Celeste Barber’s post mocking Emily Ratajkowski missed the mark

Celeste Barber’s well known “challenge accepted” posts have been hailed for poking fun at the seemingly unreal poses and bodies prevalent in the world of celebrity.

This week, one of these posts caught my eye. Not for the humour it was aiming for in its execution, but for the caption. The post featured a video of 30-year-old model Emily Ratajkowski posing against a pillar in a pair of bikini bottoms and stilettos, which Barber then mimics in her usual style. Barber’s caption reads: “We are sick of you objectifying our bodies! Also, here’s my ass.”

If the post had a different caption, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice. But to me, that caption smacks of internalised misogyny and slut-shaming, bordering on victim-blaming. It made Ratajkowski an object, and reinforced the view that if women express their sexuality, then they are not only objectified, but seen to be courting such a response.

I mean, if she really didn’t want to be objectified, she wouldn’t pose like that, right? The implication is clear: you can’t be sexual without being sexualised; you can’t show your body without being objectified.

This rhetoric removes any accountability from the people doing the objectifying and places the blame squarely back on Ratajkowski.

Ratajkowski herself has been vocal about how she has grappled with the objectification that comes with using her body for her work. Last year, she wrote an essay for The Cut called “Buying Myself Back: When Does a Model Own Her Own Image?” where she described being allegedly sexually assaulted by a photographer during a photo shoot in 2012.

That photographer then went on to publish a book of images of Ratajkowski without her permission, including naked photos of her taken during the photo shoot, profiting off his alleged abuse. He denies the allegations but in his rebuttal of them he said: “You do know who we are talking about right? This is the girl that was naked in Treats! magazine, and bounced around naked in the Robin Thicke video at that time… You really want someone to believe she was a victim?”

Since those comments, singer Robin Thicke has also been accused of sexually assaulting Ratajkowski during the filming of the Blurred Lines music video clip which shot Ratajkowski to fame – a story she recounts in her book My Body.

It may seem harmless to make jokes about the perceived mismatch in someone speaking out against objectification when there are images of them that society deems to be “sexy”. But jokes at someone’s expense, especially that of a sexual assault survivor, aren’t just jokes.