‘My Body’ by Emily Ratajkowski: Nauseating, Befuddling, Surprising

“Few would have thought that this body, Ratajkowski’s exalted and idolized body, would hold a soul so torn,” writes our contributing books editor, Afshan Shafi in her review of model/actor Emily Ratajkowski’s debut memoir, ‘My Body’.

A disclaimer – ‘My Body’ by Emily Ratajkowski is not an easy read. It nauseates in parts, it befuddles insistently, and, often, induces despair. Admirably, though, it is not a wheedling downpour of self-pity. Ratajkowski inhabits one of the most famous bodies in the world and what she wages in this book is a contest not only against what she is supposed to represent globally, but against what she is supposed to represent to the smaller, more claustrophobic worlds of family and the society of one’s birth.

Ratajkowski reading from her book, ‘My Body’ for Vanity Fair

Ratajkowski inhabits one of the most famous bodies in the world

Beauty is important to Ratajkowski’s mother, not least because she has always been considered a beauty in her hometown. In the chapter “Beauty Lessons” Ratajkowski writes of people exclaiming over her prepubescent, ripening beauty in places as humdrum as grocery stores. Her mother is gratified by the way the world responds to a young Emily. As the latter notes – “My mother seems to hold the way my beauty is affirmed by the world like a mirror, reflecting back to her a measure of her own worth.”

“My mother seems to hold the way my beauty is affirmed by the world like a mirror, reflecting back to her a measure of her own worth” – Emily Ratajkowski

Later, when she is a burgeoning professional model, Ratajkowski’s mother happily posts pictures of her daughter on her Facebook page. Flushed with pride, she tells Emily that, “A friend of mine from college wrote on Facebook that he’d seen your recent magazine cover. He said ‘No surprise Kathleen’s daughter is beautiful! But she’s not as gorgeous as you, Kathy. No one compares to you”.

Years after, Ratajkowski will wrestle with severing self-doubt – relating to her therapist, that “everything is ranked” for “that is how the world works.”

One of the most touching moments of the book is also one that is, perhaps, a bit sinister –

“I do remember that as a young girl I prayed for beauty. I’d lie in bed, squeeze my eyes shut, and concentrate so hard that I broke out in a sweat underneath the covers. I believed that for God to take you seriously, you had to make your mind as blank as possible and then focus on the expanding spots of light behind your eyelids and think only of the one thing you desperately wished for.”

“I do remember that as a young girl I prayed for beauty” – Emily Ratajkowski

For tiny Emily, her mother’s veneration for her daughter’s beauty has become something invasive, something insidious. From this point on in the book, Ratajkowski will begin traversing a landscape putrid with trespassers. Her journey and interactions with pop stars, men of influence and the world of glamour at large will leave her disassociated from the very body that allows her a place in the halls of fame.

Further on in the book she will frequently acknowledge her disillusionment with the glittering confines of celebrity – writing:

“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. Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over. Facing the reality of the dynamics at play would have 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.”

A look at Ratajkowski’s most recent Instagram post will find her apple-cheeked, a new mother, all doe-eyes and duck-lipped in the way all contemporary influencers are. It might seem fatuous to assume that she has attained some kind of higher peace, but she certainly glows with something richer than highlighter.

With this book, Ratajkowski has surprised hordes of readers and millions of fans. Few would have thought that this body, Ratajkowski’s exalted and idolized body, would hold a soul so torn. In some ways, all women will identify with ‘My Body’, for at the end of it all, Ratajkowski’s body is a female body and that is why its keeper is so reft, so scared and so unsure of her strength.

Few would have thought that this body, Ratajkowski’s exalted and idolized body, would hold a soul so torn

Ratajkowski holding her debut book, a memoir in the form of a collection of short stories titled ‘My Body’. Photo credit – Sansho Scott, BFA.com

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