After dancing her way to fame in Thicke\u2019s \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d video, she went on to become a top model, influencer and entrepreneur. She gave interviews defending her sexy selfies and photo shoots, saying shedding her clothes was empowering \u2014 only to realize that she didn\u2019t really have that much power at all.<\/p>\n
\n
From a very young age, Ratajkowski understood her looks made her stand out, particularly in the eyes of her parents.<\/p>\n
Growing up an only child in San Diego, she listened to her mother\u2019s stories about having once been a remarkable beauty herself. Kathy, an English teacher, looked like a young Liz Taylor or Vivien Leigh, and told of \u201cadoring boys standing on the lawn below her bedroom window in high school\u201d and jealous harpies who tried to undermine her.<\/p>\n\n Ratajkowski learned this was to be her legacy, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to gauge where my parents thought I belonged in the world of beauties,\u201d Ratajkowski writes. \u201cIt seemed important to them both, especially to my mother, that their daughter be perceived as beautiful.\u201d At night, she prayed that God would make her \u201cthe most beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeauty was a way for me to be special,\u201d she explains. \u201cWhen I was special, I felt my parents\u2019 love for me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n When she was 14, the modeling world came calling.<\/p>\n The first time an agent approached, a preteen Ratajkowski was in the checkout line at a grocery store. Afterward, the future mannequin burst into tears, thinking that \u201cheadshots\u201d meant \u201cneedles in the head.\u201d<\/p>\n But Ratajkowski felt that modeling would please her parents. They drove her to castings like most parents drove her peers to sports matches. Her father, a high school art teacher, displayed her first modeling \u201ccomp\u201d card \u2014 with her measurements and modeling images \u2014 in his classroom. They posted her modeling photos on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n Ratajkowski went to her first audition when she was in middle school. She wore new stretchy jeans and chunky black boots. Kathy, in the waiting room with her, instructed Ratajkowski to flip her hair when it was her turn to meet with the casting directors. There was a young man with wild hair sitting a few feet from them.<\/p>\n \u201cThat boy looked at you when you stood up and flipped your hair,\u201d her mother said, driving from the audition in Los Angeles back home to San Diego. \u201cHe was watching you.\u201d<\/p>\n She attracted male attention from the time she was 12, she writes. (\u201cI\u2019ll never forget the look on his face as you walked past him!\u201d Kathy would remark about random men on the street. \u201cHe stopped dead in his tracks and his mouth fell open!\u201d)<\/p>\n Her beauty provoked people: At 13, she was sent home from a dance after chaperones deemed her dress \u201ctoo sexy.\u201d Another time, her dad asked her to \u201cnot dress like that, just for tonight,\u201d when she came downstairs wearing a pink lace top and push-up bra. She remembered the shame and confusion she felt when her older cousin came rushing back into the living room, after leaving Ratajkowski there with a male friend for a few minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a child, but somehow already an expert in detecting male desire, even if I didn\u2019t completely understand what to make of it,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n The modeling world pushed Ratajkowski \u2014 who was shorter and bigger-busted than most high fashion models \u2014 to do catalog work, or swimsuit and lingerie shoots. When she was in high school, a casting agent pointed to some close-ups of her with her mouth half closed and lips pursed\u00a0and marveled, \u201cNow this is\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>look. This is how we know this girl gets f\u2013ked!\u201d<\/p>\n Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cMy face felt hot,\u201d Ratajkowski writes of that incident. \u201cWas this something to be proud of?\u201d<\/p>\n According to her mother: yes. She placed a sexy black-and-white photo of Ratajkowski, then in high school, on the kitchen counter facing the front door. \u201cAnyone coming in [the house] was immediately greeted by my pouty lips, bare legs and teased hair,\u201d writes Ratajkowski, adding she was \u201cembarrassed\u201d by the picture.<\/p>\n She writes that initially she took these incidents lightly, that she told herself that being a sex symbol \u2014 of feeling free to flaunt her sexuality \u2014 was empowering. And in a way, it was: it gave her money, fame, the ability to start her own business. Yet, as she saw\u00a0grubby photographers\u00a0who had taken sexy photos of her early in her career profit off her success, as she got sued by paparazzi who claimed to own their pictures of her, as she continued to encounter men like Thicke, who could touch her and face no consequences,\u00a0she realized she didn\u2019t have as much say over her body, who it belongs to, and how it can be used, as she thought.<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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,\u201d she writes. \u201cThose men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over.<\/p>\n\n \u201cFacing the reality of the dynamics at play would have meant admitting how limited my power really was \u2014 how limited any woman\u2019s power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, however, she writes, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, after Ratajkowski moved out of her parents\u2019 house and became a successful model, she finally convinced her mom to take down that photo in the kitchen.<\/p>\n Her mother agreed: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t represent you anymore,\u201d she told her daughter. Though she seemed to misunderstand the reasoning. \u201cYou\u2019re more beautiful than that now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Emily Ratajkowski was born beautiful. As her mother, Kathy, told it, the doctor who delivered her held up the perfect infant and exclaimed, \u201cLook at the size of her! She\u2019s beautiful!\u201d \u201cThe next day he brought his children to the hospital just to see you,\u201d she would continue, with pride. \u201cYou were such a beautiful …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[611],"tags":[972],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Emily-Ratajkowski-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Emily-Ratajkowski-3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n\r\n \t
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Emily-Ratajkowski-4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Emily-Ratajkowski-5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n