festival author and historian, president and ceo of the lbj foundation will be our guest talking about us president show history. his books include the last republicans and incomparable breaks, jfk and the presidency. join in the cversation with phone calls, facebook comments, tweets and texts live sunday, november 6th at noon eastern on "in depth" on booktv on c-span2. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american histo tv documents america's story and on sunday booktv brings the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including comcast. >> you think this is a community center? it is more than that. >> comcast is partnering with

community centers to create lists so students from low income families to get the tools they need to get ready for everything. comcast along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> emily ratajkowski is here to celebrate a debut collection of essays that examiner own multifaceted identity. a world-famous model with tens of millions of followers, she's a household name for her prolific image but refuses to let having a body people want to sell force her into that. "my body" tackles fame, love, friendships and an intricate web of sexuality and power, both in and out of control. in reckoning with the level of success that brought her book pain and pleasure, emily investigator own evolving beliefs, the dynamics of a culture that commoditized the female body of a commodity

between who she is and how she is perceived. emily ratajkowski is in conversation with hanna rosin, the director of audio at new york magazine which first published her essay buying myself back which was the magazine's most red piece of the year. previously hanna rosin was the cohost of npr's invisibleia, she has written the end of men and has written for the atlantic, washington post and the new yorker. later in the program we would love to hear your questions and you will be invited to line up at the microphones in either i'll. following the event, 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 giving a warm welcome to emily ratajkowski and hanna rosin. [applause]

>> hi, everyone. [applause] >> thank you so much for being here. >> i bask in the weirdness of this moment of being live. hi, everyone, people are here. how exciting. [applause] >> thank you for coming to washington. >> thank you for having me, thank you for being here. >> host: this book is so personal that i was thinking if i start right in it will be two therapy sessions. the construct i came up with his i am oprah and you are a dell --. hopefully we can do that.

we can do it. we will do our best. >> host: you called the book "my body". the title is look at my body, stop looking at my body. you are almost asking people to come into the conversation right away. is that your intention? you could've called it emily ratajkowski's life. >> guest: yeah, i think there was a part of me that liked playing with the idea of people thinking, rolling their eyes, emily ratajkowski wrote a book called "my body" and then using that preconception hopefully to maybe make them to buy the book or the ideas in the book being more impactful. i knew what i was doing, i was

embracing something that was going to potentially annoy people. >> host: i am all for that. there is a whole section of the book that i think of as the miseducation of emily ratajkowski, the signals that you received. i want to talk about that. even in your teenage life. the interesting art of that book is normally when people go through puberty or preteen this, the signals cut that come from inside are confusing to you but in your case even before you were conscious of it, all the stuff, it was like the cues that came from outside to you, can you talk about that? the first time you realized that your body was a thing, people started to send the signal to you from outside. >> guest: i developed really young and had a woman's body before i understood what sex

was. it put me in a strange position, one of the first essays i published was baby woman because i was truly a baby but was perceived, people thought i was an adult. i looked like a child but i did look older and i started to kind of have this experience of feeling self-aware in a positive and negative way. in my middle school, feeling the attention i got from boys which means popular girls wanted to be friends with me and thinking that is a good thing but also feeling about my bra strap. >> host: that image 6 in my mind.

>> guest: i don't specify that in the book but what is the point? >> in her mind, it was a beauty lesson. i'm interested in exploring ways that women try to protect other women by teaching them the hard way or about the world, the way their beauty and sexuality their body is going to be consumed and for example that vice principal thought she was saying to me you should watch out, be aware of this. if i don't snap your bra strap someone else will, that kind of thing. she wasn't doing it in a malicious way, i don't know. in general, that was the purpose behind that essay. i had an ex-boyfriend whose mom was like a very cool lady and only had our son and at one

point we were -- he said i would have obviously made sure that she stayed thin and i almost spit up my lunch, you are a smart lady with cool politics talking about making sure your daughter stays thin. you must know that's a recipe for eating disorder and in her mind, it was her thinking that would be protecting her daughter and ensuring a future and thin women are loved more but your own parents -- >> host: there is weird next messages. what sticks in that is something your dad said to your mom when people commented her on her beauty but it was her father. can you say what he would say? >> guest: that's why i included that, my grandfather would say to my mother you shouldn't say

thank you when someone complements you on the way you look because you've done nothing to deserve it and he was a really serious person and i think he made her feel ashamed for the way she looked and her body particularly, a source of shame for her and her family which is why i think in some ways she took the other route of celebrate your beauty and this should be a source of pride but in a lot of ways, the way i was perceived, i write about this in this essay, praying for beauty when i was young like 6. >> host: what was it? a source of power? >> guest: it was a source of power, not just in my, the most powerful women to me were britney spears and pop stars

and beautiful women and not just my generation. my parents loved older movies. we would watch marilyn monroe and some like it hot, there's men who can be powerful because they are president or comedians or rock stars but to me it seemed the most powerful women were the ones who were most desired by men. the young person instead of praying for money or intelligence or safety, when i looked back on that, thought about how did i learned that should be the thing i prayed for and wanted? >> host: i kind of want to talk about the blurred lines portion of the book because -- have you re-watched that video? do you ever watch it? >> guest: i watched it when i was writing the essay.

>> host: what was your second re-watching? it's weird to think about that and think that is what propelled me, such an odd moment, specific artifact of the culture? >> guest: what i wanted to convey when i wrote the essay is i don't feel connected to it. it was a job i showed up to 4 a day. choosing to write about it was strange to me because the rest of the book is so personal and this was a moment of using what that video and what i represented to give an inside look of my experience at approach to modeling and the power dynamics at play on that set but watching it again it was like i don't feel that much because i think about that day at work. i remember do you know what i

mean? i remember that time in my life. but i haven't watched it that many times so i don't feel, i don't live in the video, you know what i mean? >> host: one of the pleasures of the book the members like the treatment know from that video, are very embarrassing. what were they? it was like just an interesting time. >> guest: people were sort of already feminists like beyoncé hadn't coined the term feminist yet. there was this feminist blogohsphere, things in the past haven't been great for women but how can we be great while still being hot? essentially. >> host: the interesting part

that i did not know about is the set up, the person setting up the video was trying to create a good vibe for you. this weird sisterhood vibe in the room and the making of it. >> guest: another reason i wanted to write about that experience is there are multiple sides to the experience. it was a female director, there were tons of young women on props, makeup, set design, whatever, and for me at the time, i was 20, 21, and i had been working as a model. i have this hardheaded, this is my industry, i am working, i am a mannequin. it is not fun, it's not glamorous, i am not going to be a supermodel. i'm saving my money because i saw what happened in 2008 and

graduated in 2,009, i don't want to move back into my parents house and take a service industry job. i was really scared. modeling felt like a cheat sheet. i grew up with my mom as a writer and i understood the idea that you have to have your day job. i was like this will be my day job and then figure out what i want to do. all of that was true as when the video was criticized and people came to me there was a certain amount of pointing fingers, how dare you be part of this misogynistic thing. i felt protective of the women i liked so much on set and how much fun i had onset compared to the back of a shirt or shooting with a creepy group of guys, i made friends on that video. they asked me how i felt.

that is why i danced the way i did. i was having fun. >> host: did you feel tricked after that or did you feel sincere? >> guest: i felt sincere. i felt defiant. which is sort of why i wasn't saying also the guys who were asked holes, i felt protective of the experience that i had with that director and these other women and also protective, i wanted by politics to align with how i wanted to see. >> host: what do you mean by that? >> guest: i wanted to feel powerful. i didn't want to feel small. i didn't want to feel like a mannequin. i worked the system. i have this asset, my body and i had a great time onset and maybe that was even power.

that is true of a lot of the ways our beliefs are about our identity and what we want, how we want to see and feel about ourselves which is why it was important for me to write the full experience about what it really was like and why i was defiant and why it was important for me to feel powerful as a naked girl in a music video. >> host: that is the trick of the book, something you see on the surface, we are just seeing your instagram or just seeing you in the video. the pleasure of the book is you get the internal thoughts of that like what that experience is like and that is interesting about it but it is a hard line to walk because it is not you

can modify and -- commodeyou are trying to feel powerful. >> guest: my relationship with instagram at that time felt the same way. it was similar to the way i felt about that video and the environment that was onset which is i was in control in some ways. models in the 90s didn't have a way of dictating what images they were putting out. it was left to the magazines and whatever editor and i was like i can curate my identity online myself. i can control that and that felt really good, it felt like control. >> host: on the other side of the scale there are moments when you realize if this is my

path to power, money, control, i am dependent on men, the men who want this. it is their desire i am playing to. what is that like? how does that turn the feeling? >> guest: that's the thesis of the blurred line essay. as a young girl in my 20s which obviously my experience as a model is very specific but i have friends who look back. taylor swift. we should talk about how she feels looking back, my tiktok is all taylor swift. >> host: we should talk about that. >> guest: i think a lot of experience i had as a model and interactions in my personal

life was because i am young and desirable i am the one who has the power and even men felt that way, the men i was interacting with and some of the instances that i write about in the book feel like they were reclaiming their power by doing disrespectful things because it felt this beautiful girl, she is emasculating me in some way because she has the power because she is desired even though i look back and i was actually so young, i was a kid and you were an adult and the situation, the power dynamic was very different. that is part of the revelation of word lines and charting my relationships on video, my memory of that video and how it is representative of my politics. >> host: that was such a heart end to that sentence.

there is a super creepy incident in the book. another thing the book does is take you to world's most of us don't have access to. after blurred lines and a lot of success, can you talk about this is a less well-known story but the one about the $25,000 to show up at a sports game, such a weird story, how do different women behave in that world? >> guest: that essay is called transactions and it ran in the guardian. i was interested in investigating my judgment of women and how they navigate systems, specifically i could write a book about that.

>> host: the victoria's secret girl. >> guest: she is a real life person. people do that in their marriage. i have friends, in the industry it is specific. i am in unknown model, there is women who are sent out to castings to recruit other young models. and stand with the matta table. they are hoping to have sex with you but they just want you to stand next to them and make them look cool. it is funny but pretty dark. it is a step away from the jeffrey epstein world, to be totally honest. in new york city, i haven't

gone to nightclubs but there are a few moments i watched groups of underage, young women, one guy, wealthy guys join in and there are celebrity men and market around this. as an unknown model you don't get paid, and if you 're working model you don't make much money and they know what they are doing, the whole vibe is eat what you want, drink what you want and a lot of models go because they want a free meal and they are indicted -- invited to the club and this is where they play. i had experiences with that. i felt uncomfortable as somebody, like clear

transactions. those were not clear. the other part of the essay was an experience. a malaysian fugitive who produced and financed the wolf of wall street and essentially stealing money, pretty horrible story. the president was essentially working with him to help that happen. if you haven't read it there is a book called william dollar whale or something, really crazy. my manager got a call and i had just moved into an apartment in new york that had bedbugs and i was totally not -- i was living in the east village and was new to the world. >> host: $29,000 is a huge amount of money. >> guest: they said he wants me to come to the super bowl.

what do you mean? come to the super bowl? my manager was like trust me, it is cool, jamie foxx will be there, leonardo dicaprio. >> host: how much did they get paid? >> guest: i would love to know. i do know public records, there were those fused from these actors homes and whatever. >> host: just to show up at the super bowl. >> guest: i didn't care about football. >> host: did you cheer at the wrong moments? >> guest: i had no idea what was going on. i wasn't even pretending and that was the bazaar thing about these interactions. you don't have to do that. i wasn't being told to cheer or anything but what was interesting, watching how other women saw opportunities and

okay, this guy obviously wants to have women around, how can i turn this into something larger and at a certain point in my life i was like i would never do that meanwhile i am doing posts for spaces owned by the same type of men. maybe the transaction is more clear. that was another instance of judging my own internalized misogyny and also realizing how we all exist on the spectrum of compromise. >> host: when you say the transaction is not clear, there is almost, not quite violence but it doesn't feel safe. you don't know what will happen to your what is expected of you. it is a weird situation to fall into and the other thing, you can't necessarily, you can tell me if this is true, you can't necessarily rely on the other

women. it is hard to tell, a lot of the interactions that happen when you fall into these situations, what's the relationship between the women? are they friends? are they competitors? how are they playing off each other? in these situations? >> guest: i actually wanted to write more about interactions with other women but they were quite limited and i realized it was because we were focused on the experiences of being at this club or whatever or also i guess there is a little bit of a thing about whose side are you on, and i think that is something. honestly to me the book is more about relationships with other women then it is men. ass when point i wanted to name every essay, i talk about my mom, friend in high school,

famous women who had an impact on me, i think that could have been the old title for the book in some way. >> host: you always stop too abruptly for me to catch up. there is a point. this is a risky thing to do, in the book, the thing you wrote about your trip, when you start to commodify your self, to ask people to inhabit your mind. that feels like a risky thing to do. did you ever think about that? they feel sorry for me, they won't feel sorry for me. >> guest: i didn't write any of the essays looking for sympathy. i wrote them because i had

questions about my existence and my own contradictions in my own life that i wanted to explore and try to come up with some answers but also have an investigation and record of that investigation in an essay but then people tell me what they think about these things and what are their thoughts, their politics, what do they make of these experiences, what does it say about the world we live in that you can be paid to go on a vacation, the ways i am trying to take back control, and when you say commodifying your self, i hear you but my experience through blurred lines, feels like the same thing like taking a check. >> host: what do you mean? there is a moment when you actually make the decision, why

would i wear a bikini, posted on my own instagram and that feels powerful but that's not the end. >> guest: it is about having more control as a model and a, daddy and using my body that way but i don't know if it relieves power. one of the questions in the book is what is empowerment? is it financial success? a feeling? fulfillment? fame? is it feeling wanted? is it not feeling wanted? what is empowerment? it is a word i hear so much when it comes to women especially in pop culture and my own experience. can we go back and define that? that is one of the larger questions in the book. >> host: the most powerful essay everyone talks about, the assault that happened when you

were younger and i never know how much people know but you tell it in briefed -- what is interesting is it is the most clear. lot of other -- you tell a summary of it but it is the most -- to me a thing that happened that is so bad that it would lead you to take control of your own body, commodity, destiny, whatever. >> guest: let's tell a story so we are not speaking in inferences -- there was a photographer who shot me at 19. it was an uncomfortable situation and went on to publish multiple books. >> host: years later they show up and he is such an ass hole. >> guest: it is funny you say it is clearly wrong because at

the time, i turned to the legal system and tried to say what is my legal protection here and there was no way anyone could say this was wrong and i turned to the internet about my experiences and also no one sounds like it was wrong. >> host: you sign this release -- >> guest: didn't sign the release. potentially an agent sold it. i will probably never know. nobody felt that was very clear-cut when it was happening. even when i turned to my followers and was like don't buy this book or whatever, no. i didn't feel it was clear like that was the essay was clear. was perceived as such when it

was printed in new york magazine. >> host: it was perceived as wrong. >> guest: people felt this guy is an ass hole or whatever. >> host: it feels morally outrageous that someone could trick a younger person in this weird set up into taking these pictures, be totally dismissive of them and years later be like when they are worth something come back and publish pictures of you and make a ton of money off of it. not contact like it is outrageous, outrageous but it could happen. >> guest: i hear you but for me that was an experience, i had a ton of shame around, i didn't protect myself. wanted to impress him. as he dismissed me i tried even harder to impress him. i did take those pictures so for me it didn't feel, it still doesn't feel clear-cut. i felt complicit in the situation and had a lot of shame around it and i write

about paparazzi, the least relatable thing when i published the essay. i don't think anyone is going to like this because i was sure it was that is my experience up to that point was people had not been sympathetic with those things even though they had been in the public even though it was very encouraging. i had written 50,000 words but to start to edit, to have that go out into the world, the writing could be a medium where people think about the question i was posing away that why was communicating something that gave me control. writing will talk about control. and take back the narrative. >> host: you are not looking for sympathy, the reason the

essay resonated is it does feel, you put it out there in all the circle of internal thoughts you had about the situation, even though your experience is extreme the particular it is not like a million people had that experience, it is still relatable because everybody has been in a situation they feel complicit and don't know if it is their fault or not. maybe that is why it was received so well. >> guest: i wrote the essay to look at it myself and have other people be able to examine. i say in the book i will proclaim my contradictions because it is a tendency i have of overexposure which for better or worse led me to have a life i had but i am very

interested in being very honest rather than trying to make people feel a certain way because i'm not sure how i feel about these things. >> host: there's a romantic moment you talk about meeting your husband. i don't know if i read this correctly but a moment, maybe it is not -- is romantic. when he comes in and essentially puts himself between you and people who feel they have a right to you. can you talk about that moment? it is interesting moment in the context of the book. >> guest: before we were dating, we were both there and somebody asked for a picture and put their hands like this little finger on this side. i was like whatever and i heard

him say no touching and the guy immediately dropped his hand, i am so sorry which i never would have done myself which is not a good thing. i was more -- i wish i was more the person to say that. maybe, i am public property and i have a complicated feeling around it. in the past i had dated men who are very she's got this, she doesn't need any interjection and i thought that was very respectful. if you had asked me before he had done that i don't like it when men feel -- i can handle the situation on my own but he is interested in protecting me and using his relationship in the world, who he is as a white male kind of big guy to protect

me and for lack of a better term was hot. my girlfriend read it, that was hot. it was. so yeah. >> host: i was looking at your instagram and thinking almost as an addendum to "my body," the pictures you posted lately, the pregnancy baby series, the breast-feeding series, i was wondering about the relationship, a beautiful picture of you naked and pregnant. how does that moment of your life relate to everything you are writing, your body being used, there are a few breast-feeding pictures. what was that about for you? >> guest: it was a trip. i was writing about my body and there was a moment, i can't

publish this book because i have to write about pregnancy and birth, that is everything but that will have to be another book. i i do right about the birth of my son in the last essay. i was curious how pregnancy was going to affect me. talk about lack of control, you wake up every day and your body is doing something completely different and there is no way to ensure, you don't know what is going on, you really don't and you are growing and everything is changing and i found it really, i really enjoyed it. but it helped me appreciate my body, trust it kind of let go of control and this thing, this vessel knows better than me and i have to take the passenger

seat and let that happen. so much of my life is relating to my body as a tool and a tool to guarantee love ability and financial success and i think it didn't feel like a tool particularly because it required me to let go of managing that tool. it was doing something on its own and it even more so in that last essay, the biggest moment for me was the bike ride that i take with my husband and friends and appreciate my body as a thing that takes me through life which is what a body is. >> host: the breast-feeding pictures i was thinking about, like your body is a tool that many mothers experienced but in a different way, nobody is buying it or paying for it but

it has to do work. >> guest: it is sustaining life. breast-feeding was a chunk that was in the last essay. i took it out because it didn't work timing wise but there was this crazy thing. i don't know how many people have had this experience but your breasts wake you up to feed your child, like they make and they hurt and i would find myself walking like a zombie to feed my baby and it was a bizarre experience that i am not in control and there are things at work that have kept human beings on the planet and that ancient machinery is within me and i have to release control and see what happens and trust my body in the process.

>> we were going to open up for questions in a moment. i don't know how to ask this question. i got to thinking you get talk about playing the game, capitalism, playing the game with the body, are you winning or losing? do you feel like you are winning or losing? >> i don't know. i feel like what i do have clarity on, winning outside of the game by doing something as fulfilling as writing a book. i don't know, that is definitely a moment -- >> host: the writing of it is fulfilling. most of the time it is like a

surface thing, such a one hundred 80 degree turn, nobody is looking like this. >> guest: i love writing for that reason. >> host: nobody really loves writing. >> guest: it is miserable but i love to be clear. i think that focus and the exercise or the experience of that is like i don't feel this way about physical exercise but people talk about running but i hate it. it is a -- i am addicted and i understand that in relationship to my experience of writing. >> host: it would not be fair, writing is so easy for me and totally great, you don't want to be that. >> guest: writing is so hard.

>> host: everybody should read it. so many essays are so moving and open, so many windows and so many worlds that are completely exotic and totally familiar at the same time. we are going to open up for questions. 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. hello, virtual audience. my mom is in the virtual audience and my nieces. katie in chicago. have you heard or talked to other models buying back their photos and what are their motivations in doing so? >> guest: i'm a particular position, most working models don't have access to it. i do think there's more

conversation around copyright and in the age of the internet in general i would say with revenge porn and every one kind of putting their images out there, there is a lot of conversation that is interesting but specifically in the modeling industry, i don't think there has been a lot of that. >> host: this one question is great. i want to ask about race and public perception. the blurred lines, how does sexuality interact with ethnic ambiguity. from blurred lines? >> guest: this conversation around sexuality and empowerment reminds me of this

but i will say, it is so much worse without a doubt. the racial stereotypes come to play, it is insane and even though they were in control they have to battle another set of issues that are crazy. >> host: it is a similar thing in that video that goes on in this book. anion control? i am leaning into it and that is a form of empowerment but she does know. >> guest: it was like you had leftist feminists and right-wing people both saying this video is trash. when does that happen in the country? >> host: they come together on something like that.

>> as a young woman navigating her career, your independence and femininity not to mention dating, how did you deal with the heart ache and failures and rejections in front of the industry that is so easy and quick to reject women? >> guest: i think this is something you might hear me say again because it was one of my take aways. i wrote it to investigate experiences i have a lot of shame around and i thought i would look back at the book and say that is where i should have done something different or that was so stupid, why did you compromise yourself or agree to do this and i realized that is not a healthy exercise, women

need to give themselves a break and understand the larger things at play outside their personal choices that lead to those heart aches and brutal kind of realities which is partly why i wrote the book, my life has been a product of my choices and the culture and the world we live in and it is important for young women to learn to not be so hard on themselves. >> i was wondering, people in general, your followers, if their opinions on you, taken more seriously, changed after you opened your business or started your business? >> guest: no. >> maybe more if they started taking you more seriously with what you are talking about. >> guest: i think in the world

of skins, when people see women taking control of their image and using what has been used by other people to have their own hustles, people are like she is business savvy or whatever so yes, in some ways, that has been part of it but the book came out a week ago but i hope it is more that way. i shouldn't worry about it so much. >> host: you have a true hero friend who helps you build your business, your actual true friend in life does show up, that's a good counterbalance to this other girl on girl. >> guest: female friendships are hugely important. >> thank you so much for coming.