Emily Ratajkowski has hit back at the “clickbait headlines” accusing her of apparently backflipping on her commitment to raise her child gender neutral.
Ratajkowski announced her pregnancy to the world last October, publishing an essay about gender and expecting with Vogue. She wrote about the idea of having a girl or a boy and her fears of pigeonholing her child into either corner: pink or blue confetti, etc.
She said that she and her husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, liked to answer the question, ‘Do you know what you want?’, by saying that their child will let them know when they’re 18.
“We like to respond that we won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then,” Ratajkowski wrote.
“There is truth to our line, though, one that hints at possibilities that are much more complex than whatever genitalia our child might be born with: the truth that we ultimately have no idea who-rather than what-is growing inside my belly. Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are?” – Emily Ratajkowski, Vogue
Ratajkowski gave birth to little Sylvester Apollo Bear on March 8 and has since shared her experience as a mother on Instagram. She posted a photo of herself breastfeeding her “beautiful boy” and the book To Raise A Boy by Emma Brown.
This confused some fans, who quoted her Vogue essay to her.
“Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t your baby gender neutral?” one follower commented and almost 2,000 people liked it.
“I thought you weren’t going to say the gender?” another commented.
One person replied to the first comment, writing: “I think she just meant that she’s not gonna force gender stereotypes on him or make him feel like he needs to identify a certain way.”
Another replied: “It’s about his identity that he can choose when he is old enough.”
It opened up a huge discussion on Ratajkowski’s Instagram and was spun in the media, leading her to re-post her Vogue essay on her story with the caption: “Please read my full essay on gender and expecting rather than the clickbait headlines media pushes out :)”.
In the essay, Ratajkowski wrote that she likes the idea of “forcing as few gender stereotypes on my child as possible”, later adding that she wants to be a parent who allows their children to show themselves to her.
You can read her full essay for Vogue right here.
