Emily Ratajkowski just sold an NFT of herself for $140,000. Because she is a famous model and actress, this initially seems unsurprising — many models, actresses, and celebrities, are getting into the NFT game — but for Ratajkowski this piece of digital artwork means so much more.
In the NFT, she is standing in front of a famous piece of artwork by Richard Prince, who commented on a photo on her Instagram, then printed it, hung it on a wall, and sold it to her for $80,000. This is just one instance of the many in which men have profited off of her body, without her true consent. She details another, traumatizing ordeal of a photographer taking intimate photos of her when she was a young model and profiting off of them after she became famous in her moving essay, “Buying Myself Back,” which she published last fall. This NFT is named “Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution,” a nod to the injustice of the “redistribution” she has faced.
