My Body
by
8/99
Critics' Rating Index
39/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
89/99
Volume of Reviews
96/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
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About This Book
A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity. Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture's commodification of women is the subject of this book. 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 gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.
Reviews
"At first, I suspected this made the book boring."
"'Buying Myself Back'...is the strongest of the 11 collected here, which are serious, personal, repetitive and myopic ..."
"Or, beyond that, I wanted her to risk fully indicting modeling as a paradigm—to not merely note that her career took off after she lost 10 pounds from stomach flu and kept the weight off, but to probe what looking at images of so many skinny bodies all day does to girls as delicate and unformed as her own teenage self."
"Most of the essays oscillate between pride and disenchantment with her own beauty, especially as a means of making money and attaining a restricted kind of social capital."
"Ratajkowski has spent decades receiving the world's lecherous gaze, metabolizing it, inviting it, rejecting it, capitalizing on it, and agonizing over it."
"Throughout her writing has a sweetness and even an innocence."
"At times the reader is a popcorn-eating audience; at other times her therapist ..."
"Intimate and accomplished ..."
"Surprisingly engaging ..."
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