I recently read supermodel Emily Ratajkowski’s essay “Motherf—er” for The Cut about life after divorce as a single mom, in which she describes deciding to f–k her “way into a new kind of woman.”
As a young single mom in New York City, I felt let down.
Not because I object to women having sex, or think mothers should be chaste, but because her version of single motherhood feels completely detached from the reality I know of raising a child in this city.
A few years ago, when I was eight weeks pregnant, I actually admired Ratajkowski.
I was 22, finishing my last semester of college, unexpectedly pregnant by my on-and-off high school boyfriend.
I listened to her “High Low” podcast, where she mused on ideas like “de-centering” men, body image and the paradoxes of fame in the digital age — all while sprinting on a treadmill in a dimly lit gym, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life. My version of therapy.
At the time, her vision of urban single motherhood felt like the closest thing to a wet-dream: no man siphoning your energy, turning motherhood into a harder job than it needs to be.
Just put the baby to bed, slip on a short dress, and disappear into a city full of men eager to date a hot mom. More freedom. More power. All fantasy.
On Ratajkowski’s podcast, she spoke about feeling trapped and struggling to leave. There were allegations of her ex-husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, cheating, though she never confirmed them.
I related to the fact that like the supermodel, I, too, had had a bit of a bad-boy complex. After three years in a stable (albeit pretty boring) relationship with my kind and well-to-do college boyfriend, I left in search of something different.
Different showed up at my door in the form of a high school ex-boyfriend, standing exactly where I’d once snuck him through my bedroom window a hundred times before as a reckless teenager.
I told him we had one night together— that was it.
A month later, I was holding a positive pregnancy test — and everyone in my life had an opinion.
Keep the baby. Don’t keep the baby. Stay with the father. Leave him. Start over. Just don’t become a single mom.
Ultimately I chose to keep the pregnancy because other people’s opinions weren’t enough reason to end it.
I had the support of the people who mattered. And, perhaps, just enough self-determination to believe I’d enjoy motherhood, whether or not the father was involved.
In her essay, Ratajkowski described motherhood as a “violent transition into a new reality,” recounting both the gruesome bloodbath of labor and delivery, followed by the sudden collapse of her marriage.
She found herself a single mother not by choice, but it still resonated with me when she wrote about hating “the way people looked at her” post-divorce — like “a reject with the burden of a needy, hungry, two-foot-tall sidekick.”
I was also aware of the stigma and concerned that those feelings could turn into some kind of resentment.
But the instant they tucked my newborn daughter into my arms, I felt my old self fall to the ground. It was a death and rebirth.
She was tiny, swaddled, smelling like strawberry and spit-up, completely and utterly dependent on me. That’s when I understood what people meant when they said babies are like drugs.
Euphoric and all-consuming. Tiny crying ego-killers. Suddenly, my own stupid issues and futile desires faded — traveling the world, breaking news, meeting interesting men along the way.
I didn’t care. I wanted to sit in that hazy, milk-soaked newborn fog and stare into my squishy newborn’s gray eyes forever.
Eventually, I’d return to my own goals, but it was clear from that moment that my daughter’s wants and needs were the priority.
Ratajkowski describes her entry into single motherhood very differently. She loves her son dearly, but seems less in love with herself.
She talks about wanting to destroy “the good girl” and replace her with “the whore,” about giving men a “taste of their own medicine,” and chasing “good orgasms” along the way.
Reading it, I felt a sick twist in my stomach.
It felt as though she was recasting sex as a kind of ritual performance — where one hopes reckless intimacy becomes self-discovery, and the male gaze is sought to approve of a body transformed by pregnancy and childbirth.
It’s a troubling message, especially for young women, because it reinforces the stereotypes of single mothers as “broken” or “easy.”
For me, the reality was that it was hard to even find time to date as a single mom in New York City.
There was pumping before work, diapers and midnight feedings, bills to pay, babysitters to coordinate, playdates to make, sleep to catch up on. None of that made me feel particularly sexy.
Whatever energy was left went into my female friendships and my 9-to-5 — so I could work toward financial independence (I still rely on support from my mom, so I can’t claim that yet).
But Ratajkowski doesn’t seem as caught up in these real struggles as she does with what men think of her. Eventually, she concludes most men “don’t care” that she’s a mom, and many are actually “turned on by motherhood.”
At one point, she even asks herself, “Did they want me as their mommy?” — answering herself — “Maybe…”
Before I could even sit across from a man at a bar, I had to let go of resentment toward my daughter’s father and take responsibility for my own taste in men.
Still, friends have told me that I have “a lot of walls up,” and I actually take it as a compliment. I want to protect our peace.
And, when I do have time for myself, I want it to be with someone worth ripping myself away from my daughter for — even if only for a few hours.
The model, by contrast, describes “getting off on the thrill of being romantically inaccessible for the first time.” With one of her more frequent flings, she writes confidently, knowing “I had the upper hand: there was no chance of falling in love with him,” adding that he offered her nothing more than “superficial escapism.”
As a mother, I felt especially sad for her reading that.
Because why would you try to escape one of the most precious seasons of your life, especially when you’re experiencing it in one of the most privileged ways imaginable?
Ratajkowski’s emotional detachment and numbness didn’t read to me as feminist liberation or self-realization. It was just sad.
The 35-year-old also writes graphically about childbirth, describing her eight-pound baby tearing her “vagina in two.” And with such a visceral focus on one’s body ripping apart, it’s easy to forget the profound changes the brain undergoes, too.
During pregnancy, shifts in gray matter help sharpen a mother’s environmental awareness. They call it mom-brain.
Since becoming a mother, I’ve noticed I’ve become both sharper and softer: thinking more creatively, empathizing more deeply, listening more closely, and even recalling my dreams with greater clarity.
There is, undoubtedly, an instinctive edge to motherhood that helps us protect ourselves and our children.
But it’s hard to protect yourself, or your child, when you’re inviting in people who fetishize you.
For the cover image for her essay, Ratajkowski stands with a sultry stare, half-dressed in leather, partially exposed breasts, with a baby-doll clinging to her nipple like an accessory. A few years ago, I might have called that “hot” or “artsy”.
A portrait of a mother breastfeeding her child can be raw, intimate and powerful. But this kind of staging feels more provocative than empowering. And now, as a mom, I actually find it pretty disturbing.
I’m all for women owning their bodies. I love a good thirst-trap. But sexualizing motherhood in the same frame as an infant somehow feels perverse.
Her seeming desire to counter the feelings surrounding single motherhood with male attention speaks to something larger: a culture that still ties a woman’s worth to her desirability and relationship status.
I suspect that’s a pain point on which the supermodel and I would agree.
But the reality is that a mother’s strength has nothing to do with sexual conquests.
The way a man who desires me looks at me when I’m naked is nice, but it’s fleeting. What lasts, for me, is the way my daughter looks at me when I come home from work, and I get to wrap her up in my arms.
That feeling is irreplaceable.
Still, being a single mom is hard work, especially in one of the toughest cities in the world to live in. It’s a process of doing and undoing. Looking inward. Taking responsibility. Self-sacrifice.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t to fill your cup with more men, but your child — and hopefully raise one who ends up just a little better off than you were.
