The audience Q&A part of an event with Emily Ratajkowski in conversation with Elaine Welteroth
discussing her collection of essays, "My Body"
Emily Ratajkowski is a model, actress, activist, entrepreneur, and writer. Ratajkowski has also appeared on the covers of multiple magazines and walked the runway for numerous high fashion brands. Her 2020 essay for New York magazine, “Buying Myself Back,” led to widespread public discourse on image ownership and garnered over one million views within twenty-four hours, and was the magazine’s most-read piece of the year. My Body is her first book.
Since 2017, Ratajkowski has successfully translated her more than 26 million followers on Instagram into a successful direct-to-consumer business via her apparel line, Inamorata. As a model, she has appeared on the covers of major fashion/lifestyle magazines and is currently the face of L’Oréal’s hair care line Kerastase. As an actress, she has appeared in multiple films, including David Fincher’s Gone Girl and alongside Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. Ratajkowski is also outspoken politically, continually using her platform to advocate for her political beliefs, having campaigned for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020.
In April 2021, she announced that she was NFT’ing a conceptual art piece via a Christie’s auction, raising questions about the nature of authorship, specifically when it comes to the digital realm, while figuratively returning an appropriated Instagram post to its digitally native terrain. Building upon her New York magazine essay, the auction amplified the dialogue surrounding women controlling their image and the ability to receive rightful compensation for its usage and distribution.
Elaine Welteroth is an award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, producer, and judge on Bravo’s Project Runway. She is known for her work at the helm of Teen Vogue, where in 2016 she was appointed the youngest ever Editor-in-Chief at a Conde Nast publication and used her position to prioritize diversity and social justice coverage. Prior to stepping into the role, she served as the first Black Beauty Director in Condé Nast’s 100-plus-year history. She’s now a leading expert and advocate for the next generation of changemakers. She was recently named Editor-at-Large of Complex and Verizon’s new digital magazine In The Know where she oversees all covers and leads culture-shifting conversations speaking directly to the intersectional interests of Gen-Z.
“In prose that is by turns honey smooth and vicious, uproarious and wounded, Emily Ratajkowski has captured the complicated terrain of having a body people want to sell while having her own agenda she refuses to give up. She knows the pain that lives in every woman and she isn’t afraid to link arms and say she’s been there, and that it hurts. This is the book for all women trying to place their bodies on the map of consumption versus control, and all who want to better understand their impulses. It left me much changed.”
―Lena Dunham, author of Not That Kind of Girl
My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men’s treatment of women and women’s rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the grey area between consent and abuse.
Nuanced, unflinching, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a fierce writer brimming with courage and intelligence.