Emily Ratajkowski writes about being sexually shamed & defining sexy on her own terms

Emily Ratajkowski has written an honest and powerful essay on Lena Dunham's blog Lenny Letter about what it was like to be sexualized and shamed for her body early in life.

The model and actress speaks of her father calling her a 'baby woman' when she was 12 - 'and that's what I was: a 12-year-old with D-cup breasts who still woke up in the night and asked her mom to come and sleep in her room' - and friends and family who warned her she needed to keep a low profile.

'When I was 15, the adults in my life were concerned by my modeling at such a young age. They'd heard the horror stories of creepy middle-aged men taking advantage of young women, or agents pressuring girls to lose weight. Surprisingly enough, dealing with the world outside the industry was the toughest part of my adolescence and young adulthood. Teachers, friends, adults, boyfriends — individuals who were not as regulated as those in the highly scrutinized fashion world were more often the ones to make me feel uncomfortable or guilty about my developing sexuality.'

'And what is that message exactly? The implication is that to be sexual is to be trashy because being sexy means playing into men's desires.'

'To me, 'sexy' is a kind of beauty, a kind of self-expression, one that is to be celebrated, one that is wonderfully female. Why does the implication have to be that sex is a thing men get to take from women and women give up?'

We hear you Em, and we salute you. Read the full essay here. Images from @emrata