A bizarre, sexist 2018 interview with Emily Ratajkowski resurfaced on Twitter over the weekend — and Emily herself just spoke out on it, calling the article "gross" and "embarrassing."
It all started when writer David Klion tweeted out the French Marie Claire article on Sunday, calling out some of its more objectifying passages in screenshots.
Happy Sunday! Please enjoy this Thomas Chatterton Williams profile of Emily Ratajkowski in French Marie Claire https://t.co/OYZhXzaIUh
Though the profile was originally published in French, translations of it show that the journalist who wrote it, Thomas Chatterton Williams, was fixated on Emily's body throughout the article and expressed shock at the fact that she's a smart, well-read person.
In one translated passage, he calls her "the sexiest version of a creature right on our side of humanity" and says that Emily was "admittedly blessed with the most perfect breasts of her generation." In another, he writes that "her sexuality is omnipotent and animal."
And in a particularly condescending paragraph, Williams says his brain "shorted" when he found out Emily enjoys reading. He also seemed to question whether she really reads all of the books she says she does:
The day I read that she was a fan of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, my brain shorted. No matter how much she really took the time to read the 1,300 pages of {Bolaño's novel} 2666, the mere fact that she knew his name already seemed unbelievable to me, as if we were definitely meant to get along.
After these passages resurfaced on Twitter, many people expressed their dismay at them — including Emily herself.
"[I'd] never read this before but I really hope this will be the last of my 'she has breasts AND claims to read' profiles/interviews," Emily wrote on Twitter.
If never read this before but I really hope this will be the last of my “she has breasts AND claims to read” profiles/interviews. Lots of levels of gross/embarrassing aspects to this but the attempt at a feminist critique at the end is maybe the worst part. https://t.co/5YVFgnn3WC
"Lots of levels of gross/embarrassing aspects to this but the attempt at a feminist critique at the end is maybe the worst part," she added.
In a subsequent tweet, Emily called out the interviewer for yet another translated line from his article, in which he seems to imply that the "extraordinarily low-cut neckline" of her outfit is "in contradiction" with her being an intelligent person:
I must add here that while articulating a completely intelligent thought, she is wearing an extraordinarily low-cut neckline, without a bra, while seemingly knowing, deep down, that her outfit is at once absurd and confusing, or even outright in contradiction with her words."
Needless to say, Emily was having none of it.
“Confusing” outfit lol https://t.co/FQ9qesxehw