Emily Ratajkowski is many things; a model, actor, activist, feminist, role model.
What she is not, however, is a woman happy to be pulled and stretched and contorted to align with the fashion industry’s ridiculous and narrow beauty standards.
Em Rata, as she’s known to her millions of Instagram followers, made it pretty clear in a post directed at French fashion magazine, Madame Figaro.
In a fashion editorial shoot with the 25-year-old, the folks over at Figaro decided Emily just wasn’t attractive enough to grace their cover, so altered her appearance to bring her up to scratch.
They thinned her lips and lifted her breasts, resulting in this doctored photograph:
The feminist art scholar has previously been outspoken in the face of the tireless objectification of women in the fashion industry.
Emily has previously lost out on work because of the size of her breasts, telling Harper’s Bazaar:
There’s this thing that happens to me, ‘Oh, she’s too sexy.’ It’s like an anti-woman thing that people don’t want to work with me because my boobs are too big.
What’s wrong with boobs? They’re a beautiful feminine thing that need to be celebrated. Who cares? They are great big, they are great small. Why should that be an issue?
Why, indeed. Her followers on Instagram shared her frustration, with one writing:
Why did they do that?! You are naturally beautiful! Face and body!
Moreover, it’s offensive to change any woman’s body on such a public platform – whether she happens to be deemed typically beautiful, like Emily, or not.
Without the woman’s permission to Photoshop her portrait, the implication of such doctoring is akin to body shaming.
You wouldn’t ignore or change her body of work:
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So why ignore her unique natural beauty or change her actual body?
Good for Emily for calling them out.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.