This is The Guardian.

This week we're revisiting some of our favourite episodes from 2021.

And today we return to an interview with one of the world's most famous models and the author

of a recent collection of essays called My Body. This is Emily Ratakowski on what that career

has been worth to her and what it's cost her.

I called myself a mannequin because it's a French word for model and it helped me when I was

first starting to model. The mannequin felt like a way of almost explaining that it was an industry

and that My Body was being used.

Emily Ratakowski has a face and a physique that have been used to sell thousands of products

from Fenty underwear to Versace Okcucho. In millions of pictures posted across social media

in the tabloids on the front covers of fashion magazines, her dough-like, deep brown eyes have

gazed out at us. But it's her body and the way she uses it that has fascinated and even outraged

some people since she became world famous in 2013 for dancing almost naked in the blurred lines

video. Emily hadn't really expected to gain notoriety for that performance.

She'd studied fine art at university and thought that one day she'd make money from selling her work

or being in films. But modeling was suddenly far more lucrative.

I really was almost like a clothes hanger. I would shoot the front, the back, the side,

change, put on the different clothes. So you really feel like a mannequin.

And it was my way of saying, you think of model as this glamorous term. But this is just like a way

I'm making money and I have the right figure for this very specific niche thing that helps sell clothes.

Now she's written a book of essays about her experiences in the fashion industry.

You might have heard about it already because one of the lines from it has leaked in the press.

...