Emily Ratajkowski has addressed her alleged “drama” with Celeste Barber, after blocking the Australian comedian on social media.
Barber – best known for poking fun at celebrities, influencers, and female beauty standards on Instagram – had mimicked the US supermodel posts more than once.
But it was a 2021 post, mocking one of Ratajkowski’s swimwear campaigns – with the caption, “We are sick of you objectifying our bodies! Also, here’s my ass” – that prompted the My Body author to block Barber on the platform.
“I don’t think Emily is a fan,” Barber told Nova’s Fitzy and Wippa in November. “That’s OK, she’s allowed to not love it. But she blocked me.”
The Wellmania star also faced an onslaught of criticism from the public over that specific post, writing that the caption “reeks of people who tell women ‘what did they expect’ when they go out in a short skirt and get sexually assaulted … please check your internalised misogyny”.
In a recent episode of her High Low podcast, Ratajkowski responded to a question from a New Zealand listener about whether hindsight had changed her take on the incident.
“This whole drama with Celeste has been blown out of proportion,” the 31-year-old said.
“In general, I find her to be really funny. But, [the] message I was trying to send to her was, ‘I just don’t want you to do this to me anymore’.”
The mother-of-one added that she wants “to be able to do my thing, whether that be writing about my terrifying experiences in an industry that doesn’t protect women and young girls and femme-presenting people while also having a bathing suit line”.
At the time, The Cut had just published Ratajkowski’s essay, ‘Buying Myself Back’, which later went on to feature in her book and explored others using her image for profit without her consent.
“I was like, I’m not giving her my consent for this joke anymore. It just landed at a specific time for me,” she said.
Ratajkowski stressed she had no bad feelings personally towards Barber, but that making fun of people who are putting their bodies on display is often inherently misogynistic.
“We really love to pick on female influencers, like they are considered the trash, lamest, most cringe, most embarrassing people on the planet,” she said.
“I fundamentally find that to be sexist. Yeah, no sh*t women want to be influencers – it’s one of the ways that women have learned to be successful and make money. They’re hustling.”