spending any more of my resources on Jonathan would be money well spent. Eventually, Jonathan will run out of “unseen” crusty Polaroids, but I will remain as the real Emily; the Emily who owns the high-art Emily, and the one who wrote this essay, too. She will continue to carve out control where she can find it.

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Essay on My Body

Students are often asked to write an essay on My Body in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on My Body

Introduction.

My body is a complex system that allows me to live, learn, and grow. It is made up of many different parts, all working together to keep me healthy.

Parts of My Body

The main parts of my body are the head, trunk, and limbs. My head houses my brain, eyes, and mouth. The trunk includes my chest and abdomen, containing vital organs. My limbs help me move around.

Importance of My Body

My body is important because it helps me interact with the world. It allows me to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. It’s also my responsibility to keep it healthy.

Understanding my body helps me appreciate how amazing it is. It’s a wonderful system that deserves care and respect.

250 Words Essay on My Body

The human body, a complex and intricate system, is the physical manifestation of our existence. It’s a marvel of biological engineering, housing billions of cells working in perfect harmony to ensure our survival and well-being.

The Body as a Biological Masterpiece

Our bodies are a collection of systems, each playing a vital role. The circulatory system, for instance, ensures oxygen and nutrients reach every cell. The nervous system, a network of nerves and neurons, serves as our communication hub, while the immune system protects us from foreign invaders.

Body and Mind Connection

The body is not just a physical entity but also an extension of our mind. The mind-body connection is a profound concept, where emotions and thoughts can influence our physical health. Stress, for instance, can trigger physical symptoms like headaches or stomach issues.

Body Autonomy and Respect

Body autonomy, the right to control one’s body, is a fundamental human right. It’s essential to respect our bodies, acknowledging their capabilities and limitations. This includes maintaining a healthy lifestyle and making informed choices about our bodies.

In conclusion, our bodies are more than just physical structures. They are a testament to nature’s ingenuity, a bridge connecting us to our minds, and a personal domain demanding respect and care. Recognizing this multifaceted nature of our bodies can help us better appreciate and take care of them.

500 Words Essay on My Body

Introduction: the marvel of the human body, the body as a system of systems.

The body is made up of multiple systems, each with a specific role. The nervous system acts as the body’s command center, sending and receiving signals to and from different parts of the body. The circulatory system, with the heart as its key player, ensures the efficient distribution of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. The respiratory system, comprising the lungs, takes in oxygen and expels carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism. The digestive system breaks down food into simpler substances that the body can use for energy, growth, and cell repair. The skeletal and muscular systems provide structure and mobility, while the endocrine system regulates the body’s metabolism and energy levels.

Cells: The Building Blocks of the Body

At the microscopic level, the body is composed of trillions of cells, each performing specific functions. Cells are the basic building blocks of life, and their collective action ensures the smooth functioning of the body. They are responsible for everything from absorbing nutrients and producing energy to fighting off infections and healing wounds.

The Body’s Adaptability and Resilience

The importance of taking care of our body.

Our body is our most precious asset, and it is essential to take care of it. A healthy lifestyle, including a balanced diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and stress management, can enhance the body’s functioning and longevity. Regular medical check-ups can help detect potential problems early and keep the body in optimal condition.

Conclusion: The Body as a Reflection of Self

In conclusion, the human body is not just a biological entity; it is a reflection of who we are. It embodies our experiences, our actions, and our choices. It is a testament to the miracle of life and the complexity of nature. By understanding and appreciating our body, we can develop a more profound sense of self-awareness and respect for our own existence.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Happy studying!

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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

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 grey area between consent and abuse.

Nuanced, unflinching, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a fierce writer brimming with courage and intelligence.

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• How to write the body of an essay | Drafting & redrafting

How to Write the Body of an Essay | Drafting & Redrafting

Published on November 5, 2014 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

The body is the longest part of an essay . This is where you lead the reader through your ideas, elaborating arguments and evidence for your thesis . The body is always divided into paragraphs .

You can work through the body in three main stages:

• Create an  outline of what you want to say and in what order.
• Write a first draft to get your main ideas down on paper.
• Write a second draft to clarify your arguments and make sure everything fits together.

This article gives you some practical tips for how to approach each stage.

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Table of contents

Start with an outline, write the first draft, write the second draft, other interesting articles.

Before you start, make a rough outline that sketches out the main points you want to make and the order you’ll make them in. This can help you remember how each part of the essay should relate to the other parts.

However, remember that  the outline isn’t set in stone – don’t be afraid to change the organization if necessary. Work on an essay’s structure begins before you start writing, but it continues as you write, and goes on even after you’ve finished writing the first draft.

While you’re writing a certain section, if you come up with an idea for something elsewhere in the essay, take a few moments to add to your outline or make notes on your organizational plans.

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Your goals in the first draft are to turn your rough ideas into workable arguments, add detail to those arguments, and get a sense of what the final product will actually look like.

Write strong body paragraphs

Start wherever you want

Many writers do not begin writing at the introduction , or even the early body paragraphs. Start writing your essay where it seems most natural for you to do so.

Some writers might prefer to start with the easiest section to write, while others prefer to get the most difficult section out of the way first. Think about what material you need to clarify for yourself, and consider beginning there.

Tackle one idea at a time

Each paragraph should aim to focus on one central idea, giving evidence, explanation, and arguments that relate to that idea.

At the start of each paragraph, write a topic sentence that expresses the main point. Then elaborate and expand on the topic sentence in the rest of the paragraph.

When you’ve said everything you have to say about the idea, move onto a new paragraph.

Keep your argument flexible

You may realize as you write that some of your ideas don’t work as well as you thought they would. Don’t give up on them too easily, but be prepared to change or abandon sections if you realize they don’t make sense.

You’ll probably also come up with new ideas that you’d not yet thought of when writing the outline. Note these ideas down and incorporate them into the essay if there’s a logical place for them.

If you’re stuck on one section, move on to another part of the essay and come back to it later.

Don’t delete content

If you begin to dislike a certain section or even the whole essay, don’t scrap it in fit of rage!

If something really isn’t working, you can paste it into a separate document, but keep what you have, even if you don’t plan on using it. You may find that it contains or inspires new ideas that you can use later.

Note your sources

Students often make work for themselves by forgetting to keep track of sources when writing drafts.

You can save yourself a lot of time later and ensure you avoid plagiarism by noting down the name, year, and page number every time you quote or paraphrase from a source.

You can also use a citation generator to save a list of your sources and copy-and-paste citations when you need them.

Avoid perfectionism

When you’re writing a first draft, it’s important not to get slowed down by small details. Get your ideas down on paper now and perfect them later. If you’re unsatisfied with a word, sentence, or argument, flag it in the draft and revisit it later.

When you finish the first draft, you will know which sections and paragraphs work and which might need to be changed. It doesn’t make sense to spend time polishing something you might later cut out or revise.

Working on the second draft means assessing what you’ve got and rewriting it when necessary. You’ll likely end up cutting some parts of the essay and adding new ones.

Check your ideas against your thesis

Everything you write should be driven by your thesis . Looking at each piece of information or argumentation, ask yourself:

• Does the reader need to know this in order to understand or accept my thesis?
• Does this give evidence for my thesis?
• Does this explain the reasoning behind my thesis?
• Does this show something about the consequences or importance of my thesis?

If you can’t answer yes to any of these questions, reconsider whether it’s relevant enough to include.

If your essay has gone in a different direction than you originally planned, you might have to rework your thesis statement to more accurately reflect the argument you’ve made.

Watch out for weak points

Be critical of your arguments, and identify any potential weak points:

• Unjustified assumptions: Can you be confident that your reader shares or will accept your assumptions, or do they need to be spelled out?
• Lack of evidence:  Do you make claims without backing them up?
• Logical inconsistencies:  Do any of your points contradict each other?
• Uncertainty: Are there points where you’re unsure about your own claims or where you don’t sound confident in what you’re saying?

Fixing these issues might require some more research to clarify your position and give convincing evidence for it.

Check the organization

When you’re happy with all the main parts of your essay, take another look at the overall shape of it. You want to make sure that everything proceeds in a logical order without unnecessary repetition.

Try listing only the topic sentence of each paragraph and reading them in order. Are any of the topic sentences too similar? Each paragraph should discuss something different; if two paragraphs are about the same topic, they must approach it in different ways, and these differences should be made clear in the topic sentences.

Does the order of information make sense? Looking at only topic sentences lets you see at a glance the route your paper takes from start to finish, allowing you to spot organizational errors more easily.

Draw clear connections between your ideas

Finally, you should assess how your ideas fit together both within and between paragraphs. The connections might be clear to you, but you need to make sure they’ll also be clear to your reader.

Within each paragraph, does each sentence follow logically from the one before it? If not, you might need to add new sentences to make the connections clear. Try using transition words to clarify what you want to say.

Between one paragraph and the next, is it clear how your points relate to one another? If you are moving onto an entirely new topic, consider starting the paragraph with a transition sentence that moves from the previous topic and shows how it relates to the new one.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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Shane Bryson

Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

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The GW Hatchet

Essay: Finding peace with my body image

Rachel Armany, a freshman majoring in journalism, is a Hatchet opinions writer.

Early memories have the power to shape who you are. Everyone has experienced specific things that have influenced how they act and think as an adult. Unfortunately, in my life, many of my formative moments centered around my struggles with body image.

For most of my life, I have been very aware of how others perceive the way I look. My tendency to analyze social interactions in several aspects of my life is sometimes helpful, but often forces me to be harder on myself and the way I look. Ever since I was in high school, whenever I’m around someone I don’t know well – perhaps at a job interview or a school orientation – I actively use body language to make myself appear thinner.

I’m not unique in disliking parts of myself. Most people have things they wish they could change about their appearance. But my size isn’t just something I’ve struggled with “liking.” From a young age, I have believed my weight and appearance were how I would be defined and would dictate how others treat me. I began to think that any weight I gained would just be more of a reason for people to dislike me and that any weight that I lost would account for my popularity.

I never thought less of anyone else who gained weight – it was a completely personal struggle. When it came to my body, I felt like I had to compensate: I had to be funny or smart or artsy to avoid being defined by my physical appearance.

I started to notice that my body didn’t look like my friends’ when I was in fourth grade. I remember sitting with my best friend and asking, “Do you think I’m fat?” Given our age and lack of any education or discussion on body image, she was startled by my question and immediately responded, “No, of course not.” But her response didn’t comfort me. I felt like she said those words out of pity. My friend didn’t mean any harm. In fact, she probably meant to make me feel better. But since then, I have been hyper aware of my body because I realized that the way I see myself isn’t the same as how others see me.

My confidence in my body and weight hasn’t always been dictated by the number on a scale or by the way I feel. But rather, hearing people talk about weight gain as a negative has affected how I feel about myself. One friend always used to tell me I’m on “the good side of plus-sized.” Although that might be an innocent enough statement, all it does is tell me that I’m overweight but not in an aesthetically displeasing way. The statement indirectly warns me of the “bad side of plus-sized” – the scary fate that is being overweight enough to claim the title of “the fat girl.”

Being on the “good side of plus-sized” comes with complications. My mom’s friends used to question her on what she let me eat because they feared I would “get fat.” In middle school, I felt like I had to prove to my friends that I was active and healthy. And even today, I worry over normal weight fluctuations – all to try and avoid people sharing their “concerns” with my size. Although those people might think they’re just looking out for me, they should not feel compelled to comment on my weight if I am not at risk for health problems.

Discussing body image is difficult, especially as a young girl, and even now as an adult. Talking about insecurities is always scary. But with body image, people are quick to tell you that things are just in your head if they aren’t expressing their concerns about you. Even today, hearing things like, “You’re not even fat” does little to help me. Hearing that confirms that if I were a bit heavier I should feel bad about myself and makes me even more fearful that people will judge me for gaining weight.

What I have found to be most helpful is when people allow me to speak openly about why I feel the way I do about my body and talk with me about accepting myself – not about changing it. For example, a positive conversation is one that encourages me to exercise because it makes me feel better, not because I should lose some extra weight. Those conversations are the ones that contribute to my self confidence, because I feel that my voice is being heard, even though the discussion may be more uncomfortable than a friend simply saying I’m not fat.

I understand that sometimes friends or family members may not always know how to respond to someone struggling with the way they look. Those closest to us love us the way we are and want us to accept ourselves, too. So I remain patient with the people in my life, but I am also honest with them. I try to let people know as often as I can when I feel like they are not taking an issue seriously or they are attempting to take the easy way out of an awkward encounter. Ultimately my problems are my own – it is up to me to work on them – but having these conversations with people who care about me helps.

Though my personal struggle with my weight is ongoing, I have made great strides in learning how to live with the body I have. I am beginning to listen to my body and understand how it works in order to develop a healthy lifestyle. I hope to stop overanalyzing and keep developing my confidence, instead of treating a number on a scale as the key to a better life.

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Human Body Essay

Introduction.

It is surprising to see how a human body functions with maximum capability. Whether we are talking, walking or seeing, there are distinct parts in our body that are destined to perform a particular function. The importance of each part is discussed in this human body essay. When we feel tired, we often take a rest and lie down for a moment. But our body continues to work, even when we take a break. Even if you are tired, your heart will not stop beating. It pumps blood and transports nutrients to your body.

The human body is made up of many parts and organs that work together to sustain life in our body. No organ or body part is more important than the other, and if you ignore one of them, then the whole body will be in pain. So, let us teach the significance of different parts of the body to our children through this essay on human body parts in English. To explore other exciting content for kids learning , head to our website.

Different Systems in the Human Body

The human body looks very simple from the outside with hands, legs, face, eyes, ears and so on. But, there is a more complex and significant structure inside the body that helps us to live. The human body is made up of many small structures like cells, tissues, organs and systems. It is covered by the skin, beneath which you could find muscles, veins, and blood. This structure is formed on the base of a skeleton, which consists of many bones. All these are arranged in a specific way to help the body function effectively. In this human body essay, we will see the different systems in the human body and their functions.

The circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system and nervous system are the main systems of the human body. Each system has different organs, and they function together to accomplish several tasks. The circulatory system consists of organs like the heart, blood and blood vessels, and its main function is to pump blood from the heart to the lungs and carry oxygen to different parts of the body.

Next, we will understand the importance of the respiratory system through this human body essay in English. The respiratory system enables us to breathe easily, and it includes organs like the lungs, airways, windpipe, nose and mouth. While the digestive system helps in breaking down the food we eat and gives the energy to work with the help of organs like the mouth, food pipe, stomach, intestines, pancreas, liver, and anus, the nervous system controls our actions, thoughts and movements. It mainly consists of organs like the brain, spinal cord and nerves.

All these systems are necessary for the proper functioning of the human body, which is discussed in this essay on human body parts in English. By inculcating good eating habits, maintaining proper hygiene and doing regular exercises, we can look after our bodies. You can refer to more essays for kids on our website.

Frequently Asked Questions on Human Body Essay

Why should we take care of our bodies.

Most of the tasks we do like walking, running, eating etc., are only possible if we have a healthy body. To ensure we have a healthy body, all the systems must function properly, which is determined by our lifestyle and eating habits. Only a healthy body will have a healthy mind, and hence, we must take good care of our bodies.

What are some of the body parts and their functions?

We see with our eyes, listen with our ears, walk with our legs, touch with our hands, breathe through our nose and taste with our tongue.

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ALS has killed multiple people in my family. Now the disease is coming for me

I was diagnosed with familial ALS in 2022, and while my body is deteriorating, I’m hopeful the future will be different for my children.

For better or worse, I don’t remember a single thing about my mother or her battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was diagnosed at age 29, when I was 2 years old, and my sister, Michelle, was 6 years old.

She died one year after her diagnosis. 

My grandmother, mother and two uncles also died from ALS , which runs in my family. 

I was diagnosed with familial ALS on March 1, 2022. It was devastating, but not surprising. I’d lived my entire life worried about the disease. That day, my worst nightmare became my reality. I had never done genetic testing for ALS because I knew that if I was positive, my anxiety would be crippling, and there was no intervention that could help me anyway — or so I thought. Thank goodness, after my diagnosis, my neurologist at Rutgers took swift action and referred me to Columbia University’s Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center, where a new treatment called tofersen was available for my very unique genotype, SOD1. 

Only about 5-10% of ALS cases are familial, meaning that two or more people in the family have ALS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . SOD1 accounts for about 3% of total ALS cases (20% of familial ALS and 2-7% of sporadic ALS), according to research .  Parents with a genetic mutation causing ALS have a 50% chance of passing that mutation on to their children. 

Considering no one in my family lived beyond one year after being diagnosed, I am so grateful to be alive. Though my treatment is new, it brings me hope, and has slowed my progression significantly.

This disease is devastating in every way. My first symptom was weakness in my right arm, and for a solid year, I was able to keep my diagnosis private and make adjustments to cope. Today, both of my arms are so weak I can’t raise them at all. I do have mobility in my hands, so I’m able to type. My speech and ability to swallow have been severely diminished. I get all my nutrition via a feeding tube, and I mostly use an app on my iPad and phone to communicate. At night I use a bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machine to help me breathe and rest my respiratory muscles. Luckily, my legs so far have been unaffected, and I often participate in walks to raise money for ALS research.  

People with familial ALS typically live only one to two years after symptoms begin, the CDC reports . Considering no one in my family lived beyond one year after being diagnosed, I am so grateful to be alive 2 ½ years after my diagnosis. Though my treatment is new, it brings me hope. It’s not a cure, but it has slowed my progression significantly. 

My older sister did genetic testing for ALS shortly after I was diagnosed, and thank God she is negative. I have two sons, Henry, 19, and Charlie, 21, both in college. My younger son is positive for the same gene, which means there’s a chance he, too, will eventually have ALS , but right now he is not symptomatic. My oldest is in the process of being tested. It is so important that my kids get tested as there is a possibility that they too could receive tofersen, now FDA-approved as Qalsody , and prevent the disease from expressing symptoms. 

I work hard at staying in the moment and taking each day as it comes. It’s not easy. The unknown is so challenging. This medicine is brand-new so no one really knows what will happen. I’m a planner and like to be prepared for changes to come, but at the same time, I’m trying to stay in the moment and not think too far ahead — it’s a challenge I struggle with daily.  

The love and support my family and friends have shown me has been overwhelming. I wish everyone had the opportunity to experience this when they are healthy.

Before my diagnosis, I worked as a NICU nurse at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey. I enjoyed running, Pilates, golf and skiing. I loved to travel and enjoy time with friends and family. Now, a typical day for me starts with my husband of 24 years, Andrew, preparing my medications and breakfast and administering it via my feeding tube. After that, he helps me shower and get dressed. He also does my hair and makeup. He prepares my lunch and then heads to work. I usually spend the morning watching TODAY and catching up on social media and email. Around noon a volunteer (often a teammate from my old women’s hockey team) comes to visit and give me lunch. The afternoons can feel long. I try to turn off the television and read or ride the Peloton. My husband gets home around five. He cooks for himself and the kids (they’re home from college right now) and prepares my dinner. We watch some TV and catch up. Then he gives me my evening meds and gets me ready for bed — helping me into my PJs, getting me settled comfortably and putting on my BiPAP mask. We try to stick to a routine so it doesn’t get too overwhelming. 

The love and support my family and friends have shown me has been overwhelming. I wish everyone had the opportunity to experience this when they are healthy. 

One example: I learned to play hockey as an adult with some women I met through my kids’ hockey team. We had a great time learning together. I stopped playing before my diagnosis, but my teammates didn’t forget me. When they heard what had happened, they took it upon themselves to learn how to administer a feeding through my feeding tube, and someone from the team often comes by to give me lunch, so my husband doesn’t have to leave work. Other friends have also joined in to help. 

I’ve received love and support from childhood friends, high school friends, work colleagues, neighbors and even strangers. The wider ALS community has also been amazing. Connecting with others who have the disease through social media, fundraising, advocacy and support groups has helped me feel less alone. ALS United Greater New York , I Am ALS, the ALS Therapy Development Institute, Team Gleason, the Healey Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital and Synapticure have been supportive in so many ways. My friends and family recently got together to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the ice bucket challenge , which first went viral in August 2014. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I would not be here if it weren’t for the original ice bucket challenge, since the money the challenge raised helped fund the development of the drug I take.

People with ALS tend to hide or fade away because of the devastating physical changes, but our minds are still sharp. I want people to know that this disease — even if it’s not familial ALS — impacts the entire family. We all need support. There might not be a cure for ALS right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s incurable. The past two years alone have brought incredible advancements in ALS research , expanded access to care for people living with ALS, and enabled legislation that impacts the quality of life of people with ALS and their families. I know even more is possible. This disease might be coming for me, but I’m hopeful that the future will be different for my children. It’s time to end this terrible legacy and tell a new family story.

Melanie Craig is a mom and ALS patient in New Jersey. 

The foot is an undervalued, uncomplaining beast that deserves a doctor of its own - Joe Bennett

Like most parts of the body, feet are taken for granted, writes Joe Bennett.

Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton-based writer and columnist. He has been writing a column since 2017.

Before I took my foot to the doctor, I went to the dictionary. Podiatrist turned out to be Greek, of course, from “podos”, foot, and “iatros”, physician. Oh, they were clever, those Greeks, fathers of poetry, tragedy, mathematics, philosophy, democracy, the very cast of your mind and mine, and now foot doctoring. Have we done anything much since then?

I wanted to ask the podiatrist: Why podiatry? What induced him to choose the foot? Though even as I thought of asking, I could sense the gist of an answer, that the unconsidered foot was the base of all things human, our foundation. Take the feet from under someone and there’s nothing he can do. The foot is our passport. We are a going-somewhere species and without feet we’d have gone nowhere. So, it could perhaps be argued that where dust meets dust, where flesh meets the soil, it sprang from, is where the truth of us lies, that sole is soul, or some such. So why not be a doctor of the foot? It is an honourable thing.

Like most parts of the body, feet are taken for granted, presumed on, often abused. We cram them into nylon socks, and shoes that weren’t built for them, then gaze in wonder at their malformations and recoil in horror at their stench . As we age and stiffen, our feet grow ever more distant, become remote outposts of the empire whose wellbeing we take increasingly on trust, and to whose welfare we pay less and less attention. Until the day of revolution comes to the land of Podos and something goes wrong. “Oh, oh, oh,” we cry, “My feet are killing me,” all while disregarding the truth that we have spent a semi-century or so doing all we might to kill our feet.

The foot, then, is an undervalued beast, and an uncomplaining one, that fully deserves a doctor of its own, one who loves it for its own sake, a podophile.

When Dr Pod ushered me into his consulting room, I sensed him studying my gait, and immediately I forgot how to walk naturally. The Greeks knew all about the subconscious becoming self-conscious. They told the story of Oedipus.

“Before we start,” said the doc, “Would you mind if AI listened in?”

I begged, as you can well imagine, his pardon.

“Would you mind,” he repeated, “If artificial intelligence listened in on the consultation?”, and he explained how the clever thing would pay attention to everything we said and take notes and at the end of our little tete-a-tete would produce a summary of what was said of medical significance but would somehow sieve out all that was incidental or peripheral. He’d show me at the end, and I would be impressed, he said. But it was up to me.

“Heigh ho,” I said, “Why not! Let little AI be the third in the room, our silent witness and medical stenographer. I look forward to seeing how he fares.”

But I spoke with forked tongue. For even as I welcomed AI’s presence, I was hatching plans. I would interlace my foot-talk with other stuff, with chit-chat and with jokes, with anecdote and tricky metaphor, and maybe even a smattering of naughty foreign languages. All to test the intelligence of intelligence.

Because instinctively, I did not want the thing to work. This was partly, of course, an old man’s fear and hatred of the new. But it was also something else. If the boffins were ever to succeed in using their intelligence to build a new intelligence, a thing with the capacity for independent thought, then they’d assume the power of gods. The Greeks had abundant myths of men who sought the power of gods. None ended well.

I shed my shoe and sock, and the good doctor cradled the foot as if he truly cherished it and - but you have no interest in my foot. You have an interest in an artificial thinking thing. “Want to look at the notes?” asked Dr Pod when we had finished, and he turned the screen my way.

The notes were faultless, an eerily exact transcription of all that had been said of feet and related matters but with every last bit of anything else winnowed out. A party trick? An act that’s effectively mechanical rather than intelligent? I cannot say. I don’t know enough to say. But had I been Greek, I think I would have thought of Icarus, the darling boy who flew too close to the sun.

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