We are used to looking at Emily Ratajkowski.
That is, in many ways, the starting point of My Body. She has spent most of her career being photographed, discussed, sexualised, admired and judged. In this collection of essays, she turns that perspective around and tells us what it feels like to be the person on the other side of that gaze.
My Body is about modelling, fame, relationships, power and, the complicated relationship Ratajkowski has with her own body. She moves through different moments of her life rather than telling one continuous story, and I think that format works particularly well. The essays are short and easy to move through, but they rarely feel superficial. There was always enough depth to make me stop and think without the book ever becoming heavy or exhausting to read.
What stayed with me most was how vulnerable she allows herself to be. Ratajkowski is someone whose appearance is constantly idealised. She is quite literally presented as a beauty standard, which makes it easy to imagine that insecurity must somehow stop once you look like her.
It does not.
She writes about comparison, validation, jealousy and the constant awareness of her own appearance. There was something strangely powerful about reading that from someone so many people compare themselves to. It exposes how pointless the entire cycle can become: you look at another person and imagine that having their face, their body or their life would finally make you feel secure, while they might be looking at somebody else and thinking exactly the same thing.
That part of the book gave me a completely different perspective on insecurity.
Not because her experiences are identical to everyone else’s, but because the emotions underneath them often are. There is something almost comforting about that, but also depressing. Apparently being considered beautiful by millions of people does not necessarily change the way you speak to yourself when you look in the mirror.
The book also creates a kind of closeness that I did not expect. Public figures are so often reduced to whatever version of them is easiest to consume. With Ratajkowski, that version has largely been her body. My Body gives her the space to complicate that image. She explains her own choices, contradictions and experiences rather than having them interpreted for her.
And there are a lot of contradictions.
Her body has given her money, independence, attention and power. At the same time, it has often been treated as something other people are entitled to look at, use, photograph or comment on. She has benefited from an industry built around the female body while also being harmed by the way that industry treats women.
What I appreciated is that she does not try to resolve that contradiction neatly. The book does not reduce everything to either empowerment or exploitation. Ratajkowski can enjoy being desired and still feel objectified. She can consciously use her sexuality and still have boundaries. She can make money from her image without that giving other people ownership over it.
Those distinctions seem obvious when written down, yet the book shows how often women are denied exactly that complexity.
Some of the essays also made me incredibly frustrated. There are moments where the imbalance feels almost exhausting in how familiar it is. Being watched. Being reduced to your appearance. Wondering whether someone respects you or simply wants access to you. Realising that another person feels strangely entitled to comment on your body. Different women experience these things in completely different ways and to completely different degrees, but there is something frustrating about how recognisable the underlying patterns are. And success does not seem to offer much protection.
If anything, one of the most uncomfortable things about the book is seeing that beauty, money and fame do not automatically give someone control over how they are treated. We often imagine that there is some point at which you become attractive enough, confident enough or successful enough that insecurity and these power dynamics disappear. Ratajkowski makes it difficult to keep believing that.
Overall, My Body was an easy read without being an empty one.
What I took from it most was not really a lesson about Emily Ratajkowski specifically. It was the reminder that we know very little about what it feels like to exist inside a body we only ever see from the outside.
Especially when that body is one we have been taught to envy.
The person you compare yourself to is still a person. They still compare, doubt, question and look for validation.
And somehow, that is both reassuring and incredibly frustrating.