My Body - Emily Ratajkowski

Book Club March 2023

Cover photo credit: @emrata

4/5 Stars

To report on a society of which every minute is chronicled online in some form is a feat in itself. To do so from a new perspective, one that we - as the everyday person - have perhaps been left to wonder about, left to be jealous of, and still make those feelings hit the pits of your stomach in the same way a sentimental conversation with a friend would, takes talent.

From implicating accounts of what it has taken to reach her level of acclaim, to glimpses into her teenage years, and entry into the modelling world; Emily never asks us to feel sorry for her, but she is there to let us know that she is not exempt from the trials and tribulations of girl to womanhood, or the pain that accompanies it.

Emily Ratajkowski brings forward the female voice made up of decades worth of the essayists that we know and love - Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison - and gives her a personality fit for the internet age. I wrote briefly in my essay about ‘good’ feminism, how a lot of these public figures are expected to have a lot of the answers to the questions that they’re posing - or often blamed for causing - when they’re often in the process of figuring​​ out those answers themselves, probably expecting them of the people they deem higher than them. Ratajkowski offers us a window of humanity into the experience of celebrity.

You experience realisations at the same time as Emily does, and slowly that string begins to untangle. I read this book for the first time, months ago, and have since been unable to shake the excerpt: 

“Maybe many years from now, maybe next week…those girls will suddenly feel upset at something and will not know why. Where is this reaction coming from? They really won’t know, they won’t be able to place it, but it will be because of the way they let themselves. in that room”.