Land Forms
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
Aug 11, 2025
Summary
What person doesn’t know a time when an industry has objectified their body? Cast as the ideal consumer for a product you never needed. The second you buy in, you get stuck in a cycle that can easily drain your wallet while providing little relief — continually promising wellness is just around the corner.
The toxic wellness standards designed to sell products are influencing a new kind of body dysmorphia where perfectly healthy people believe there is something fundamentally broken inside. But that is just marketing.
“For a long time, I didn’t think my body was worthy of the attention required to take care of it. I expected my body to function but ignored it, even when it called out to me... But I wasn’t interested in listening. If I woke up with an empty stomach, hollow and gasping for fuel, I threw bitter coffee into it instead, urging my body to function faster, move faster. I’d wait to eat until my eyesight became blurry and my hands shook and I couldn’t function.”
Emily Ratajkowski
About the Author
As Emily grew up, she was socialized to learn to ignore her inner impulses and instead conform herself to the needs and wants of society. She wanted a body that could be productive with as little resistance as possible (which, in this world, means gaining as many privileges as possible).
It became clear to her at a young age that her body was growing into some traditional standard of beauty, and she learned how to use that to her advantage. In order to consider herself and her work valuable and successful, she strived to achieve such a high return on any personal investment that she gave herself as little as possible.