Emily ratajkowski is your tonight to celebrate a debut collectiones of essays that examines her own multifaceted identity. A worldfamous model with tens of millions of followers, she is a household name for her looks and prolific image, but refuses to let having a a body peoplet to sell forcer into dimensionality. My body tackle same, love, friendship and betrayal, and the intricate web of sexuality and power. Feeling small one second and powerful the next both in and out of control. In reckoning with a level of success that is broader both pain and pleasure, emily investigates her own evolving beliefs, the perverse dynamics of a culture that commoditize the female body and the dichotomy between who she is and how she is perceived. Emily ratajkowski is in conversation this evening with hanna rosin the editorial director for audio at new york magazine. Previously, hanna was a cohost of nprs and the author of the book the end of man and is also written for the atlantic, the Washington Post and the new yorker, among others. Later in the program we would love to hear questions and you will be invited tos line up at the standing microphones in either aisle. Following the event signed a books will be for sale in the main lobby. Thank you all again both here and at home for being with us tonight, and please join me in getting a warm welcome to Emily Ratajkowski and hanna rosin. [applause] everyone thank you sor being here. I have to like basque in the weirdness of this moment for one second of being live and having people live. Hi. Everyone. People are here so exciting. Thank you for coming to washington. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Yeah, i feel. This book is so personal. That i was thinking like if i just dive right in i itll be too therapy session. So so like the the construct i came up with is like im oprah and youre adele. Can we do that . I did get to watch it. So i feel behind but im a quick learner. Hopefully i can yeah, we can do it. You just do it dalinopra. Oh my god. Yeah we can do it. Well do our best at six and i so you called the book my body, which i feel like embodies. The thing about the book its like in my head the title is like look at my body. Stop looking at my body like it has like youre almost asking people to sort of come into the conversation right away. Is that your intention like you could have just called it emilys life or something. Well, that doesnt sound its like friday prejudice and im gonna be honest with you. Um, yeah, i mean, i definitely think that there was a part of me that liked playing with the idea of people thinking like rolling their eyes and being like, oh Emily Ratajkowski wrote a book called my body like right and then using that preconception hopefully to you know, maybe make them buy the book or even help, you know, sort of the ideas in the book be more impactful. So it was, you know a new what i was doing. I knew i was embracing something that was gonna potentially annoy people. Yeah. Good. Okay. Im all for that. Um, theres a whole section of the book that had i think of as like the miseducation of emily or like the signals basically that you received and i want to talk about that like even in your teenage life the interesting thing about that part of the book to me was normally when people are going through puberty or preteens. Its like the signals that come from inside that are confusing to you, but i feel like in your case even before you were conscious of it. Its all the stuff that it was like the the cues that came from outside to you. Can you talk about that a little bit like the first time you realize that were not necessarily the first time that your body was a thing and the people started to send that signal to you from outside. Yeah. I mean, i think that i developed really young and i had a womans body before i even understood or knew what sex was. So it put me in a really strange position one of the first essays i ever published was something called baby woman because i was truly a baby, but i was now i look back at pictures and im like really people thought i was an adult. I looked like a child, but i did look older and i certainly i started to kind of have this experience of both feeling really selfaware in a positive and also in a negative way so, you know at middle in my middle School Feeling the you know attention that i got from boys, which means that meant that the, you know popular girls wanted to be friends with me and thinking like, oh, thats a good thing. But then also, you know feeling like i had a vice principal snap my bra strap or i know i always remember that. Yeah at that image sticks in my head of like that sucks. She was a woman interestingly. I dont think i specify that in the book, but you know, whats the point like, what are you supposed to do in her mind . It was i mean and this is really kind of that essay in general beauty lessons, you know. Im interested in exploring the ways that women try to protect other women by kind of teaching them the hard way or teaching them about the world and the way that their beauty and their sexuality in their bodies are going to be consumed and i think that for example that vice principal sort of thought she was saying to me like you should watch out you should be aware of this and like if i dont stand your bra strap somebody else will kind of thing. I think you know, i dont think she was doing it necessarily in a malicious way. I dont know but i mean it in general that was sort of the purpose behind that essay. I had an exboyfriend whose mom was like a very cool lady and she only had a son and at one point we were talking about if she had had a daughter and she said well i would have like obviously made sure that she you know stayed thin and i like almost spit up my lunch because i was like, wait what like youre a smart lady. Eat with cool politics and youre talking about how you would make sure your daughter stays thin like thats you come on. You must know that thats like recipe for an eating disorder and i realized that in her mind it was her it was her thinking that would be protecting her daughter and ensuring her daughter a good future and love because then women are loved more but your own parents. I feel like theres a theres weird mixed messages in there that theres like a thing that sticks in my head that your dad said to your mom when people complemented on her on her beauty. Yeah, her father not was her father. Yes. Can you say what he would say . Yes, so thats part of why i included that in the essay. My grandfather would say to my mother, you know, you shouldnt say thank you when someone compliments you on the way you look because youve done nothing to deserve it and he was a really serious person and i think that he made her feel ashamed for the way. She looked and you know her body particularly and it was a source of shame for her and her family which is why i think in some way she took the other route of like celebrate your you know old boys looking at you whatever and kind of saying like this should be a source of pride but in a lot of ways it made me very aware of the way. I was perceived and you know, i write about this in that essay like praying for beauty when i was very young like six and and what did you think it was . Like, was it a source of power . I mean just to be clear. Yes. It was definitely a source of power. Like this wasnt just in my family. It was also, you know, i grew up in the early arts and the age of like the most powerful women to me were Britney Spears and pop stars and beautiful women. And not just my generation like my parents loved older movies. Wed watch like Marilyn Monroe and some like it hot and it was like, okay, so theres men who can be powerful because theyre president s or their comedians or their rock stars, but to me, it seemed that the most powerful women were always the ones who are most desired by men. So i think that as a very young person instead of for like money or intelligence or safety like it seemed it. Just spoke. It said took so much to me when i looked back on that and thought about like at how did i learn that that should be the thing that prayed for and wanted . Yeah. I i kind of really want to talk about the blurred lines portion of the book because i have you rewatched that video you never watch it anymore watched it when i was writing the essay. Um, what was your second rewatching . Im curious if it was the same. Its so weird to think about that and think like thats what propelled me to fame. Its such an odd moment specific artifact of the culture, you know. Yeah. I mean, i think you know what i wanted to convey when i wrote the essay and truly how i feel about it is i dont feel that connected to it. It was a job that i showed up to for a day. So, you know even choosing to write about it was strange strange for me because so much of the rest of the book is so personal and this was definitely a moment of using you know, what that video and what i represented in the zeitgeist to sort of give an inside look of my experience and my approach to modeling and the kind of like Power Dynamics that were on that on that set but yeah watching it again. It was like its not i dont feel that much because im like, i just think about that day of work. All right, you know, i remember how much i got tip remember who i was dating. Do you know what i mean . Like, i remember that time in my life. But i havent watched it that many times so i dont feel. I dont like live in the video and my real you know what i mean, one of the pleasures of the book everyone out there. Is that emily remembers the like the the treatment notes from that video . Theyre very embarrassing. What were they they were like trashy something man. Like it was really yeah. I mean, i think it was just an interesting time because people were sort of already, you know feminist like beyonce hadnt you know coined the terms or owned the term feminists yet, but there was like this feminist blogosphere people were kind of talking about you know, like okay maybe things in the past havent totally been like great for women. But like, how can we like, how can they be great for women while still being hot, right, you know . Right, essentially. Well the interesting part which i did not know about that video is is that the setup . The person setting up the video was trying to create kind of a good. Vibe for you guys. It was lower beside this like weird like sisterhood vibe in the room. Yeah. Well making of it. Yeah. I mean, i think that another reason i wanted to write about that experience is because you know, there are multiple sides to that to the experience. It was a female director. It was a female dp there were tons of young women on props makeup set design whatever and for me at the time. I think i was 20 21, and i had just been working as a model which you know, i described in the book i had this really hardheaded kind of like, this is my industry. Im working. Im a mannequin like its not fun. Its not glamorous. Im not going to be a supermodel. Im saving my money because i saw what happened in 2008. I graduated high school in 2009 and i was like, i dont want to like move back into parents house and have to take a Service Industry job. So yeah, i was really scared and so modeling felt like this like cheat sheet essentially this like i also grew up with you know, my mom was a writer. My dad was a painter. I always understood the idea of like you have to have your day job. They were teachers, you know, so i was like, okay, i guess this will be my day job and then ill figure out what i really want to do. So yeah, all of that was true and when the video was criticized and people came to me and sort of you know, i think there was a certain amount of pointing fingers and like how dare you be a part of this, you know, misogynistic thing. I felt really protective of of the women that i had liked so much on set and how much fun i had had on set compared to like front side back of a shirt or shooting with some, you know, creepy group of guys. I was like wait i made friends on that video. They asked me how i felt i thats why i danced the way i did because was having fun. And did you feel tricked after that or you felt sincere like that what they thought its me fear. I felt sincere. I felt also defiant which is sort of why i wasnt saying like also the guys who i shot it with were kind of , you know, because i felt very protective of the experience that id had with that director and with those other women women and also protective of i wanted my politics to align. How i wanted to see myself and feel which would you mean by that . I wanted to feel powerful. I didnt want to feel small. I didnt want to feel like a mannequin. I wanted to say look i worked this system. I like, you know had this commodifile full asset my body and i had a great time on set and like yeah, you know what that was, maybe that was even power and i think that that i think thats true of a lot not to go on a separate tangent, but a lot of the ways that our beliefs are often about our identity and what we want to how we want to see and feel about ourselves which was why it was so important for me to also write kind of the full experience about what it really was like and you know, also inspect why i was defiant and why it felt so important for me to feel powerful as the naked girl in a music video. I mean, i think whole trick of the book is like something that we see generally on the surface like were just seeing your instagram or were just seeing you in the video we like the pleasure of the book is that you get in you get the internal thoughts of that like what that experience is like and thats whats interesting about it, but its like a heart. Its like a hard line to walk like theyre because its not you commodifying your own body yet like not yet. Youre just getting paid to show up for a few hours, but and some and people other people are telling you youre being objectified, but youre trying to like somehow feel powerful, you know . Yeah, and i mean, i would say that you know my relationship with instagram at that time actually felt the same way. It was similar to the ways that i felt about that video and the environment that was on set which was that i you know was in control in some ways. I you know models in the 90s didnt have a way of dictating. What images they were putting out. It was just left up to the magazines and whatever editor and blah blah and i was like, wow can curate my identity. Line myself i can control that and that felt really good. It felt like you know it it felt like control. Yeah, i mean the thing that like is on the other side of the scale is there are moments in the book when you realize await if this is my path to power money control, im kind of dependent on men like the men who want this. Its like their desire and playing to so that what is that realization . Like, how does that turn to feeling . I mean, i think thats the thesis of the blurred lines essay is sort of realizing you know that as a young girl in my 20s which by the way, you know, obviously my experience is a model is very specific. Its an industry, but i have friends who look back. I mean taylor swift we should talk about, you know, how she feels looking back at being my tiktok is all taylor swift and jake gyllenhaal. Ive been lets talk about it for 10 minutes. Exactly. Yeah exist. I would love to um but no, i mean, i think that a lot of the experience i had as a young person as a model, but also with interactions in my personal life was like, oh im because im young and im desirable. Im the one who has the power and i think that even men felt that way the men that i was interacting with and i think actually some of the instances that i write about in the book, they almost felt like they were like reclaiming their power by kind of doing these like disrespectful things because it felt like oh this young beautiful girl like she shes the one in like shes actually emasculating me in some way because she the power here because shes desired even though now i look back and im like, oh i was actually so young. I was a kid and you were an adult and you know, the situation was the power dynamic was very different than what i thought. And so yeah, thats sort of part of the revelation of blurred lines and and charting my relationship to that video my memory of that video and how its also you know, representative of the evolution of my politics that was such a hard end to that sentence. Thats good. Probably for a little longer. The the one theres a super creepy incident in the book. I mean another thing the book does is take you into worlds that most of us dont have access to and its kind of like after blurred lines and a lot of success you end up in like weird vips situations. Can you just tell i mean, this is a less well known story, but the one about the 25,000 to show up at a sports game. That is such a weird. Story like what is that world and how to different women behave in that world . Um, yeah. Well that essay is called transactions and an excerpt of it ran in the guardian. So if you read that then thats what im referencing. I was really interested in investigating my own judgment of women and how they navigate systems of power in regards to men specifically, you know in my you know there i could write a whole book just about that called like victorias secret girl. Shes a great character in the oh, yes. Yeah. Shes a real life person. But you know, i was interested in i mean, i think people kind of like do that in their marriage. Sometimes i have friends who you know, marry somebody wealthy and whatever theres all kinds of negotiations but in the industry, its very specific because as an unknown model, youre basically, you know, theres women who kind of are sent out to castings to recruit other young models to essentially go out with richmond and just like stand with them at a table and like theyre kind of hoping to have sex with you, but like honestly they just want you to stand next to them and make them look cool. Its funny, but its pretty dark and you know, its its a step away from the Jeffrey Epstein kind of world to be totally honest and as as now living in new york city, i see i dont really go to nightclubs, but theres been a different few different moments where ive watched these like groups of very underage. Very clearly very young women walk in with like one guy whos the Party Promoter and then you know the wealthy guys kind of join and its related. Also, theres celebrity men. Theres this whole kind of market around this and you know as an unknown model you dont get paid, but they essentially host a dinner. So if youre you know a working model in la youre not making that much money youre hungry straight up and you go to these things and they know what theyre doing. Theyre like come to nobu and you know, the whole vibe is like eat whatever you want drink whatever you want and so a lot of models go because they just want meal and then they get a little drunk and then theyre invited to the club and thats sort of like when these wealthy men come into play so i had experiences with that where you know, i felt extremely uncomfortable as somebody who you know had not had was always very liked clear transactions and those were not very clear and then the the other part of