It’s a tale of two models, and two very different paths that looking ridiculously good can take you.
Miranda Kerr became Australia’s first Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2007, wearing the wings for six years, and used the stage to launch KORA Organics in 2009. She wrote two self-help books, Treasure Yourself and Empower Yourself, married Orlando Bloom, divorced, married Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel with 207 sons. KORA is still his. She still models by choice. The symbol facing society is good health, motherhood, and clean living.
Emily Ratajkowski broke out in 2013 dancing topless in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video, which she first defended and then criticized. He booked Gone Girl the following year and built a similar career as a writer. His 2021 essay collection My Body became a New York Times bestseller. She married producer Sebastian Bear-McClard in 2018, had a son in 2021, divorced in 2022, and now writes cultural criticism for outlets like New York Magazine while doing influence work. His public-spirited brand is the opposite of Kerr’s: a systematic critique of the industry that made him famous.
The difference in attitude seems especially clean in the story Ratajkowski tells in My Body, from Super Bowl weekend in the early 2010s. The host was a Malaysian financier named Jho Low, who actually paid famous and beautiful people to hang out with him. Ratajkowski says she was paid $25,000 just to attend some of his after-party events.
In the book, Ratajkowski describes watching an unnamed Victoria’s Secret model with “famous dimples” charm Low handing her a shot, then quietly tossing it over her shoulder at a Super Bowl party. “Damn,” Ratajkowski wrote. “What a way.” A week later, the book says, Low threw a birthday party for the same model and gave her a heart-shaped diamond necklace engraved with her initials, worth $1.3 million.
The money was not Low’s. US prosecutors say he helped loot an estimated $4.5 billion from the Malaysian government, and is now a fugitive. The jewelry was bought with the stolen money, and the Department of Justice eventually came looking for it. Kerr had to return about $8 million in gifts. One, a baby grand piano, was too big to handle. He was never charged, cooperated fully, and said he had no idea the gifts were tied to stolen money.
That’s all the difference in one weekend. Kerr took this pose with everything she deserved: jewelry, accessorizing, a diamond necklace. He accepted everything with a charm, held on to it until it turned into poison, and then returned it clean. Ratajkowski took his appearance fee, stood aside, looked at the machines around him, and then called them.
The same divide runs through their politics. Ratajkowski endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, served as a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, and ran a clothing line that donated money to the organization. She calls herself a feminist in almost every interview and article. Kerr has no recorded group endorsements. His public philanthropy is no small feat: Baby2Baby, an Australian charity, and Evan Spiegel, recently cleared $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 people across California. She talks about prayer, gratitude, motherhood and her mother’s life. He doesn’t really do politics.
It comes from the way they talk about modeling, too. Ratajkowski spent a decade describing the business as exploitative, writing that on the set of “Blurred Lines” she was “nothing but a mannequin for hire.” Kerr acknowledges the constant pressure and feedback that he’s not good enough, but puts it down as part of the job. His books are about gratitude and attitude, not the darkness of industry.
They are two different images: the artist as a young woman, and the capitalist as a young woman. They both came out of the same bad modeling machine, but Kerr learned to make the machine pay for him, while Ratajkowski learned to explain what the machine was worth. Kerr is often estimated at $60 million alone, before you even get to Spiegel’s millions; Ratajkowski is usually valued at $8 million to $10 million. The numbers aren’t perfect, but the brand isn’t. One came away with the company of beauty, a luxurious life, and being close to one of the great fortunes of technology. Another stayed close to disaster and turned the same industry into art.
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