Emily Ratajkowski Announces Pregnancy In Essay About Gender & Motherhood

Model Emily Ratajkowski wrote a personal essay discussing her views on gender and the power of being a mother, ultimately announcing her own pregnancy.

In the article published by Vogue and its accompanying short film directed by Lena Dunham, Ratajkowski expresses her curiosity about her child, saying, “I dreamed of you for the first time the other night. We are waiting for you, wondering who you will be.”

The model writes in her essay that she and her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, plan to be “progressive” raising their child. “We won’t know the gender until our child is 18,” they said. “They’ll let us know then.”

Ratajkowski elaborates on her feminist views in the essay as she grapples with the state of the world her child will be born into. She discusses the longstanding systems of race, gender and power imbalance as part of the reason she doesn’t want to gender her child. She wrote, if the baby is a girl, she’ll experience the same “subconscious and internalized misogyny” that Ratajkowski still struggles with. If the baby is a boy, he will have to be taught about his “position of power in the world” as a white man.

Ratajkowski also discussed her and Bear-McClard’s own biases – Ratajkowski never thought about having a son, while she openly questions whether her husband is “secretly yearning for a boy.”

“I want to be a parent who allows my child to show themself to me,” the model concluded. “And yet I realize that while I may hope my child can determine their own place in the world, they will, no matter what, be faced with the undeniable constraints and constructions of gender before they can speak or, hell, even be born.”