Emily Ratajkowski covers the new issue of ES Magazine, which is the weekly magazine for the Evening Standard. I really don’t like the squinty cover – I think Emily is really pretty, and she usually photographs a lot better than that shot. Anyway, in her interview, Emily talks about all of the hot-button issues she’s been discussing a lot over the past few months, like feminism, nude selfies, her defense of Kim Kardashian and more. Some highlights:

Being a sexy actress: “It’s an interesting paradox. If you’re a sexy actress it’s hard to get serious roles. You get offered the same thing they’ve seen you in. People are like sheep and they’re like ‘Oh, that’s what she does well.’ What’s so dumb is that women are 50 percent of the population and they want to spend money to see movies where they’re portrayed as three-dimensional characters.”

Being ‘the pretty one’ in her teenage years: “I started to realise that I was being perceived differently. It was confusing. Basically it was more about the way that people had a problem with a girl looking like a woman because it confused them. It made them feel uncomfortable and I think there was a lot of guilt that they wanted to induce.”

On her nudity in art: “Like any art, there’s a million ways to interpret it. All I can say is that when a woman is naked, that’s not immediately anti-feminist. I have no apologies for it, and I’m not ashamed at all.”

Identifying as a feminist: “Every woman, whether or not they’re comfortable with the term feminist, probably wants to be equal to men and that is fundamentally what feminism is about. I think that there is a stigma attached to the word, but to me it means talking about the way we look at women and how we judge women differently than how we judge men; also it is about paid maternity leave, equal pay for women…”

On Piers Morgan’s criticism of Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies: “[He was] talking about the fact that Kim is 34 and a mother and that we’re over seeing her in a sexual light, which I had a lot of problems with. He also implied that her husband was writing her tweets, as if she isn’t capable of writing them herself, which to me is incredibly sexist… There are lots of [criticisms] I can understand one might have about the Kardashians and reality TV, but even someone who you might be critical of is allowed to post a naked selfie if she wants to….[Piers] criticises everyone. I think he’s also really attention seeking. It’s the Trump phenomenon. If you keep saying controversial things, then you keep trending on Facebook and that’s great for some people’s career.”

[From The Daily Mail & Glamour UK]

She says more about women needing spaces where they can be sexual, and I would add that I think the biggest problem with the criticism of Kim (and Emily, by extension) is that women need spaces to be sexual… without their sexuality and nudity being assigned a moral component. It’s not immoral to be naked. You’re not a bad person just because you post a nude selfie. Which is Emily’s point. And I also agree that Piers Morgan is a dumb, attention-seeking blowhard.

Photos courtesy of ES Magazine.