Emily Ratajkowski Says Vogue "Twisted" Her Words About Her Baby's Gender When She Was Pregnant With Her Son

In October 2020, Emily penned an essay for Vogue entitled "Emily Ratajkowski on Pregnancy and Why She Doesn’t Want to Reveal the Gender of Her Baby." She emphasized the importance of not imposing gender stereotypes on her child, contending that while it's comforting to know the biological sex of the baby, it’s more critical to embrace the mystery of who this individual will grow into, recognizing that their identity will extend far beyond their assigned gender at birth. Emily acknowledged that societal pressures and ingrained behaviors can complicate this ideal. She shared her childhood experiences of envisioning a mini-version of herself, a daughter. She discussed the psychological concept of parents trying to "redo" their childhood through their offspring, and admits that she had not previously considered having a boy.

She expressed her dislike over the stereotypes that people adhere to when it comes to being pregnant with a boy or a girl. "According to friends and strangers alike, even my pregnancy itself seems to be affected by the gender of my child: where I’ll carry (Boys are low! Girls sit higher and make you sick in the first trimester!), what I’ll want to eat (craving sweets means a girl!), and even what will turn me on (carrying a boy means more of a sex drive!). A makeup artist applies mascara to my eyes as he tells me that carrying a girl takes the mother’s beauty away," she wrote.

"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," she continued. "I want to be a parent who allows my child to show themself to me. 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."

Three years later, Emily's son Sylvester is two years old, and she says on her podcast that Vogue misrepresented what she was really trying to say.

Emily Ratajkowski Says Vogue "Twisted" Her Words About Her Baby's Gender When She Was Pregnant with Her Son

In a recent episode of her podcast called High Low with Emrata, she spoke about her birth experience and said she didn't consider a gender reveal for her baby. "I basically got a lot of heat for an article I wrote in Vogue around my announcement, where they kind of twisted my words in saying that I was never going to talk about Sly as a boy or a girl, which is not true, but I definitely really believe in gender neutrality and with Sly in particular I've made an effort in introducing him to things that are typically associated with both genders," she said.

She said realizing she was having a boy "brought up a lot of things" for her, and she had to grapple with her idea of what gender really means. However, she was most certainly not trying to say that she was going to raise her baby in a genderless home that didn't identify whether her son was a boy or a girl.

"That was an interesting experience for me," she concluded, referencing how her essay was edited by Vogue. She didn't say anything else about the collaboration with the fashion magazine, but made it clear enough that she felt her words were slightly taken out of context.

In that Vogue essay, Emily voiced her fears about raising a son in a world where white male privilege is prevalent. She expressed her concern about instilling awareness of this privilege in her child, avoiding cultivating the unintentional carelessness she has witnessed in many men. In her podcast, she has regularly referred to male privilege that she still believes exists in our culture, so it's safe to say that she still believes her son will experience a unique type of privilege that his female counterparts won't ever possess.