Emily Ratajkowski has announced she will be ushering in a new stage of her life, which she has referred to as her “bitch era”.
The 31-year-old supermodel recently declared her forthcoming bitch era on TikTok, where she’s gained millions of followers for her feminist takes and candid thoughts on toxic masculinity. While weighing in on the discourse surrounding the fictionalised Marilyn Monroe film Blonde, Ratajkowski spoke about the fetishisation of female pain and how she plans to fight back against society’s obsession with female suffering.
While the My Body author admitted she had not seen the Netflix film, Ratajowski said that she was not surprised there’s yet another movie “fetishising female pain, even in death,” and used the media craze surrounding Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, and Princess Diana as real-life examples.
“I think as women, I mean I can say for myself for sure that I’ve learned how to fetishise my own pain and my own hurt in life, so that it feels like something that can be tended to, that’s kinda sexy,” she admitted, before coming up with a solution to end the sexist cycle.
Ratajkowski then came up with a “proposal” to end the sexist cycle: “You know what’s kind of hard to fetishise? Anger.”
“I think we all need to be a little more pissed off. I’m going to be in my bitch era,” she said. “I think we should all be in our bitch era. I’m just gonna get angry.”
Following the declaration, Ratajkowski announced on 12 October she will be launching a podcast to coincide with her newly declared “bitch era”.
The podcast HighLow with EmRata, which launches on 1 November in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment, will explore topics on relationships, politics, feminism, and pop culture. Each week, Ratajkowski will release two episodes – both in part-monologue, part-interview format – and a third episode for subscribers only.
Speaking to The Cut about her new podcast, Ratajkowski explained how HighLow will help in ushering in Bitch Era 2022. “It might be longer than 2022, to be honest, because this year’s coming to an end and I have a whole lot of bitchiness to serve up,” she told the outlet.
“Generally speaking, I think anger is something all of us have a negative relationship to,” she continued. “At least for me, I associate it with masculinity and toxic masculinity and violence, even. But I think what the world could use is a healthy dose of female anger.”
The bestselling author went on to explain how she is subverting the word “bitch” to mean something more than just a female dog, or a derogatory term. “I like that word because it has this negative, derogatory [connotation]. It’s a slur, but I’d like to say that, in the same way we’re thinking about how anger doesn’t have to be a negative thing, being a bitch doesn’t have to be a negative thing,” she said. “It can just mean standing up for yourself.”
Ratajkowski, who filed for divorce from husband Sebastian Bear-McClard on 8 September following claims he cheated on her, also revealed plans to discuss relationships on the new platform.
While speaking to The Cut, Ratajkowski, who shares one-year-old son Sylvester with McClard, said that listeners can expect to hear her advice on dating and relationships, especially for those who are “postdivorce”. “I’m a single mom and I’m 31,” she said. “I’ve learned so much about relationships and marriage. We’re in this interesting moment where there’s all kinds of studies about women postdivorce and their happiness, about heterosexual marriages and how families work.”
