Emily Ratajkowski has no time for shamers.
The model and actress who rose to fame after stealing the spotlight in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video, has penned a personal essay about the excessive criticism she received following her support of US Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.
In Glamour magazine’s October issue, the Emily, 25, starts: “Commenters said I had ‘an excess of beauty and lack of brain’ and told me to ‘shut up and show us your tits.
“But I was also criticized in a very specific way — for seeking attention. They wrote me off as ‘a desperate attention whore,’ saying I was taking part in the conversation only because everybody else was too,” she continues.
The Gone Girl star then explains that she is perceived differently because she’s a woman, not a man.
“I realised then that I’ve been called an attention whore so often that I had almost gotten used to it. And as women we are accused of seeking attention more than men are, whether for speaking out politically, as I did, for dressing a certain way, or for even posting a selfie.
“Our culture has a double standard that runs so deep, many women have actually built up an automatic defense — attempting to be a step ahead of potential critics by making sure we have ‘real’ reasons for anything we say or do.”
She concludes the article by pointing out that women do not owe any explanations to anyone.
“We shouldn’t have to apologise for wanting attention either. We don’t owe anyone an explanation. It’s not our responsibility to change the way we are seen—it’s society’s responsibility to change the way it sees us.”
This isn’t the first time the British-born star has spoken out about feminism and inequality. In March this year, Emily stood beside Kim Kardashian West after the reality star received backlash for a nude selfie she had shared on Instagram.
Emily and Kim then stood side-by-side, topless, in a photo captioned: “We are more than just our bodies, but that doesn’t mean we have to be shamed for them or our sexuality. #liberated”.
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