Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton.

This is the show that gives a voice to topics that are often kept silent.

Today I'm chatting to Emily Ratichakowski.

You are objectified, you're sexualized, it may be very young,

even if you're a woman who's done a bunch of amazing journalistic work,

like there is kind of this push to be also hot and celebrated in that way.

And then on the other side of it, there's this sort of shaming that comes with it.

Like, well now nobody's going to take you seriously because, you know,

you're a slut quote unquote, or even from feminist,

I think that there's this feeling of like, well now you've played into the male gaze,

so therefore you're not progressive, you're not helping women.

Emily began her acting career as a child and has gone on to star in numerous huge films,

as well as work as a model.

In 2021, she published a collection of essays in her book My Body.

It's a deeply thoughtful commentary on what it's like to be a woman working in an industry

that wants to commodify and objectify you.

Now she's carrying on the conversation with her podcast, Hi-Lo, with Em Ratichak.

Basically, across as many platforms as possible,

she's using her celebrity to speak how in favour of female sexual empowerment

and against body shaming, and I was so so interested to have this chat with her

because I'll be honest, there's so much within these conversations that I feel conflicted about

or don't know what I'm meant to think about it.

...