Emily Ratajkowski Defends Her Nude Photos: ‘I Don’t Think I’m Being Complicit’
Not a day goes by when Emily Ratajkowski either strips down topless or completely nude for a photo op. Every time she does it, the internet gets mad. But, Emily is not changing anytime soon. She will continue to post nude photos on social media.
The Gone Girl actress sat down for an interview with Australian magazine, Oyster. Inside the publication, Emily revealed that she likes to post the photos for her “own enjoyment” rather than for the enjoyment of others. She also stated that she would rather play by the sexist rules rather than breaking them herself.
“I don’t think I’m being complicit,” she stated. “Women in the last five to ten years are able to say, ‘I want to feel this way – it’s not for someone else. I don’t know if in [Gloria Steinem’s] revolution in the 60s that was really true. I don’t know if there were a lot of women being sexy for their own enjoyment; that’s much more common now.”
In that same interview, Emily revealed that her looks got her to where she is now. While she does want to be taken more seriously as an actress, she admits that she wouldn’t even have a career if it wasn’t for her looks or her sexy photos.
“I don’t think my career would have happened if it wasn’t for the way I look,” she admitted.
While Emily loves taking nude photos, she doesn’t approve of others who release her photos for their own financial gain. Emily slammed photographer Jonathan Ledger on Twitter for publishing her nude photos without her consent in his new book. The photo shoot was taken in May, 2012, and some of the photos were widely circulated by media outlets and publications. Since news broke of Emily’s nude photos, she took to Twitter to slam the photographer, according to the Daily Mail.
“My body, my choice,” she tweeted. “This book and the images within them are a violation. I’ve been resisting speaking publicly on the recently published photos by Jonathan Ledger to avoid giving him publicity. But I’ve had enough.”
She revealed that she originally took the Polaroids for an artful magazine spread and she never intended the unused ones to be published.
“These photos being used w/out my permission is an example of exactly the opposite of what I stand for: women choosing when and how they want to share their sexuality and bodies,” she wrote. “To be clear: I signed no release & was not paid.”
Leder used a Polaroid camera to snap over a hundred photos of Ratajkowski, according to the Washington Post. Seventy-one of those photos have been combined into a new collector’s book called Leder/Ratajkowski and retails for $80 by Imperial Pictures. The photos will also be on display at Chelsea’s Castor Gallery in February, USA Today reported.
Inside the book’s forward, Leder described his first impression of Ratajkowski.
“My first thought was, wow, that’s a mouthful,” he wrote when he talked about her last name. “This one’s not gonna go too far with that name.”
He went on to describe the photo shoot, which he described as “fun.”
“We shot for two nights in the Cape House in Woodstock, NY. Just her and I. I think the results speak for themselves. I will say it was a very lovely shoot. She was very, shall we say, comfortable with her body and as far as shoots go, I would say it was fun. Over the course of the two evenings, we shot about a hundred Polaroids, most of them which are now presented here, many for the first time.”
In most of the photos, Ratajkowski posed in lingerie, though in many she’s topless and fully nude with strategically placed hands or objects.
Emily is not going to let haters or sexist photographers get to her. She recently took to Instagram to post a photo of herself wearing a white lacy bodysuit by Gooseberry Intimates, according to Cosmopolitan. She accessorized her look with dainty gold necklaces and a pink pout. Emily’s fans approved this photo, even if her lingerie left little to the imagination.
[Featured Image by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Breeders’ Cup]
