NO MORE BLURRED LINES

At the tender age of 21 Emily Ratajkowski starred in Robin Thicke’s infamous video wearing just a thong. She said it was empowering. Nearly a decade on, the model and actress is not so sure

-  MEGAN AGNEW

EMILY Ratajkowski wants control. She wants control, she says, because there have been too many times in her life when she thought she had lots and claimed she had lots, but really she had very little.

She found fame as a model, her body primped, preened and positioned by other people to sell their clothes or sex up their music videos, most famously for the 2013 hit Blurred Lines.

Emily (now 30) was a pin-up. She gained wealth and power from being the object, the muse, a “good model”. But her power was always dependent on other people finding her attractive, particularly men.

That is why she wanted to write a book.

“You can have so much control in writing, you’re choosing the words, you’re the creator,” she says.

My Body is a collection of essays – part memoir, part analysis of sexual politics, modelling, gender and feminism. She wrote it over the past two years from her apartment in Manhattan, where she lives with her husband, Sebastian BearMcClard, a film producer, and their 10-month-old son, Sylvester Apollo.

In the first chapter she describes how, as a 21-year-old model living in Los Angeles, she was hired to appear in Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I.’s music video.

“I hate these blurred lines/I know you want it/I know you want it,” sang Thicke, wearing a suit and tie, while Emily danced around him, naked save for a skin-coloured thong and trainers.