Emily Ratajkowski Can Take Care of Herself, but a Little Help Would Be Nice

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Emily Ratajkowski is doing a balancing act many famously beautiful women have to perform. In her 2021 book “My Body,” she reflects on what it’s been like to build a career based on her public image, and her struggle to control that image in an industry largely run by men. Since getting divorced a few years ago, she’s been thinking a lot about gender dynamics and the type of agency she wants to have in dating, too. Today, Ratajkowski reads “Why I Fell for an ‘I’m the Man’ Man,” by Susan Forray. Forray is also a successful, self-sufficient woman, dating after divorce. She’s surprised to find herself falling for a man with old-fashioned ideas about who does what in a relationship. (He pays for dinner, handles the finances and initiates sex). As a single mom who handles everything, Ratajkowski says, she can relate to the desire to be cared for once in a while. And that doesn’t have to mean playing into a sexist stereotype.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love.
0:10.0	Today I'm talking to model, actress, writer, entrepreneur, and busy toddler mom Emily Radikowski.
0:18.0	Hello!
0:20.0	How are you?
0:21.0	I'm great. Where are you? I'm in New York in my kids playroom sitting on a toy.
0:28.0	Okay, I see. I mean at least it's a stuffed animal not a LEGO those things are notoriously painful is your
0:35.3	kid a LEGO kid yeah he's a little young for Legos but he does love Legos he's got an airplane
0:40.8	he's got lots of dinosaurs truck I was sitting on a bunny from
0:46.2	Easter so when Emily isn't at home taking care of her son she's often posing in
0:51.2	some glamorous photo shoot and photographs of her are everywhere,
0:56.0	on magazine covers, and fragrance and swimsuit ads all over social media,
1:00.6	where she's known by her iconic handle,
1:03.0	Emrada.
1:04.3	And recently, she's been speaking up
1:06.1	about the ways people perceive her.
1:08.7	In her 2021 book, My Body, Emily writes
1:11.7	about what it feels like to have men profit from her image and to work in an
1:16.0	industry where her beauty is her currency.
1:26.0	Do you want me to call you Emily or do you want me to call you Emily or do want me to call you Emmarao? What do you prefer? Whatever you want? I think most people call me Emily.
1:31.0	Okay, that's what I'll do. But I'm curious, where did that nickname, Emrada? Where did that start?
1:37.4	So my dad was the art teacher at my high school and he was this larger than life's legendary very cool painting teacher who like
1:46.8	barely wore shoes and everyone called him Radha. So then when I I think I got my first MySpace page I just decided to be M Radha.
	...

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