Emily Ratajkowski is all about realigning priorities.
In a refreshingly honest chat with ELLE UK for their July/August issue, the actress and model opened up about her current mindset, where men fall on her list of priorities, what motherhood really means to her, and how she’s embracing her 30s with intention.
Ratajkowski, 34, doesn’t shy away from redefining what people expect from her. While she still enjoys the company of men, she’s made it clear they’re not central to her life. “I still like men. I just have zero straight men in my life, unless they’re a romantic interest,” she said. “In the hierarchy of needs, that’s at the top of the pyramid, which is nice. [Men are] pleasure and fun, but not a part of my core.”
Instead, her energy is focused on her community, which includes other women and queer people, and especially her four-year-old son, Sylvester, whom she shares with ex-husband Sebastian Bear-McClard.
Motherhood has shifted her sense of self in powerful ways, but not in the conventional direction. She’s not interested in looking or acting like a stereotypical mom, and she’s proud of that. “I think that [fashion] is actually one of the ways I really enjoy being subversive with motherhood,” Emily explained. “There’s so much around what a mom should look like. I know what kind of mom I am, and I only deeply care about my son’s reaction to that. Anybody else who has opinions about me as a mother because of the way I dress, it’s just so inconsequential.”
That kind of clarity seems to be the reward of entering her 30s. Emily reflected on how this stage of life mirrors her mother’s own experience of transformation. “My mom had me at 39, and I remember she always romanticised her thirties as a time of self-exploration and power as a woman. I’m in the midst of it and really feel that way too.”
Ratajkowski also sounds fired up about what’s ahead. “You can’t control everything, but you can move towards something to give yourself the life you want,” she said. “That really excites me, because when I think about 34 to 44, I’m like, ‘Oh man, there’s so much opportunity.’ I can be so much more intentional than I was in my twenties and there won’t be, like, accidents.”
From her attitude on dating to how she navigates motherhood and fashion, Emily Ratajkowski’s interview reveals a woman who’s living on her own terms, and loving it.
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