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 acerbic voice to call out troubling behaviour.
Why then, are images of Ratajkowski posing in jeans triple her size, flirtingly pulling at the waistband with a “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” smize, circulating the internet?
The intention of the image isn’t immediately clear. Is the French publication, M Magazine, hoping to have Ratajkowski ‘larp’ as an individual who fits the denim as a way of gaining social clout?
But the longer the image remains to be distributed, what becomes apparent is the damaging behaviour of everyone involved in sending the image to print—including Ratajkowski herself.
Erroneously, 2023 has become the year that women’s bodies have once again become subject to dissection. If headlines are to be believed, ozempic-laden thin figures are ‘in’, while anything above a sample size is ‘out’, and placing a thin, white woman in a pair of trousers designed for a bigger body isn’t the way to reject this discourse.
If anything, images like this continue to perpetuate harmful narratives that the only way plus-sized women can get representation in the media is to have their clothes mockingly worn on conventionally skinny bodies.
As this story goes to print, the image of Ratajkowski remains published on her and the magazine’s respective Instagram accounts. The longer the photo remains, the more barrage and critique it receives.
“I’ve been looking for those jeans in the second photo. If you could just please return them that would be cool. Tysm,” wrote model, Tess Holiday. Stephanie Yeboah, a body image activist based in London added, “What a strange second photo. And you wrote a book about body image? Mm!”
These images shouldn’t justify the incessant calls to the fashion industry to expand their sizing models to include all types of bodies, but it is giving volume to concerns that have been previously silenced.
