We love you, you're perfect, now hide.
Model-turned-actress Emily Ratajkowski admits she faced immense
pressure from family members and school administrators growing up to
shield her good looks and suppress her sexuality to protect herself from
the world.
"Teachers, friends, adults, boyfriends ... (they) were more often the
ones to make me feel uncomfortable or guilty about my developing
sexuality," she reveals in a highly personal essay on Lena Dunham's
online "Lenny" newsletter.
The "Gone Girl" star, who says she developed D-cup breasts by age 12,
recalls a concerned family member blatantly "sobbing" to her parents
when she was only 13 because her outfit in a school play apparently
caught the eye of some of the men in the audience.
Later that year, she says another family pulled her aside and warned
her that she should "hide out" and "keep a low profile" as she grew into
her body.
"Their comments felt much more personal and thus landed that much
harder," Ratajkowski recalls. "I was still figuring out how to put a
tampon in, never mind how to understand some of the more complicated
aspects of womanhood."
Ratajkowski, 24, has a far different understanding of what it means to
be sexual now. She says there's a colossal difference between being
"sexy" and being "trashy" — even if society doesn't see the distinction.
"To me, 'sexy' is a kind of beauty, a kind of self-expression, one that
is to be celebrated, one that is wonderfully female," Ratajkowski
wrote.
"Why does the implication have to be that sex is a thing men get to
take from women and women give up?" she continued. "Most adolescent
women are introduced to 'sexy' women through porn or Photoshopped images
of celebrities. Is that the only example of a sexual woman we will
provide to the young women of our culture?"
Ratajkowski longer listens to the naysayers. As one of the world's most
prominent models and a budding film star, the brunette beauty says she
won't let the unwanted opinions of others bring her down.
"I refuse to live in this world of shame and silent apologies," she
wrote. "Life cannot be dictated by the perceptions of others, and I wish
the world had made it clear to me that people's reactions to my
sexuality were not my problems, they were theirs."
No comments:
Post a Comment