Emily Ratajkowski admits to ‘exploiting herself’ and ‘using her body’ to get ‘fame and success’

Emily Ratajkowski, 30, has admitted to ‘exploiting herself’ and ‘using her body’ to get ‘fame and success’ in a sensational new interview – just one day after she slammed the industry and revealed she was paid $25,000 to attend the Super Bowl with disgraced Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho aka Jho Low.

The New York-based actress and model confessed to ‘capitalizing on her sexuality’ when she was younger in attempt to gain control during an interview with CBS Mornings on Monday – recalling how she saw her self-exploitation as a form of ’empowerment’, a view that has changed as she’s grown older.  

‘[In] my early 20s, I really thought of myself as hustling and working the system and saying, “Okay, I know what I can get from becoming a model and from using my body to have fame and success.” And, I even called it empowerment,’ she explained.

Emily starred in Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ music video in 2013 – when she was 22 years old – and it quickly skyrocketed her career. In the clip, she and two other female models appeared completely topless as they danced alongside Robin. She later claimed that the singer groped her beasts on set. 

‘I was in the Blurred Lines video – that was my big breakthrough moment – and I told everyone that felt like an empowering experience,’ she said.

‘But, as I’ve gotten older, I realized that it’s a bit more complicated and feel a responsibility to tell young girls that.

‘I would be wrong to say that it’s just simply empowering to capitalize on your sexuality and your beauty as a woman.’ 

The mom-of-one continued, ‘I’m not interested in cancelling anyone. For me it was telling the truth of the whole reality of that experience. Because for so long everything I said was, “It was so fun,” which, by the way, it was also.’

Emily explained that she liked to ‘use her sexuality’ and ‘capitalize on her image’ because she felt it gave her ‘some kind of control.’ But she realizes now that she never really had any power until she wrote her book, My Body – which is set to come out on Tuesday, November 9.

‘I don’t think that exploiting myself is progress at all, I think that it just offered me some kind of control. The only time I feel like I’ve experienced empowerment is through writing this book and telling this story and even just making something, creating something. That feels like real power,’ she said. 

While speaking to The Sunday Times Magazine one day earlier, Emily confessed that she has previously accepted thousands of dollars in return for attending events with different men – although she is now blasting the practice as a form of ‘manipulation’.

Now, when asked how she could publicly call out these things but also admit to participating in them, Emily explained, ‘I think it’s really important – politicians are a perfect example of that – they’re criticizing the system and they’re still working within it, because you want it to change.

‘As somebody who you can Google and look at my Instagram and see all this glamorous and success, fame… It’s really important to give people the full story.’

She continued, ‘I don’t fault young girls and I would never shame them for how they dress or how they try to work the system or try to be.

‘That being said, I don’t want [them] to think it’s gonna be a beautiful pathway with flowers… It’s more complicated than that. There’s a lot of ways that you can be hurt. Especially if you are naïve.

‘I was defiant. I really wanted to believe I was an example of a woman empowered. That if this was feminism that you can use your body to have fame and success, and in some ways that’s totally true. In other ways I didn’t feel empowered because it’s more complicated than just that.

‘It’s a cultural shift. There’s obviously ways that we can protect models but it’s a really complicated industry because it’s just about using women’s bodies to sell products,’ she said.

‘So ultimately there’s always going to be a level of objectifying. I think though, having respect for these young women, offering them as much control as we can, is huge.

‘In general, and how we treat young girls and how we teach them – in all kinds of subtle ways – that they are kind obligated to be really sweet, never let what they need and protect themselves be known.’

The brunette beauty – who welcomed her first son, Sylvester Apollo Bear, with her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, back in March – said she wanted to make sure that when the now-8-month-old grows up, he is aware of ‘how he can hurt women in certain situations.’

‘I think women and men can benefit from understanding these power dynamics. Understanding the ways that sometimes men feel intimidated, that they have something to prove, there are some things that are hard for men too,’ she said.

‘Toxic masculinity is bad for everyone. I wanna take that pressure off him and also make him aware of how he can hurt women in certain situations.’ 

In her new book, Emily also claimed that photographer Jonathan Leder sexually assaulted her in 2011. And while chatting with The Sunday Times, she explained why she finally decided to open up about the incident, along with what happened on the Blurred Lines set.

‘These were the experiences I didn’t want to look at because they made me feel out of control of my own life and I was afraid of acknowledging that,’ she admitted.

‘I didn’t sit down to write a list of the traumatic events in my life. At all. But there were experiences that I had a lot of shame around and there is this validation that comes with people reading it and recognizing your experience as being real and it existing.’

The runway star also described how her ex-boyfriend Owen ‘forced himself’ on her when she was too drunk to refuse at age 15. He was allegedly 16 years old at the time.

‘Naming what had happened with Owen was particularly healing,’ Emily told the mag.

‘That was nonconsensual sex. I was so young. I hadn’t even had sex before. So many young women I know, their first early sexual experiences border on nonconsensual.’