My Body Quotes

“In my early twenties, it had never occurred to me that the women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place. Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over. Facing the reality of the dynamics at play would have meant admitting how limited my power really was—how limited any woman’s power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I so desperately craved men's validation that I accepted it even when it came wrapped in disrespect.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I read once that women are more likely than men to cry when they are angry. I know that women cry out of shame. We are afraid of our anger, embarrassed by the way that it transforms us. We cry to quell what we feel, even when it's trying to tell us something, even when it has every right to exist.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Men never notice the overcalculating that women do. They think things happen "for some weird reason" while women sing songs and do backbends and dance elaborate moves to make those things happen.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I wonder how many women you've disregarded in your life, written off, because you assumed they had nothing to offer beyond the way they looked. How quickly they learned that the stuff in their heads was of less value than the shape of their bodies. I bet they were all smarter than you.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I will proclaim all of my mistakes and contradictions, for all the women who cannot do so, for all the women we've called muses without learning their names, whose silence we mistook for consent. I stood on their shoulders to get here.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“You thought you were a mind, but you're a body.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Lines were never clear between us. The house didn’t help: it was a place with no boundaries. Children who grow up in homes like mine, just them and their parents with no separation, physically or emotionally, become experts in a very particular type of seeing. We learn to see things that are hidden, and things that aren’t there at all. We become particularly sensitive to the moods and emotions of others. We are nimble and excellent at shape-shifting. We oscillate between feeling special and feeling alone. We feel simultaneously capable of both saving and destroying those we love.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“My mother seems to hold the way my beauty is affirmed by the world like a mirror, reflecting back to her a measure of her own worth.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Apples and oranges, my therapist tells me. What if you're not the same as other women, what if you're an entirely different fruit? she asks gently. But everyone has a favorite fruit, I tell her. I feel a tear run down my cheek. Everyone prefers one over the other. That is how the world works; everything is ranked. One is always better than the other.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I want to calculate my beauty to protect myself, to understand exactly how much power and lovability I have.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Beauty was a way for me to be special. When I was special, I felt my parents' love for me the most.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I know that embracing anger means relinquishing that control, that assessment, that distance from myself, but I am desperate for control. I would rather hurt myself--metaphorically stab myself--than let anyone else hold the knife.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Thank you! What a joy life can be in this body.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“It didn’t occur to me that what I wanted from S was the same thing that my mother craved from me: to have someone live in her pain with her.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I do remember that as a young girl I prayed for beauty. I'd lie in bed, squeeze my eyes shut, and concentrate so hard that I broke out in a sweat underneath the covers. I believed that for God to take you seriously, you had to make your mind as blank as possible and then focus on the expanding spots of light behind your eyelids and think only of the one thing you desperately wished for.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“In my early twenties, it had never occurred to me that the women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place. Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over. Facing the reality of the dynamics at play would have meant admitting how limited my power really was - how limited any woman's power is when she survives and even succeeds in the world as a thing to be looked at. With that one gesture, Robin Thicke had reminded everyone on set that we women weren't actually in charge. I didn't have any real power as the naked girl dancing around in his music video. I was nothing more than the hired mannequin.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“No one likes an angry woman. She is the worst kind of villain: a witch, obnoxious and ugly and full of spite and bitterness. Shrill. I do anything to avoid that feeling, anything to stop myself from being that woman. I try to make anything resembling anger seem spunky and charming and sexy. I fold it into something small, tuck it away.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I want to be the one in control of my body, even if that means denying it.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I've felt objectified and limited by my position in the world as a so-called sex symbol. I've capitalized on my body within the confines of a cis-hetero, capitalist, patriarchal world, one in which beauty and sex appeal are valued solely through the satisfaction of the male gaze.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Strip yourself naked so it seems like no one else can strip you down; hide nothing, so that no one can use your secrets to hurt you.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“The world celebrates and rewards women who are chosen by powerful men.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I think of her and the other naked women who line the walls and fill the halls of museums, some so ancient the color has washed from their bodies and their marble heads have fallen off. It would be easy to mistake these displays for symbols of respect, for an honor. But what were their lives? And what were their names? no one remembers.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I am newly married to my husband when he remarks casually, “There are so many beautiful women in the world.” I freeze when he says this. I know it is a perfectly acceptable and truthful thing to remark on, and yet I feel a familiar twist in my gut. “What?” he asks. He can feel the switch; he can sense the instant tension in my body. “I don’t know,” I reply. I press my face into his chest, ashamed of my reaction. “I don’t know why it hurts to hear you say that.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“On a good day, I'd call people sexist who condemned a woman for capitalizing on her body. On a bad day, I'd hate myself and my body, and every decision I'd made in my life seemed like a glaring mistake. Mostly, though, I knew I was a whole, complex person with thoughts and ideas and things I wanted to make and say. I wanted so desperately to prove them all wrong. I just hadn't gotten the change yet.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I so desperately craved men’s validation that I accepted it even when it came wrapped in disrespect. I was those girls in that room, waiting, trading my body and measuring my self-worth in a value system that revolves around men and their desire.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“We learn to see things that are hidden, and things that aren’t there at all. We become particularly sensitive to the moods and emotions of others. We are nimble and excellent at shape-shifting. We oscillate between feeling special and feeling alone. We feel simultaneously capable of both saving and destroying those we love.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Children who grow up in homes like mine, just them and their parents with no separation, physically or emotionally, become experts in a very particular type of seeing. We learn to see things that are hidden and things that aren't there at all. We become particularly sensitive to the moods and emotions of others. We are nimble and excellent at shape-shifting. We oscillate between feeling special and feeling alone. We feel simultaneously capable of both saving and destroying those we love.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“I've always been drawn to overexposure. Making myself big gives me a sense of security. Be the loudest in the room, the most opinionated, the one in the most revealing dress. Do the most. Being big also means becoming a target. But by inviting people's gaze and attention and therefore their attacks, I have a sense of more power, less vulnerability, since I'm the one putting myself out there.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body

“Feminism is all about choice, I reminded the world, so stop trying to control me.”
― Emily Ratajkowski, My Body