Saturday, September 05, 2015

Emily Ratajkowski's blurred lines

Emily Ratajkowski, who was one of the models roped in to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines project, has been doing a bit of an "I don't see what the fuss about" interview.

She was talking while promoting the Zac Effron film We Are Your Friends at the time, so it's almost as if she's drawn to career-limiting moments.

On Blurred Lines, she called it the "bane of her existence":

"Now, it’s the bane of my existence. When anyone comes up to me about 'Blurred Lines', I'm like, are we seriously talking about a video from three years ago?"
Which is ironic, because whenever anyone spots him at his current job at the Chick-fil-a, Robin Thicke hopes someone will ask him about Blurred Lines.
Ratajkowski also spoken about the amount of nudity in the clip, saying, "It's weird to me that the reaction to a woman’s naked body is so controversial in our culture."

"My mum taught me to never apologise for my sexuality. My dad never made me feel embarrassed. I also don’t think I’ve ever had an awareness of my own body as being super-sexual. It was always just my body."
Obviously, yes, being naked isn't a bad thing and being ashamed of your body is terrible. But Emily's being a bit disingenuous here - it's hard to see how she could have been so surprised that the level of nudity was a problem when they had her film a completely separate version with her clothes on.

More importantly, it's the context of the nudity and the way that the women had no clothes on, and the men did. And the way the men interacted with the women. It's such a blatant piece of sexist crap that it could almost have been designed as a starting point for GCSE essays on the male gaze. So clunky and easy to grasp are the problems with Blurred Lines video that it could have been made by Fisher Price as My First Sexist Problems.

It's not that there was a problem with your body, Emily. It's the way it was used. And that's why you're probably going to find people asking you about it for years to come.


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