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As anyone with an understanding of Emily Ratajkowski and her work as a literary figure or podcast host can attest, the supermodel knows how to use her body as a medium to spark conversation. It’s a double-edged sword for the 33-year-old.
Ratajkowksi has commodified her figure and image as a symbol of empowerment and autonomy, yet still profits off the ideals her specific genre of supposed “enviable” thinness and beauty upholds through her work as a model.
Though the lines of what defines a model’s role have blurred with the dawn of social media—shifting their position from pure clotheshorse to a cachet of power—it’s clear that Ratajkowski is one such figure who isn’t afraid to use her voice to call out troubling behaviour.
So when images of Ratajkowski posing in jeans triple her size, coyly pulling at the waistband with a smize, circulated the internet, fans were taken aback.
The intention of the image isn’t immediately clear, either. Is M Magazine, a French publication, simply hoping to have Ratajkowski mock the baggy denim trend?
Alarmingly, in 2023, we’ve seen women’s bodies once again become subject to dissection. If headlines are to be believed, Ozempic bodies and ‘Heroin Chic’ aesthetics are threatening to negate the momentous steps achieved by the body positivity movement. But placing a thin, white woman in a pair of trousers designed for a larger body isn’t the way to reject this discourse.
If anything, images like this risk perpetuating harmful narratives that the only way plus-sized women’s clothes can be in fashion is when worn on conventionally skinny bodies in jest.
As this story goes to print, the image of Ratajkowski remains published on her and the magazine’s respective Instagram accounts, with a barrage of criticisms filling up the comment sections.
“I’ve been looking for those jeans in the second photo,” wrote model Tess Holiday. “If you could just please return them that would be cool. Tysm.”
“What a strange second photo. And you wrote a book about body image? Mm,” Stephanie Yeboah, a body image activist based in London, added.
