Emily Ratajkowski announces pregnancy, says she won’t know child’s gender until they’re an adult

Supermodel and actress Emily Ratajkowski has just announced her pregnancy to the world, powerfully advocating for gender-neutral parenting.

Emily Ratajkowski has announced the news of her pregnancy. The supermodel took to Instagram to share her new Vogue digital cover, alongside a pregnancy video directed by Lena Dunham, which shows the 29-year-old cradling her baby bump, interspersed with personal clips and an intimate self-narration. 

Ratajkowski has also proven, once again, that she has quite the way with words, having written an open letter accompanying her feature on Vogue, in which she shares her views in regards to notions of gender and her unborn bub. 

In her letter, which features a collection of her thoughts, Ratajkowski states that she and her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, “won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then”.

Just last month, the model wrote an essay for New York Magazine’s The Cut titled Buying Myself Back, When does a model own her own image? which explored topics of bodily autonomy, sexual assault, and empowerment.

Now, her recent words for Vogue focus on the pressures we all inherently face in regards to gender and societal conditioning, whilst revealing her progressive stance on the topic.

 

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“Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are?“ read my essay on pregnancy and gender on @voguemagazine 🤍 thank you for all the well wishes 🤍 @cassblackbird @jordenbickham

A post shared by Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) on Oct 26, 2020 at 2:37pm PDT

Reflecting on the notions of old wives tales which claim that certain signs will reveal the gender of your unborn child, Ratajkowski says: “I don’t necessarily fault anyone for these generalizations—a lot of our life experiences are gendered, and it would be dishonest to try to deny the reality of many of them. But I don’t like that we force gender-based preconceptions onto people, let alone babies.”

 

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Entitled “Who Will You Be?”, digital cover star @emrata’s new short film is a self-narrated, deeply personal portrait of pregnancy. Her friend @lenadunham, who directed the short exclusively for Vogue, explains: “It was important to me that it feel very unfiltered and authentically present.” Tap the link in our bio to watch the full video. Directed by @lenadunham Written and filmed by @emrata Edited by @dschneids Post Production @modern.post Colorist Justin Schroepfer Music “Chrome Country” performed by Oneohtrix Point Never (@eccopn), courtesy of Warp Records (@warprecords)

A post shared by Vogue (@voguemagazine) on Oct 26, 2020 at 12:30pm PDT

“I want to be a parent who allows my child to show themself to me,” she continued. “And yet I realize that while I may hope my child can determine their own place in the world, they will, no matter what, be faced with the undeniable constraints and constructions of gender before they can speak or, hell, even be born.”  

This latest piece of writing will be included in Emily Ratajkowski’s upcoming book of essays, titled My Body, that will be published in 2022 by Metropolitan Books. According to the publishing company, the selection of essays is set to explore “what it means to be a woman and a commodity, how men treat women and why women permit it.”