MixedVultureThroughout the 12 essays in My Body, Ratajkowski hovers over questions of beauty, abuse, and power, trying to reclaim her image through narratives of self-discovery and feminist evolution ... With the publication of My Body, it’s clear that Ratajkowski is working with a more self-interested line of questioning — one that proves not to be in conversation with the questions Black’s work invokes regarding race, gender, class, and the corporeal. Turning inward rather than outward, the memoir sets aside the question of bodies and situates an individual body at its center ... Ratajkowski’s sentences are clear cut, reflective, and declarative; external and internal dialogues sit next to one another without apology. In subject matter, Ratajkowski is archival, looking back in the hopes of moving forward. Where the come-up story of an always-beautiful woman could risk alienating readers or further the flattening of Ratajkowski’s public persona, her stories about her childhood, early years as a full-time model, and musings on motherhood and marriage rescue the project from that fate. Her writing shines brightest in anecdotes where she allows the narrative to breathe without elaborate explanation ... She may want to situate her experiences within a broader western feminist discourse, but she is in conversation, first and foremost, with herself ... But what of the women whose shoulders she stands on? The flip side to refusing indebtedness is that the collection ends up suffering from an aversion to citation. As she retraces her feminist evolution through pop culture and personal experience, Ratajkowski avoids thorough consideration of the writers and thinkers who facilitated her journey. Even her reference to Black’s work, which seemed to inspire the book’s title, is given only a few lines ... My Body mostly omits the wider dialogues on desirability politics, media, labor, and power that make the book feel timely, carving out a vision of becoming that prizes the singularity of the author ... Though at times its small scope causes the pulse of the collection to grow faint, My Body finds its heartbeat again when Ratajkowski describes feelings of exhaustion ... My Body relies on these bursts of energy and intrigue.
