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I’m happy to hear Ratajkowski tell (part of) her story in her own voice. It’s refreshing to see artists, and especially models, try to take back their bodies, voices, images- tangible and otherwise, etc.
A moment that seems to capture so much of what is wrong with the industry (and also its very essence) is when she says she was paid $150 to pose for a shoot and then a couple thousand when the magazine came out. A photo from that shoot would then cost $80,000 later, after some douchebag hung a blown up print in his living room. Gross-but therein lies the issue: being a successful artist requires someone else looking, listening, watching, and capturing your image, your talent. They decide that they like what they see (and so will others $$$$). She only profits off of her body, her writing, her voice if other people decide it can be packaged and sold.
For all of her candidness, I think she struggles to fully clarify and reconcile the conflict & hypocrisy there. How to continue making money off her image without…selling herself.
Maybe she is Jia Tolentino’s “cyborg” in her essay “Athleisure, Barre, and Kale: Tyranny of the Ideal Woman”. In it, Tolentino shows us rebellion in the form of a woman who can admit she is artificial as she continues to build and profit off of her personal brand. I’m not sure how successful either are in their efforts to rebel or reject or change the very system they stay in. In Rata’s case, I think her openly conflicted moments in this collection are of value, nonetheless.
To start this essay collection with beauty lessons she learned in childhood and end it with the birth of her son is a fitting and bold choice. Ratajkowski laments how men see womens’ bodies as a life cycle that starts with sex object and ends with motherhood. This collection doesn’t necessarily change the end of that life cycle, but tries to reframe it. In her last essay, Ratajkowski shows us a mother’s body that is powerful, in charge, aware, trusted, peaceful- everything she felt her body wasn’t before. This ending felt like real, personal resolution for her and other women, even if “the industry” remains broken.
A moment that seems to capture so much of what is wrong with the industry (and also its very essence) is when she says she was paid $150 to pose for a shoot and then a couple thousand when the magazine came out. A photo from that shoot would then cost $80,000 later, after some douchebag hung a blown up print in his living room. Gross-but therein lies the issue: being a successful artist requires someone else looking, listening, watching, and capturing your image, your talent. They decide that they like what they see (and so will others $$$$). She only profits off of her body, her writing, her voice if other people decide it can be packaged and sold.
For all of her candidness, I think she struggles to fully clarify and reconcile the conflict & hypocrisy there. How to continue making money off her image without…selling herself.
Maybe she is Jia Tolentino’s “cyborg” in her essay “Athleisure, Barre, and Kale: Tyranny of the Ideal Woman”. In it, Tolentino shows us rebellion in the form of a woman who can admit she is artificial as she continues to build and profit off of her personal brand. I’m not sure how successful either are in their efforts to rebel or reject or change the very system they stay in. In Rata’s case, I think her openly conflicted moments in this collection are of value, nonetheless.
To start this essay collection with beauty lessons she learned in childhood and end it with the birth of her son is a fitting and bold choice. Ratajkowski laments how men see womens’ bodies as a life cycle that starts with sex object and ends with motherhood. This collection doesn’t necessarily change the end of that life cycle, but tries to reframe it. In her last essay, Ratajkowski shows us a mother’s body that is powerful, in charge, aware, trusted, peaceful- everything she felt her body wasn’t before. This ending felt like real, personal resolution for her and other women, even if “the industry” remains broken.