So I listened to this during Sophie's nap time - all five hours spread across a week where she actually slept (miracle) - and I'm still processing it. Look, I'll be honest: I picked this up because I was curious. Emily Ratajkowski is everywhere, and I wanted to know what she actually had to say beyond the Instagram posts and the headlines.
What I got was... not what I expected. At all.
The Voice Behind the Image
Here's the thing about celebrity memoirs read by the celebrity themselves - they can go so wrong. Stilted, awkward, like someone reading a teleprompter at gunpoint. But Emily? She sounds like she's sitting across from you at a coffee shop, telling you things she probably shouldn't. There's this steady, almost confessional quality to her voice that made me forget I was folding laundry.
She reads her own words with this earnestness that caught me off guard. When she talks about being photographed at seventeen, about the way men have literally owned images of her body, about the weird gray areas between empowerment and exploitation - you can hear her working through it in real time. It's not polished in that over-rehearsed way. It's raw.
I found myself pausing to text my sister things like "okay but she's actually saying something here" which is high praise from me because I rarely interrupt my sacred quiet time for anything.
Where It Got Uncomfortable (In a Good Way)
This isn't a beach read. I mean, it's only five hours, so technically very doable - I finished it in a week, which for me is basically speedrunning. But some of these essays made me sit in my car an extra ten minutes just... thinking.
She writes about consent in ways that don't give you easy answers. About wanting to be desired and also being exhausted by it. About making money from her body and wondering what that means. Untamed wrestled with similar questions about reclaiming yourself, though Glennon Doyle came at it from a completely different angle. And honestly? As someone who left a career to raise kids and sometimes feels like my body belongs to everyone but me (seriously, I haven't gone to the bathroom alone in seven years), some of it hit different than I expected.
Not all of it landed for me. There were moments where I thought "okay, but your problems are very specific to being a famous supermodel" - and that's fair. Her perspective is narrow by definition. She's not trying to speak for all women. She's trying to figure out her own complicated relationship with being beautiful and being seen and being owned.
The Mom Take
Here's where I'll be real: this book made me think about things I don't usually have brain space for. Between school pickups and snack negotiations and the endless laundry mountain, I don't often sit with questions about commodification and the male gaze. But Emily's voice in my ears during those quiet moments - it stuck with me.
Would I recommend this to my book club? (If I ever have time for book club again - big if.) Yeah, actually. But with caveats. If you're looking for a straightforward memoir with a clear arc and a tidy ending, this isn't it. These are essays. They circle back on themselves. They contradict. They don't resolve neatly.
But if you want something that'll make you think while you're scrubbing the highchair for the fifteenth time today? Something that survives being paused and still makes sense when you come back? This works.
The production is clean, the length is manageable, and Emily's narration adds something you wouldn't get from reading it yourself. Hearing her voice crack slightly when she talks about certain experiences, hearing the careful way she chooses her words - that's the audiobook advantage right there.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
This one's for you if you want something thought-provoking that fits into stolen moments - nap times, commutes, late-night folding sessions. Skip it if you need neat resolutions or can't handle content that's definitely not kid-friendly. (Trust me on that second part.)
Not groundbreaking in the sense that it'll change your life. But honest in a way that feels rare. And sometimes, between the chaos of raising three humans, that's exactly what I need - someone else being messy and uncertain and figuring it out as they go.
Just maybe don't listen at school pickup. Some of the content is... not for little ears. I learned that the hard way when Emma asked what "commodification" means. Fun times.
