Emily Ratajkowski made headlines back in January when she commented on a TikTok featuring a 2012 Ellen DeGeneres interview with Taylor Swift, in which the “All Too Well” superstar is visibly and outspokenly uncomfortable as the host has her react to various photographs of herself with male celebrities.
“This is so f—ed up. She’s literally begging her to stop,” Ratajkowski commented on the clip, in which Swift is seen telling DeGeneres, “Stop it, stop it, stop! This makes me feel so bad about myself,” before adding, “Every time I come up here, you put a different dude up there on the screen, and it just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being.”
In a new interview with Elle, the High Low podcast host reflected on how she felt watching the TikTok clip. “I recently became a Swiftie. I loved her last album and I’ve seen her documentary, but I wasn’t following her career in the same way the last 10-plus years,” Ratajkowski explained. “Watching that [interview], I was so struck by how clear she’s being about what is making her uncomfortable. I think the lens that I would’ve viewed that interview from 10 years ago versus now has evolved so much, which is why it struck me. I was in bed falling asleep and commented on it, not because I thought it was going to make headlines at all.”
She continued that Swift is “another example of a woman who has been faced with such blatant misogyny and sexism, and yet we don’t want to admit that, because she’s powerful and successful, and also she’s white.”
“There’s a bunch of reasons, which I think are fair and important to also bring up in the conversation, but that clip in particular was just so striking to me because she was communicating very clearly about why she didn’t feel comfortable with what was happening,” Ratajkowski concluded. “And it was making everyone laugh. It actually upset me. And I think that just even that speaks to a larger thing I’ve noticed, where people don’t listen to femme-presenting people.”
