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>> emily ratajkowski is your tonight to celebrate a debut collectiones of essays that examines her own multifaceted identity. a world-famous model with tens of millions of followers, she is a household name for her looks and prolific image, but refuses to let having a a body peoplet to sell forcer into dimensionality. "my body" tackle same, love, friendship and betrayal, and the intricate web of sexuality and power. feeling small one second and powerful the next both in and out of control. in reckoning with a level of success that is broader both pain and pleasure, emily investigates her own evolving beliefs, the perverse dynamics of a culture that commoditize the female body and the dichotomy between who she is and how she is perceived. emily ratajkowski is in conversation this evening with hanna rosin the editorial director for audio at new york magazine.

previously, hanna was a cohost of npr's and the author of the book the end of man and is also written for the atlantic, the "washington post" and the new yorker, among others. later in the program we would love to hear questions and you will be invited tos line up at the standing microphones in either aisle. following the event signed a books will be for sale in the main lobby. thank you all again both here and at home for being with us tonight, and please join me in getting a warm welcome to emily ratajkowski and hanna rosin. [applause] everyone thank you sor being here.

i have to like basque in the weirdness of this moment for one second of being live and having people live. hi. everyone. people are here so exciting. thank you for coming to washington. thank you for having me. thank you for being here. yeah, i feel. this book is so personal. that i was thinking like if i just dive right in i it'll be too therapy session. so so like the the construct i came up with is like i'm oprah and you're adele. can we do that? i did get to watch it. so i feel behind but i'm a quick learner. hopefully i can yeah, we can do it. you just do it dalinopra. oh my god. yeah we can do it. we'll do our best at six and i so you called the book my body, which i feel like embodies. the thing about the book it's like in my head the title is like look at my body. stop looking at my body like it

has like you're almost asking people to sort of come into the conversation right away. is that your intention like you could have just called it emily's life or something. well, that doesn't sound it's like friday prejudice and i'm gonna be honest with you. um, yeah, i mean, i definitely think that there was a part of me that liked playing with the idea of people thinking like rolling their eyes and being like, oh emily ratajkowski wrote a book called my body like right and then using that preconception hopefully to you know, maybe make them buy the book or even help, you know, sort of the ideas in the book be more impactful. so it was, you know a new what i was doing. i knew i was embracing something that was gonna potentially annoy people. yeah. good. okay. i'm all for that. um, there's a whole section of the book that had i think of as like the miseducation of emily or like the signals basically

that you received and i want to talk about that like even in your teenage life the interesting thing about that part of the book to me was normally when people are going through puberty or preteens. it's like the signals that come from inside that are confusing to you, but i feel like in your case even before you were conscious of it. it's all the stuff that it was like the the cues that came from outside to you. can you talk about that a little bit like the first time you realize that we're not necessarily the first time that your body was a thing and the people started to send that signal to you from outside. yeah. i mean, i think that i developed really young and i had a woman's body before i even understood or knew what sex was. so it put me in a really strange position one of the first essays i ever published was something called baby woman because i was truly a baby, but i was now i look back at pictures and i'm like really people thought i was an adult. i looked like a child, but i did

look older and i certainly i started to kind of have this experience of both feeling really self-aware in a positive and also in a negative way so, you know at middle in my middle school feeling the you know attention that i got from boys, which means that meant that the, you know popular girls wanted to be friends with me and thinking like, oh, that's a good thing. but then also, you know feeling like i had a vice principal snap my bra strap or i know i always remember that. yeah at that image sticks in my head of like that sucks. she was a woman interestingly. i don't think i specify that in the book, but you know, what's the point like, what are you supposed to do in her mind? it was i mean and this is really kind of that essay in general beauty lessons, you know. i'm interested in exploring the ways that women try to protect other women by kind of teaching

them the hard way or teaching them about the world and the way that their beauty and their sexuality in their bodies are going to be consumed and i think that for example that vice principal sort of thought she was saying to me like you should watch out you should be aware of this and like if i don't stand your bra strap somebody else will kind of thing. i think you know, i don't think she was doing it necessarily in a malicious way. i don't know but i mean it in general that was sort of the purpose behind that essay. i had an ex-boyfriend whose mom was like a very cool lady and she only had a son and at one point we were talking about if she had had a daughter and she said well i would have like obviously made sure that she you know stayed thin and i like almost spit up my lunch because i was like, wait what like you're a smart lady. eat with cool politics and you're talking about how you would make sure your daughter stays thin like that's you come

on. you must know that that's like recipe for an eating disorder and i realized that in her mind it was her it was her thinking that would be protecting her daughter and ensuring her daughter a good future and love because then women are loved more but your own parents. i feel like there's a there's weird mixed messages in there that there's like a thing that sticks in my head that your dad said to your mom when people complemented on her on her beauty. yeah, her father not was her father. yes. can you say what he would say? yes, so that's part of why i included that in the essay. my grandfather would say to my mother, you know, you shouldn't say thank you when someone compliments you on the way you look because you've done nothing to deserve it and he was a really serious person and i think that he made her feel ashamed for the way. she looked and you know her body particularly and it was a source of shame for her and her family

which is why i think in some way she took the other route of like celebrate your you know old boys looking at you whatever and kind of saying like this should be a source of pride but in a lot of ways it made me very aware of the way. i was perceived and you know, i write about this in that essay like praying for beauty when i was very young like six and and what did you think it was? like, was it a source of power? i mean just to be clear. yes. it was definitely a source of power. like this wasn't just in my family. it was also, you know, i grew up in the early arts and the age of like the most powerful women to me were britney spears and pop stars and beautiful women. and not just my generation like my parents loved older movies. we'd watch like marilyn monroe and some like it hot and it was like, okay, so there's men who can be powerful because they're presidents or their comedians or their rock stars, but to me, it seemed that the most powerful women were always the ones who

are most desired by men. so i think that as a very young person instead of for like money or intelligence or safety like it seemed it. just spoke. it said took so much to me when i looked back on that and thought about like at how did i learn that that should be the thing that prayed for and wanted? yeah. i i kind of really want to talk about the blurred lines portion of the book because i have you rewatched that video you never watch it anymore watched it when i was writing the essay. um, what was your second rewatching? i'm curious if it was the same. it's so weird to think about that and think like that's what propelled me to fame. it's such an odd moment specific artifact of the culture, you know. yeah. i mean, i think you know what i wanted to convey when i wrote the essay and truly how i feel

about it is i don't feel that connected to it. it was a job that i showed up to for a day. so, you know even choosing to write about it was strange strange for me because so much of the rest of the book is so personal and this was definitely a moment of using you know, what that video and what i represented in the zeitgeist to sort of give an inside look of my experience and my approach to modeling and the kind of like power dynamics that were on that on that set but yeah watching it again. it was like it's not i don't feel that much because i'm like, i just think about that day of work. all right, you know, i remember how much i got tip remember who i was dating. do you know what i mean? like, i remember that time in my life. but i haven't watched it that many times so i don't feel. i don't like live in the video and my real you know what i mean, one of the pleasures of the book everyone out there. is that emily remembers the like

the the treatment notes from that video? they're very embarrassing. what were they they were like trashy something man. like it was really yeah. i mean, i think it was just an interesting time because people were sort of already, you know feminist like beyonce hadn't you know coined the terms or owned the term feminists yet, but there was like this feminist blogosphere people were kind of talking about you know, like okay maybe things in the past haven't totally been like great for women. but like, how can we like, how can they be great for women while still being hot, right, you know? right, essentially. well the interesting part which i did not know about that video is is that the setup? the person setting up the video was trying to create kind of a good. vibe for you guys. it was lower beside this like weird like sisterhood vibe in the room. yeah. well making of it. yeah. i mean, i think that another

reason i wanted to write about that experience is because you know, there are multiple sides to that to the experience. it was a female director. it was a female dp there were tons of young women on props makeup set design whatever and for me at the time. i think i was 20 21, and i had just been working as a model which you know, i described in the book i had this really hard-headed kind of like, this is my industry. i'm working. i'm a mannequin like it's not fun. it's not glamorous. i'm not going to be a supermodel. i'm saving my money because i saw what happened in 2008. i graduated high school in 2009 and i was like, i don't want to like move back into parents house and have to take a service industry job. so yeah, i was really scared and so modeling felt like this like cheat sheet essentially this like i also grew up with you know, my mom was a writer. my dad was a painter. i always understood the idea of like you have to have your day

job. they were teachers, you know, so i was like, okay, i guess this will be my day job and then i'll figure out what i really want to do. so yeah, all of that was true and when the video was criticized and people came to me and sort of you know, i think there was a certain amount of pointing fingers and like how dare you be a part of this, you know, misogynistic thing. i felt really protective of of the women that i had liked so much on set and how much fun i had had on set compared to like front side back of a shirt or shooting with some, you know, creepy group of guys. i was like wait i made friends on that video. they asked me how i felt i that's why i danced the way i did because was having fun. and did you feel tricked after that or you felt sincere like that what they thought it's me fear. i felt sincere. i felt also defiant which is sort of why i wasn't saying like

also the guys who i shot it with were kind of --, you know, because i felt very protective of the experience that i'd had with that director and with those other women women and also protective of i wanted my politics to align. how i wanted to see myself and feel which would you mean by that? i wanted to feel powerful. i didn't want to feel small. i didn't want to feel like a mannequin. i wanted to say look i worked this system. i like, you know had this commodifile full asset my body and i had a great time on set and like yeah, you know what that was, maybe that was even power and i think that that i think that's true of a lot not to go on a separate tangent, but a lot of the ways that our beliefs are often about our identity and what we want to how we want to see and feel about ourselves which was why it was so important for me to also

write kind of the full experience about what it really was like and you know, also inspect why i was defiant and why it felt so important for me to feel powerful as the naked girl in a music video. i mean, i think whole trick of the book is like something that we see generally on the surface like we're just seeing your instagram or we're just seeing you in the video we like the pleasure of the book is that you get in you get the internal thoughts of that like what that experience is like and that's what's interesting about it, but it's like a heart. it's like a hard line to walk like they're because it's not you commodifying your own body yet like not yet. you're just getting paid to show up for a few hours, but and some and people other people are telling you you're being objectified, but you're trying to like somehow feel powerful, you know? yeah, and i mean, i would say that you know my relationship with instagram at that time

actually felt the same way. it was similar to the ways that i felt about that video and the environment that was on set which was that i you know was in control in some ways. i you know models in the 90s didn't have a way of dictating. what images they were putting out. it was just left up to the magazines and whatever editor and blah blah and i was like, wow can curate my identity. line myself i can control that and that felt really good. it felt like you know it it felt like control. yeah, i mean the thing that like is on the other side of the scale is there are moments in the book when you realize await if this is my path to power money control, i'm kind of dependent on men like the men who want this. it's like their desire and playing to so that what is that realization? like, how does that turn to feeling? i mean, i think that's the thesis of the blurred lines

essay is sort of realizing you know that as a young girl in my 20s which by the way, you know, obviously my experience is a model is very specific. it's an industry, but i have friends who look back. i mean taylor swift we should talk about, you know, how she feels looking back at being my tiktok is all taylor swift and jake gyllenhaal. i've been let's talk about it for 10 minutes. exactly. yeah exist. i would love to um but no, i mean, i think that a lot of the experience i had as a young person as a model, but also with interactions in my personal life was like, oh i'm because i'm young and i'm desirable. i'm the one who has the power and i think that even men felt that way the men that i was interacting with and i think actually some of the instances that i write about in the book, they almost felt like they were like reclaiming their power by kind of doing these like disrespectful things because it felt like oh this young

beautiful girl like she she's the one in like she's actually emasculating me in some way because she the power here because she's desired even though now i look back and i'm like, oh i was actually so young. i was a kid and you were an adult and you know, the situation was the power dynamic was very different than what i thought. and so yeah, that's sort of part of the revelation of blurred lines and and charting my relationship to that video my memory of that video and how it's also you know, representative of the evolution of my politics that was such a hard end to that sentence. that's good. probably for a little longer. the the one there's a super creepy incident in the book. i mean another thing the book does is take you into worlds that most of us don't have access to and it's kind of like after blurred lines and a lot of success you end up in like weird vips situations.

can you just tell i mean, this is a less well known story, but the one about the 25,000 to show up at a sports game. that is such a weird. story like what is that world and how to different women behave in that world? um, yeah. well that essay is called transactions and an excerpt of it ran in the guardian. so if you read that then that's what i'm referencing. i was really interested in investigating my own judgment of women and how they navigate systems of power in regards to men specifically, you know in my you know there i could write a whole book just about that called like victoria's secret girl. she's a great character in the oh, yes. yeah. she's a real life person. but you know, i was interested in i mean, i think people kind of like do that in their marriage. sometimes i have friends who you know, marry somebody wealthy and whatever there's all kinds of

negotiations but in the industry, it's very specific because as an unknown model, you're basically, you know, there's women who kind of are sent out to castings to recruit other young models to essentially go out with richmond and just like stand with them at a table and like they're kind of hoping to have sex with you, but like honestly they just want you to stand next to them and make them look cool. it's funny, but it's pretty dark and you know, it's it's a step away from the jeffrey epstein kind of world to be totally honest and as as now living in new york city, i see i don't really go to nightclubs, but there's been a different few different moments where i've watched these like groups of very underage. very clearly very young women walk in with like one guy who's the party promoter and then you know the wealthy guys kind of join and it's related. also, there's celebrity men. there's this whole kind of

market around this and you know as an unknown model you don't get paid, but they essentially host a dinner. so if you're you know a working model in la you're not making that much money you're hungry straight up and you go to these things and they know what they're doing. they're like come to nobu and you know, the whole vibe is like eat whatever you want drink whatever you want and so a lot of models go because they just want meal and then they get a little drunk and then they're invited to the club and that's sort of like when these wealthy men come into play so i had experiences with that where you know, i felt extremely uncomfortable as somebody who you know had not had was always very liked clear transactions and those were not very clear and then the the other part of that essay is an experience i had with the now fugitive joe lowe malaysian fugitive who produced and financed the wolf of wall street, and he was

essentially stealing money from the malaysian people. it's pretty horrible story the malaysian government. the president was essentially working with him to help that happen. it's great. if you haven't read it, there's a book called i think billion dollar billion dollar whale or something. it's it's really crazy, but you know my manager got a call like oh and i had just moved into a apartment. work that have bed bugs and like i was totally not i was living in the east village and it was i was new to the world. so 25,000 dollars is a lot of money huge amount of yes, um, and they were like, yeah, he just wants you to come to the super bowl and i was like, what do you mean come to the super bowl and my manager at the time was like trust me? it's cool like jamie foxx will be there leonardo dicaprio like other celebs will be how much do you think they got paid? i would love to know love to know. i mean, i do know that, you know, it's public record that

like there were basquiats that were seized from you know these actors' homes and whatever that were gifts from jolo. it's worth it. i mean just to show up at the super bowl like yeah. well i didn't care about football. so, um, why do you like cheer at the wrong moments? oh, i have no idea what was going on at all, so i wasn't even pretending and that was the other really bizarre thing about these interactions is like, you know, you don't actually have to do that. like i wasn't i wasn't being told to cheer or anything but was what was interesting in both of these experience was watching how other women like saw opportunities and capitalized on them and was like, okay like this guy obviously wants to have beautiful women around like, how can i parlay this into something larger? and i think that at a certain point in my life, i was like, i would never do that. meanwhile, i'm you know doing paid posts for toothpaste that are owned by the same type of

men essentially and maybe the transaction is a little bit more clear. but that was another instance of sort of like my own judging my own internalized misogyny and also, you know kind of like realizing how how we all exist on the spectrum of compromise. although there's an undercurrent of like i when you say the transactions not clear it helps me understand what was going on your head because there's a lot of there's like almost it's not quite violence, but it doesn't feel safe. like you don't know what's going to happen to you don't know what's expected of you. it's like a really weird situation to fall into and the other thing is you can't necessarily i'm reading into it. you can tell me if this is true or not. you can't necessarily rely on the other women. mm-hmm. like it's the it's hard to tell in a lot of the interactions that happen when you fall into these situations are what's the relationship between the women like are they friends? are they competitors? like what how are they playing off each other in these

situations? yeah. i mean i actually wanted to write more about the inter. that i had with the other woman, but they were actually quite limited and i realized it was because we were sort of focused on the experiences, you know being at this like club or whatever or you know, also it i guess there's a little bit of a thing of like whose side are you on like and yeah, i think that that's something i mean honestly to me the book is more about relationships with other women and other women than it is men. i at one point wanted to name every essay after like i mean, i basically talk about my mom, you know friend in high school famous women what you've had an impact on me. like i do think that that could have been the alt title for the book or in some way. you always stopped to abruptly for me to catch up to you. that's okay. i don't even know i'm doing it.

there's a there's a point. well, i think it's they were this is a risky thing to do in the book which is to like like the thing you wrote about your trip or sort of when you start to. commodify yourself almost and and ask people it's hard to be sort of rich and successful and ask people to inhabit your mind or feel sympathetic that feels like a risky thing to do. did you ever think about that and like how people like will they feel sorry for me? no, they won't feel sorry for me because i am rich and or whatever. i mean i didn't write any of the essays like looking for sympathy. i wrote them because i had questions about my own existence and my own contradictions and my own life that i wanted to explore and maybe try to come up with some answers, but also just have like and investigation and a record of that investigation and an essay, but then people could kind of, you know, tell me

what they what they think about these things when they're what are their thoughts. what are their politics? what do they make of these experiences? and like what does it say about the world we live in that you can be paid to go on a vacation and you know like the ways that i'm kind of trying to take back control and i mean, you know when you say commodifying yourself, it's like i hear you but at the same time my experience from blurred lines to doing that feels very like it feels like the same thing. it's like taking a check. you know, what do you mean like there's a moment when you're what i think it feels like in the book. there's a moment when you actually make the decision like, why would i why would i put you know, why would i wear a bikini for somebody else's bikini company? i might as well do it for myself posted on my own instagram and that feels powerful, but that's not like the end. well, i think it's just about control about having more control as a model and as a commodity and using my body and that way, but i don't know.

if it relieves power, i mean one of the questions of the book is sort of like what is empowerment is it financial success? is it a feeling is it fulfillment is it fame? is it in feeling wanted is it in not feeling wanted like where what what is empowerment really mean? it's such a it's a word i hear so much when it comes to women, especially in pop culture and in my own experience. i'm like wait, can we just go back and like can we define that so that's that's sort of one of the larger questions in the book. in a weird way the most powerful essay in the book which everyone talks about which is the felt that happened to you when you were younger and then should we tell that story? i never know how much people know. i mean, that's the story that was on the cut. yeah, we'll tell it in very brief, but it what's interesting to me about that story is it's the most clear like a lot of other in it basically, well, you tell a summary of it it's weird for me to do it. but but it is the most like to

me that's like a thing that happened that is so bad that it would lead you to take control of your own body commodity destiny whatever like it's just so wrong that. yeah, i at the time let's tell the story. so we're not like speaking in inferences. yeah, there was a photographer who shot me when i was like 19 it was kind of a pretty uncomfortable situation and then he went on to publish multiple books using the images and my galling like years later. they just go up and he's such an -- as it's happening and then like sorry, i mean, it's a truly, you know, it's funny that you say that it's so clearly wrong because at the time i you know, first of all, i turned to like the legal system and tried to say, okay, like what's my legal protection here? and there was no way that anyone could say this is wrong and there was no justice there and then i actually turned to the internet and tweeted about my experience and how i didn't want the images to be out there and

also no one felt like it was wrong. that's a good point that legally like you signed this release, but like your bait you're so i didn't sign the release. oh, right. yeah. i didn't find the release potentially an agent maybe sold it or it was forged. i will probably never know but i mean, yeah, nope. nobody thought that that was very clear cut when it was happening even when i kind of like turned to my followers and was like, hey don't buy this book whatever everyone was like no, took those pictures, so i didn't feel like it was clear. like that was the essay was clear. i think it was received as such when it went up. was printed in new york magazine, but i think it was received as wrong. yes. people felt very like, oh, wow. this guy is an -- and whatever but it just feels morally outrageous that someone could essentially like trick a young person in this completely weird setup and to taking these pictures be totally dismissive

of them and then years later like when when they're worth something come back and publish pictures of you and make a ton of money off of it not contact like it's an outrageous like in your soul it feels so outrageous that that could happen. i mean i hear you but you know for me that was an experience. i had a ton of shame around i thought i acted a certain way. i didn't protect myself. i wanted to impress him as he dismissed me. i tried even harder to kind of impress him. i you know, i did take those pictures. so for me, it didn't feel clear. it still doesn't feel totally clear-cut. i felt complicit in the situation and i had a lot of shame around it and also in that essay i write about paparazzi like the least relatable thing anyone, you know when i published the essay i was like, i don't think anyone's gonna like this because i was sure that it was kind of, you know, my experience up into that point was that people had not been sympathetic with those those things even though they had been

out in the public which was you know, another it was very encouraging i had already sort of written about 50,000 words of the book, but it hadn't edited. it hadn't kind of doven and started to edit, but it was really encouraging to have that. peace go out into the world and see that like writing could be a medium where you know, at least people could think about the questions that i was posing in a way, you know that i was communicating something and a way that, you know gave me control. i mean, i think writing the book we're talking about control as an act of control to kind of try to take back my narrative. yeah, it's interesting that you say you're not looking for sympathy because i think the reason that essay resonated so much is because it just feels i guess. it just feels real like you're not you you put it out there in in all the circle of internal thoughts that you had about that situation including feeling complicit. and so it just even though your experience is extremely particular. it's not like a million people have had that experience.

it's still relatable because everybody's been in a situation where they feel complicit or they've looped around or they don't know if it's their fault or not. so, yeah, maybe that's why it was received. so well, yeah, i mean again, i wrote the essay sort of to lay everything out and to look at it myself, but also to have other people be able to examine like i even say in the book like i'm gonna proclaim my contradictions, you know, because i i think you know, it's also a tendency i have of kind of like overexposure which for better or worse has led me to have the life i've had but you know, yeah, i'm very interested in sort of like being very honest rather than and trying to make people feel a certain way because i'm not totally sure how i feel about all of these things. there's a that there's a romantic moment when you talk about meeting your husband. i don't know if i read this correctly, but it's like a

moment when he it's it's maybe it's him. maybe it's not empowerment. i don't really know it's just romantic but when he comes and and like essentially just kind of puts himself between you and people who feel they have a right to you. can you just like talk about that moment? it's literally like stop someone from putting it's a very interesting moment in the context of the book. yeah before we were dating he was like at some party that i was we were both there and somebody asked for a picture and like kind of like put their hand like this like little finger came over here on this side. i was don't say that a little drunk. yeah, and i was just like, oh whatever, you know, and i heard him say like no touching and the guy like immediately like dropped his hands. i'm like, oh i'm so sorry, which i would have never done myself to be honest, which i don't that's probably not a good thing. i wish i was more the type person to say that because i do think as a public persona and as a woman i sort of feel like no

i'm like public property and something have a complicated feeling around it and the past i had dated men who were very like she's got this she doesn't need, you know, enter any interjection and i always thought that was very respectful. so, you know, i think if you would ask me before he had done that i would have said like i don't like it when men like feel like they have to i can handle the situation on my own but all of a sudden i was like, oh, wow. he's interested in protecting me and using his relationship in the world like who he is as a, you know, cis white male kind of a big guy to like protect me and it for lack of better term was hot. it was hot my girlfriend read it and she was like wow that that part was hot and i was like yeah, i was so yeah. i was looking at your instagram before this event, and i was

thinking like almost as an addendum to my body like the kinds of pictures you've posted lately like the pregnant the pregnancy. the pregnancy baby series the pregnancy breastfeeding series, and i was wondering about the relationship to whether those were freeing. i mean, there's like a beautiful picture of you naked and pregnant. how does that moment of your life relate to everything you're writing? it's like your body being used in a totally. i mean, there's a few breastfeeding pictures. yeah, just what was that about for you? it was a trip because i was finishing the book as well. so i was writing about my body and there was a moment where i was like, well, i can't publish this book because now i have to write all about pregnancy and birth because that's like that's everything but i think that'll just have to be another book. i do write about the birth of my son in the last essay. i was curious about how pregnancy was going to affect me talk about lack of control like

you wake up every day and your body is just doing something completely different and there's no way to ensure that, you know, everything's going you don't know what's going on like you really don't and you're just kind of growing and everything's changing and but i found it actually really i really enjoyed it. everybody's experience with pregnancy is really different, but it actually helped me appreciate my body. trust it kind of like let go of control and say like, okay this thing knows this vessel knows better than me and i have to sort of take the passenger seat and let that happen. so much of my life has been relating to my body as a tool and you know a tool to guarantee lovability as a tool to guarantee financial success, and i think that you know, it didn't feel like a tool particularly in

birth and in pregnancy because it required me to let go of managing that tool. it was just doing something on its own and then, you know even more so in the in that last essay, really honestly, the biggest moment for me was the bike ride that i take with my husband and my friend and just sort of being able to appreciate my body is a thing that takes me through life, which is what a body is. mm-hmm, which the breastfeeding pictures that i was particularly thinking about because it is like your body as a tool like that many mothers have experienced but in a totally different way like nobody's buying it nobody's paying for it, but it has to do work, you know, and i guess it's sustaining life and that was breastfeeding was actually a chunk that was in that last essay. so it's funny that you're saying that and i took it out because it didn't work timing wise but there's this really crazy thing.

i don't know how many people have had children or had this experience but you your breasts wake you up to feed your child like they ache and they hurt and you like i would find myself like walking. like a zombie to meet my baby to feed my child and it was this really bizarre experience of like, oh, i'm not in control here. like there's there are things at work that have kept human beings on the planet and that's that ancient machinery is then it was within me and i have to just like release control and see what happens and trust my body and and the process. oh, sorry. we we're gonna open up for questions everyone in just a few minutes. i don't know how to ask this question. i was i was as i got to the end of the book. i was thinking you talk a lot about playing the game like about capitalism playing the

game with your body or or losing. you feel like you. or winning or losing great. i don't know. i don't know about the game. i feel like what i do have clarity on is when winning with outside of the game by like doing something as fulfilling as writing a book. mm-hmm. i don't know if that sort of side. that's definitely a moment where the actual writing of it. yeah fulfilling it is weird because most of the time you're used to just like being look it's like a surface thing. so it must be such a like a 180 degree turn to be like i'm by myself. nobody's looking at me. this is like my internal. i mean i loved it. i love writing and that for that partly that reason but nobody really loves writing. you just love that.

oh, it's like miserable, but i love the oh to be clear. yeah miserable. yeah, but i think that that like focus and the like exercise of or the experience that is just like i don't feel this way about physical exercise, but i know when people talk about running sometimes and they're like, i hate it, but it feels like it's so satisfying. i'm addicted. i'm like, oh i understand that in relationship to my experience with writing. mhm. yeah. yeah. i don't think it would be fair if you were like, i'm beautiful and i writing is so easy for me and it's totally great and it's like you don't you don't want to be that writing is so hard really so hard well, it's really beautifully written. it should read it it is all i mean so many of the essays are like so moving and opened so many windows into so many worlds that are both completely exotic and totally familiar at the same time so much. thank you for doing this totally

so we are gonna open up for questions. so if anybody wants to ask questions, please come to the microphone as people are lining up i am going to ask questions from our virtual audience. i don't know where the camera is, but hello virtual audience my mom's in the virtual virtual audience and my nieces. so from katie in chicago, have you heard of or talk to other models buying back their photos? and what are their motivations in doing? so? >> i mean so, this is like i'm in a very particular position most working models don't have the ability to do that. or have access to it. i do think there's more conversations around copyright and also, you know, in the age of the internet in general. i would say is that that with revenge porn and everyone is essentially putting their images out there, there's a lot of

conversations around ownershipti that are interesting, but specifically in modeling industry, no, i don't think there has been a lot of that. >> i will say those women as black women, it's so much worse. without a doubt, the racial stereotypes are coming into play and it's insane. and even though, you know, it was their music video and they were in c control, they have to

battle a whole other set of issues that are crazy. >> but it is a similar thing going on in that video that goes on in this book, which is like am i in control?ng like i'm doing this thing and leaning into itnt and maybe thas a form of empowerment but i think she does know, cardi b. emily: yeah, you had leftist and right wing people both saying this video is trash. like when does that happen in this country? yeah. >> i know, they come together and agree on something that's heart warming. >> as a young woman navigating her career and femininity and dating, how did you deal with the heart ache and kind of rejections from the industry that is so easing and quick to

reject women for another? emily: yeah, i mean i think that this is something i've -- you might hear me say this again because it was really one of the take aways i had with the book. i wrote in investigative experiences they had a lot of shame around and i thought i would look back at the book and be like that's the moment where i should have done something different or that was so stupid and why did you compromise yourself in that way and agree to do this or whatever. what i realized is that not a healthy exercise and young women need to learn to give themselves a break and understand the larger things at play outside of their personal choices that lead them to the heart aches and tol those brutal realities, which is, you know, partly why i wrote

the book is i don't think it's just the culture and world we live in p and young women in particular to learn not to be so hard on themselves.en >> do people take you more seriously change or after you started your business? emily: no. >> maybe they started taking you more seriously with all the stigma of the young generation today. emily: yeah, i think in the world of skins and kylie, i think that when people see women taking control e of their image and using what's been used by other people to somewhere theira own success, people are like,

oh, wow, maybe she's business savvy or whatever. yes, i think in some ways i shouldn't worry about it though. >> you have a hero friend that helps you build your business and actual true friend shows and you happen that's a good counter balance to the girl on girl weirdness going on. emily: yeah, i think female friendships are hugely important. >>ives wondering what advice you'd give to young women in their 20s on owning their sexuality and entering these

professional years and even overlapping between them as you have. emily: thank you forun coming ad i think that one thing i learned and sounds like getting advice around pregnancy and motherhood and like i heard that a million times and that's not helpful. then you come back to it and you're like, yeah, that was good advice. people are going to guide you e'and in particular with young women, that's true but there's a lot of mentors that will be quick to sort of just say you should do it this way and don't listen to yourself and whatever and be sort of dismissive. i have found that taking that advice from people has not been helpful from me and instead kind of doing what i want to do.

i felt passionate about it and i'm successful and can go to bed at night knowing i did what iru care about and trusting your gut. >> awesome. thank you so much. emily: thank you. >> hi, emily. thank you so much for sharing in the cut, your essay was one of the greatest things i read in 2020. i guess my question is you mention about like being considered public property and being controlled and trading your instagram and about the ability you have to have the people. how do you navigate that and i noticeth that you don't show yor son that much on your instagram. i guess in going through the process and getting to this, how do you control that and how much do you share and people know you and see you everywhere?

emily: that's a really good question. like with my son, i didn't share himin ever and then there's a point of me wanting control and saying if there'son images of my son, i want to choose which are out in the world.rl it's not the ideal but it's a, you know, it's my way of taking control and also like, you know, it started feeling like more of a headache to try and protect his image from being out there than to just like relax and be like, it's okay. he can o be out in the world and that feels better to me. it was a gut check to the world and writing this book deciding what i wanted to share and why. that was kind of just what felt

right and being -- really checking in with myself in the way that i definitely used to not. i used to feel like, you know, i would never even -- if somebody touched y me, i would never and thought they would think i was rude and now i'm a bitnt more interested in taking care of myself and worrying about the way i'm perceived. >> sometimes you're lucky as a writer because that's a response to para social relationship like these are my thoughts and what i think and all my complicated feelings. it's a great way of addressing all the great things people are projecting on you. you have topr project. here it is. >> hi.r i'm curious on your thousands of the fall of the girl pose and how that sort of came out of crying culture and women have to

work 14 hours but then also, yon know, give into their maternal instincts and now that you're a mom, what do you think of that? where do you see yourself in all of that? emily: yeah, at one point i was like i need to write a girl boss essay and i realized my girl boss essay was the maldives going to there and being like i might as well be the ones to sell the bathing suit rather than this guy. if it's related to i have to become the man or become the boss in order to be viewed as successful. even if that's being an asshole who doesn't pay fair wage, that's a game i have to play and

as a woman go doubly hard and that was unfortunate because it didn't mean real change. at the same time also was nice to see women in businesses and place was power we don't normally see women. the backlash to the girl boss phenomenon and i don't think there was many men being held accountable was also related to sexism. >> three more questions. emily: three, you sure? s>> hi, my name is romeo and thank you for being here. my question is what would men learn from reading this look? emily: hi, romeo. thank you for coming. i think that i wrote this book with men in mind in some ways

because there were or are men that i'm close to that don't understand why i get so emotional about things and i felt so frustrated i wasn't doing a good job of explaining what it's like to be a young girl or be a woman in this world. when i wrote the book, i kept -- i didn't want to just be -- i obviously was thinking about women a lot, but i wanted it to be accessible to men so they could feel compassionate and empathetic with what it's like to bee a woman. >> thank you. emily: thanks. >> i emily.

>> i'm w 23 and all my friends e 23. you talk a lot about control in being out of control and how hard it is to navigate that. i was just wondering for someone at our age and starting out because a lot of the experiences that you talk about were in your early 20s, what's the best advice fornt navigating that and harnessing that. emily: it's hard when you're 23 you're you're 23 and people are like, you're only 236789 even if you are inserting your age, there's a certain amount of dismissal and distrust. i think being aware of protecting yourself and not letting things land personally. that can be helpful and as you

kind of p find control, there's pushback but it's really tough. i don't have, i wish there was some kind of guide book to it. i think just knowing yourself and really pressing your instinct and reminding yourself with the reactions that you are getting aren't because of who you are. it's' because of the world.

>> hi, before the book was published, did you sit down with your mom and talk about the relationships in the book and if so, howea did that go?io >> thank you, i meant to ask that question and wonder what your dad thousand of the book. emily: i shared everything with my mom and it's an ongoing conversation. what i tried to do was give her to be as empathetic and i know that everything in the book she did out of love and out of a desire to be close and to protect me. as a parent myself, i have to accept that i'mrf going to be imperfect as a parent and evenwe the most well intentioned person will be things that.

>> thank you all for coming.

>> governor kristi noem, we're going to rip the band-aid off and get into the book, not "not my first rodeo". kristi: i'm focused on staying in south dakota and runni