What Does a Model Do with an Industry That Exploits Her? Miranda Kerr and Emily Ratajkowski Chose Opposite Paths

It’s a tale of two models, and two very different paths on where being ridiculously good-looking can take you.

Miranda Kerr became the first Australian Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2007, wore the wings for six years, and used the platform to launch KORA Organics in 2009. She wrote two self-help books, Treasure Yourself and Empower Yourself, married Orlando Bloom, divorced, married Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel in 2017, and has four sons. KORA is still hers. She still models selectively. The public-facing brand is wellness, motherhood, and clean living.

Miranda Kerr in a white tulle strapless gown alongside her then-husband at the 2011 Met Gala’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Lia Toby/WENN.com.

Emily Ratajkowski broke through in 2013 dancing topless in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video, which she initially defended and later criticized. She booked Gone Girl the next year and built a parallel career as a writer. Her 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 influencer work. Her public-facing brand is the opposite of Kerr’s: systemic critique of the industry that made her famous.

A couple arrives at the 2022 Met Gala celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” — she in a strapless white draped ballgown, he in white-tie formal wear on the museum’s grand staircase. Photo by The Mega Agency.

The difference in temperament shows up cleanest in a story Ratajkowski tells in My Body, from a Super Bowl weekend in the early 2010s. The host was a Malaysian financier named Jho Low, who was basically paying famous and beautiful people to hang out with him. Ratajkowski says she was paid $25,000 just to attend one of his afterparties.

In the book, Ratajkowski describes watching an unnamed Victoria’s Secret model “with famous dimples” charm Low into handing her a shot, then quietly tossing it over her shoulder at the Super Bowl party. “Damn,” Ratajkowski writes. “What a manoeuvre.” A week later, the book says, Low threw that same model a birthday party and gave her a heart-shaped diamond necklace engraved with her initials, valued at $1.3 million.

Dressed in a sheer, crystal-embellished long-sleeve gown, a dark-haired woman poses in profile on the red carpet outside The Mark Hotel ahead of the 2024 Met Gala. Photo by The Mega Agency.

The money wasn’t Low’s. U.S. prosecutors say he helped loot roughly $4.5 billion from a Malaysian government fund, and he’s now a fugitive. The jewelry was bought with stolen money, and the Justice Department eventually came looking for it. Kerr had to return around $8 million in gifts. One, a translucent baby grand piano, was too big to seize. She was never charged, cooperated fully, and said she had no idea the gifts were tied to stolen money.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a white embellished corset-bodice ball gown with a sweeping train is worn during the 2023 Met Gala honoring Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty. Photo by The Mega Agency.

That’s the whole contrast in one weekend. Kerr took the situation for everything it was worth: the jewelry, the access, the diamond necklace. She accepted it all with charm, held onto it until the moment it turned toxic, then handed it back clean. Ratajkowski took her appearance fee, stood off to the side, watched the machinery around her, and later called it out.

The same divide runs through their politics. Ratajkowski endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, served as a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, and ran a clothing line that donated proceeds to the organization. She calls herself a feminist in nearly every interview and essay. Kerr has no partisan endorsements on record. Her public philanthropy is less theoretical: Baby2Baby, Australian charities, and, with Evan Spiegel, the recent erasure of roughly $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 people across California. She talks about prayer, gratitude, motherhood, and her mother’s health. She doesn’t really do politics.

Emily Ratajkowski and Sebastian Bear-McClard walk together through a New York City street at night after Rihanna’s Met Gala after-party in May 2018, she in a plunging metallic wrap minidress. Photo by The Mega Agency.

It shows up in how they talk about modeling, too. Ratajkowski has spent a decade describing the business as exploitative, writing that on the “Blurred Lines” set she was “nothing more than the hired mannequin.” Kerr acknowledges the pressure and the constant feedback that you’re not good enough, but she frames it as part of the job. Her books are about gratitude and mindset, not the darkness of the industry.

A close-up portrait of a dark-haired man in a black blazer at the UK premiere of Kingdom of Heaven at Empire Leicester Square, London, in May 2005. Photo by Z.Tomaszewski/WENN.

It’s two different portraits: the artist as a young woman, and the capitalist as a young woman. Both came out of the same sinister modeling machinery, but Kerr learned how to make the machine pay her, while Ratajkowski learned how to explain what the machine costs. Kerr is usually estimated around $60 million on her own, before you even get to Spiegel’s billions; Ratajkowski is usually estimated closer to $8 million to $10 million. The numbers are imperfect, but the symbolism isn’t. One exited with a beauty company, a luxury life, and proximity to one of tech’s great fortunes. The other stayed close to the wreckage and turned the same industry into art.

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