Accusing the Accuser: Emily Ratajkowski's Body

I recently travelled to Santa Barbara, California to celebrate Thanksgiving with my partner and his family. We began each morning with a (freezing) swim in the Pacific Ocean, a (necessary) dip in the hot tub, followed by a warm cup of coffee by the fire while reading a single chapter from Emily Ratajkowski's My Body—debate ensues.

I can only thank my partner for brilliantly ordering two copies for us to read simultaneously before deep diving into hour long debates, deconstructing the day's essay and contextualising it within contemporary feminist discourse. If only we had a podcast, we'd say. If only those walls could talk.

As noted in a previous post, My Body is an ostensibly feminist collection of essays, written by Emily Ratajkowski. And yet, this text fails to capture the complexities of feminism. My Body explores a limited kind of feminism, construed by and for the upper-class, white female gaze, written for women like Ratajkowski. Those who dare to critique My Body risk being labeled as 'anti-feminist' at best, and disbelievers at worst. It's difficult to say whether Ratajkowski consciously construed My Body in this way.

My Body is wolf in sheep's clothing; it is a brutal attempt to claim power over other women, concealed behind the curtain of feminism.

However, it is difficult to separate My Body from its silencing ability. Ratajkowski's discourse protects itself from insightful critique by discussing contentious topics that trigger those who have lived through similar experiences. For example, the attempt to critique an Ratajkowski's essay discussing sexual violence can be read as a kind of denial of her experience. Let me be clear: I do not deny, nor negate, Ratajkowski's experience. However, I do take issue with the kind of language she uses to describe other women—and violence against women in general—in order to serve her own goals as a writer and a cultural commentator. Fundamentally, My Body is a collection of essays that situates Ratajkowski above all others. My Body is wolf in sheep's clothing; it is a brutal attempt to claim power over women, disguised as feminism.

In "Toxic", Ratajkowski carefully weaves her story into Britney Spears' infamous 'breakdown' which both took place in 2007. The opening sentence reads: "I was sixteen on February 16, 2007, when pictures of Britney Spears shaving her head hit the internet." She continues, "At that time, I was smoking pot every day after school, having regular—and unprotected—sex with an older boyfriend...and skipping class for photoshoots." It is striking how Ratajkowski can read her own lived experience into Spears' trauma; a process that trivialises Spears' trauma and fails to accurately consider why Spears shaved her head. Ratajkowski focuses on the theatricality of this act, rather than addressing the legal and maternal discourses which likely informed Spears' rationale.

It is important to note that Spears didn’t shave her head in a fit of rage—she did it so there would be no way to trace her drug use. Hair screening is a regulated scientific method that is used to test the accumulation of illicit substances in the human body. When Britney shaved her head in 2007, she was fighting her husband in court over the custody of her two children.[1] Spears' drug use was supported by the fact that her ex-manager had drug-snuffing dogs scouring her home in search for evidence of drug consumption. Indeed, the dogs discovered crystal meth hidden in her home. It is significant that medical examinations rely on hair specimens to determine the concentration of methamphetamine in the human body. Thus, Spears' choice to shave her head was not necessarily an aesthetic decision but rather an attempt to avoid the consequences associated with confirmation of her ostensible drug consumption. Unfortunately, Spears' drug use caused her to lose custody of her children.

In the introduction to Wasted Looks, Skelly notes that “female alcoholics and drug addicts have received a particular kind of surveillance informed by beliefs about ideal femininity and notions of appropriate female sexuality.”[2] Skelly continues, and contends that “Addicted women could not be viewed as good mothers or good wives, and they were pathologised as excessive and fundamentally threatening to the social body.”[3] Therefore, there is a way to interpret Spears' shorn head as a physical threat to herself, her children, her “estranged” husband, and to society because of her “wild” behaviour.[4] Britney’s excessive behaviour and her ostensible drug consumption were used to support this idea that she was not behaving as a mother at the exact time when her motherhood was legally called into question.[5] Indeed, Spears’ shaved head was used as evidence to identify her as 'someone gone mad', and a woman unfit for maternal duties, instead of someone who was living with serious mental illness.

It is clear that Ratajkowski does not recognise the power of her words. I would argue that Ratajkowski commits a kind of discursive violence against Spears in this particular essay. "I felt angry; Britney was destroying the girl I'd once idolized," she writes. It gets worse: "Sad Britney was not what I wanted to see. I didn't want to hear about how lonely she felt despite all her success," Ratajkowski writes. I can't decide which is worse, the fact that Ratajkowski places emphasis on her own experience witnessing Spears' trauma, or the fact that she finds Spears' trauma painfully tedious. Ratajkowski problematically reflects Western society's criticism against women who exceed the boundaries of femininity. Famous women are recorded in visual and material culture in order to feed the consumerist desire to observe the intimate lives of America's modern-day aristocracy, and subsequently avert their gaze when these women no longer represent the promising ideals of fame and wealth.

Isn't it interesting that Ratajkowski frames criticism of her lived experience and trauma as 'anti-feminist', while simultaneously degrading another woman's lived experience of both femininity and trauma?

This is the problem I have with Ratajkowski and My Body. She frames her essays as feminist in principle, but in practice she maliciously fashions her feminism and body in such a way that maintains her superiority above all other women. This feminist discourse is written by and for [Ratajkowski's] Body.

[1] Britney Spears is the mother of two sons, both born before she went to rehabilitation in 2007 for drug and alcohol consumption: Sean Federline (b. 2005), and Jayden James Federline (b. 2006). [2] Julia Skelly, “Introduction: The Visual Politics of Addiction,” Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919: Wasted Looks (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 7. [3] Skelly examines the visual politics of addiction in visual culture produced in Britain from 1751 to 1919. Although her study does not specifically examine the visual politics of addiction in the twenty-first century, I wish to apply her discourse in order to deconstruct the ways in which female alcoholics and/or drug users are visibly degraded through their visual representation. See: Skelly, “Introduction: The Visual Politics of Addiction,” p. 5. [4] Britney Spears is the mother of two sons, both born before she went to rehabilitation in 2007 for drug and alcohol consumption: Sean Federline (b. 2005), and Jayden James Federline (b. 2006). [5] Western society has historically associated the female body to discourses on sexuality, morality, and motherhood; women who were ostensibly “bad” mothers were criticized for their failure of their female roles. For more on the female body and its cultural significance, see: Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).