While Emily Ratajkowski may be a well-known face in the fashion world, the supermodel is letting the public know how harmful some of her upbringing was, and why her looks were so emphasized growing up.
While most kids were busy running around and getting dirty with permission from their parents, Ratajkowski reveals that for her, it was the opposite. Now, in her new memoir, the supermodel is letting it all out, especially now that she is a mother herself.
Emily Ratajkowski recounts harmful pressure from her own parents
In her upcoming book of essays titled My Body, Ratajkowski says that a large portion of her youth was navigating through her own parent's obsession with her looks.
Her mother, Kathy, would often remind her just how "beautiful of a baby" she was, and emphasized that her pretty face was her best feature.
The model explained that while both of he parents were attractive themselves, their undying pressure caused her to "gauge where my parents thought I belonged in the world of beauties".
She writes that "It seemed important to them both, especially to my mother, that their daughter be perceived as beautiful."
She continued to write that it seemed as a child being beautiful would make her seem "special" and that by the time she was 12 years old, her mother would point out when men would notice her.
While this left her with distorted views of love, Ratajkowski doesn't hide this in her essay, furthering her point by admitting that by the time she was 13, she already knew how to appear appealing to the male gaze.
She doesn't glorify this fact and states, "I was a child, but somehow already an expert in detecting male desire, even if I didn’t completely understand what to make of it."
Even more disturbing still is the objectification Ratajkowski said she was subjected to at just 16 years old. While at a modelling gig, the photographer made comments regarding her facial expression, putting her completely on the spot.
"Now this is the look. This is how we know this girl gets f***ed!" she remembers. Ratajkowski said this was a shock to her looking back, and made her realize a sad fact.
She writes, "Women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place."
She continues, "Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over."
She added that it took a long time for her to completely accept that fact because admitting it would hand over her "power".
"[It] meant admitting how limited my power really was - how limited any woman's power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at," she said.
She continued, "I was forced to face some ugly truths about what I understood as important, what I thought love was, what I believed made me special, and to confront the reality of my relationship with my body."
Ratajkowski's book also recounts details surrounding allegations that Robin Thicke groped her on set of the "Blurred Lines" music video.
Her book, which is a collection of essays about her life, will be available for purchase on November 9th of this year.
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