- Model Emily Ratajkowski (35) describes in an essay for “The Cut” how she rediscovered her sexuality after a separation and motherhood.
- She began to go on dates compulsively and adopted an alter ego so as not to be seen as an “abandoned single mother”.
- In the end, she draws a sobering conclusion: According to her, the alter ego was a “ridiculous performance without content.”
“I hated the condescending way people looked at me after my breakup,” recalls Emily Ratajkowski in her text for “The Cut” about the time after her divorce from Sebastian Bear-McLard, with whom she shares a five-year-old son. The 35-year-old therefore did everything in her power not to conform to the image of the “abandoned single mother”, which would be tantamount to an insult. She started dating compulsively.
“I just wanted to get fucked,” Emily admits in her text. The author makes it clear that the focus was not on the orgasm – she could have masturbated for that. «What I wanted was the attention. I wanted to feel a man’s desire and be reminded that I am a sexual being – not just the mother of a small child.”
How would you rebuild your self-confidence after a breakup or big life change?
Emrata played the “good girl” for years
The model created an alterego for the dates. Everything revolved around making the men feel like she wasn’t a victim – just not an “abandoned single mother”. Instead, Emily wanted to appear sexual and scary.
Serial dating was new territory for Ratajkowski. “Before my breakup, I didn’t have any one-night stands. I never slept with a person the same day I met them.” For years she played the role of the “good girl” instead, with the conviction that men would then want to take care of her. The separation taught her otherwise: “I decided to fuck myself into a new personality.”
“It was all a ridiculous performance”
In her essay, Emily talks in detail about the explicit meetings with the men – from blowjobs, dirty talk to questionable fetishes. «The dates taught me two things. On the one hand, that men are stimulated by my motherhood,” shares the author. She also found that the less she depended on men, the more she was desired by them.
At the end of the text, Emily’s conclusion is sobering. She had to realize that her alterego didn’t make her inscrutable and inscrutable. “I was just as misguided as I was in my twenties when I played the good girl. I was missing connection to my own sexual desires. It was all a ridiculous and silly performance with no content,” writes the 35-year-old. The feeling of having power over men also turned out to be an illusion.
Do you have questions about relationships, love or sexual health?
You can find help here:
That’s why the comment field was deactivated
Leonie Projer (pro), born in 1997, is deputy head of the People department and has been working at 20 Minuten since October 2022. She gained her first journalistic experiences at Tele M1 and “ArgoviaToday”.
