Emily Ratajkowski has said that she and her husband Sebastian Bear-McClard won’t know the gender of their baby until the child is 18 years old. The model broke the news on Instagram yesterday, when she shared a fashion magazine’s digital cover where she can be seen cradling her baby bump.
Alongside the cover she wrote, “Grateful & growing Thank you @voguemagazine for this very special cover.” She also shared another collage which she captioned, “Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are?“ read my essay on pregnancy and gender on @voguemagazine thank you for all the well wishes @cassblackbird @jordenbickham.”
She wrote an open letter for the magazine where she discusses her pregnancy and her child. She wrote in the letter, “There is a 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? This is a wondrous and terrifying concept, one that renders us both helpless and humbled.”
She said that she wants to impose ‘as few gender stereotypes on (her) child as possible’ but despite this she understands the desire to know the gender of her baby. She wrote, “No matter how progressive I may hope to be, I understand the desire to know the gender of our fetus; it feels like the first real opportunity to glimpse who they might be. As my body changes in bizarre and unfamiliar ways, it’s comforting to obtain any information that might make what’s coming feel more real.”
She also addressed the need of people to know or ask a parent-to-be for their preference and 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. 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.”
(Source: Instagram/Vogue)
