Emily Ratajkowski: I’m not ashamed of posing naked … I’m a feminist

She danced semi-naked in a thong in the music video that catapulted her to fame and, more recently, courted the wrath of Piers Morgan by posing for a topless selfie with Kim Kardashian.

But Emily Ratajkowski, 24, who has been named one of the world’s sexiest women by both GQ and Esquire, says she is a committed feminist who has “no apologies” about posing nude.

The model and actress was propelled into the spotlight in 2013 after appearing in Pharrell and Robin Thicke’s video for their single Blurred Lines.

In it, the male artists performed fully clothed as Ratajkowski and two other female models danced topless. The song was banned at universities across the UK.

Speaking about the video to ES Magazine, she said: “Like any art, there’s a million ways to interpret it.

"All I can say is that when a woman is naked, that’s not immediately anti-feminist. I have no apologies for it, and I’m not ashamed at all.”

In March, Ratajkowski posed topless with Kardashian, who had been criticised earlier in the month for posting a censored but fully naked selfie to her 70 million Instagram followers.

Media commentators including Morgan, 51, criticised the reality TV star but Ratajkowski leapt to Kardashian’s defence, tweeting: “Love when a man comments on a woman’s decision to post a nude photo. Her body, her career. Sexist bullshit.”

Speaking to ES Magazine, she said: “[Morgan was] talking about the fact Kim is 35 and a mother and that we’re over seeing her in a sexual light, which I had a lot of problems with.

“He also implied that her husband [Kanye West] was writing her tweets, as if she isn’t capable of writing them herself, which to me is incredibly sexist.

“There are lots of [criticisms] I can understand one might have about the Kardashians and reality TV. But even someone who you might be critical of is allowed to post a naked selfie if she wants to.”

She called Morgan an “attention-seeker”, adding: “Then we decided to do a selfie with our tops off, flipping off the camera, which I think speaks for itself.”

The American, who was born in London and lived in West Kensington as a child, is the daughter of two academics — Kathleen Balgley, a professor of English, and art teacher John Ratajkowski. She is currently reading Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf and says she takes after her mother in her views on feminism.

“[My mother] always told me never to feel sorry or apologetic or embarrassed by my body, to never apologise for my sexuality,” she said.

“Every woman, whether or not they’re comfortable with the term feminist, probably wants to be equal to men and that is fundamentally what feminism is about.

“To me it means talking about the way we look at women and how we judge women differently than how we judge men — also it is about paid maternity leave, equal pay for women…”

But Ratajkowski, who appeared in Gone Girl in 2014 and last year’s We Are Your Friends, says her looks do inhibit her acting career. If you’re a sexy actress it’s hard to get serious roles,” she said. “You get offered the same thing that they’ve seen you in.

“People are like sheep and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s what she does well.’ What’s so dumb is that women are 50 per cent of the population and they want to spend money to see movies where they’re portrayed as three-dimensional characters.”