Beyond Noise (Emrata)
EMILY RATAJKOWSKI’S SINGULAR BEAUTY THRUST HER INTO THE SPOTLIGHT —
BUT IT’S HER GRACE, HER NERVE, AND HER VOICE THAT’LL HOLD HER THERE FOREVER.
Emily Ratajkowski is one of the most famous women alive. She’s famous in the old-fashioned sense—a single photo of her can stop the planet spinning, and it’s easy to imagine the air in any room carrying more weight as soon as she enters. But even while in possession of a star power largely gone by, Emily is fully here and now, tuned into and responding to the conditions of the present. Like many millennial women, she posts TikToks about her love life and bad haircuts, cares deeply about the state of the world, and has a complicated relationship with Instagram.
Emily’s rise can be attributed to her looks—she is a petite brunette with impossible curves and a face that is both feline and doe-eyed. Her beauty transcends language and borders. After appearing in a viral music video in 2013, she became an instant cultural obsession: gaining millions of followers, landing a succession of high-profile modeling and acting jobs, and reshaping the landscape of female desirability upon impact.
It’s possible to plot the cultural passage of time according to Emily’s greatest hits on Instagram: 2018 is her courtside at a Lakers game, in jeans and a white crop top; 2020 is her lower back, temp-tatted with “emrata,” her social media handle-turned-nickname; 2025 is a selfie flashing her “divorce rings,” the double diamonds of her engagement ring now separated. But Emily was never a flat image. She campaigned for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders when most of Hollywood was stuck on Hillary, was arrested for protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court following allegations of his sexual misconduct, and constantly shares her own critical thoughts alongside sexy selfies. She hosted a podcast about philosophy, politics, and modern feminism, and works closely with Lena Dunham, whose public image itself was somewhat of a political statement on what it meant to be a contemporary woman.
In many ways, Emily is the blueprint for one of the most dominant representations of modern womanhood: the hot girl. The hot girl reads, writes, has opinions, experiences mental illness, and loves to have fun with her friends. The existence of “hot girl” as qualifier is reflective of a social media-driven emphasis on image, but it also is a self-aware acknowledgement of how the world works. Looking good, or at least feeling good about how you look, is often a real step toward getting what you want. Emily gets this—she also gets that it’s complicated. She wrote a whole book about it: the New York Times Best Seller My Body.
Now, at 34, Emily is taking on her biggest role yet. This year she revealed an untitled A24 series for Apple TV+ that she’ll write, produce, and star in, teaming up with author Stephanie Danler and Lena, fresh off their collaboration on Netflix’s Too Much. It’s still early stages, but the project is expected to explore themes of identity and modern motherhood, drawing on Emily’s own experiences as the mother of a young child.
Source: Beyond Noise / www.thebeyondnoise.com
Written by: Biz Sherbert