Ratajkowski's Journey
Emily Ratajkowski details postpartum split and embracing single-mom sexuality in new essay
Anonymous
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Ratajkowski described an especially traumatic childbirth, writing that the nurse told her, “Pushing will be easy… You’ll be done in 30 minutes,” but she ended up pushing for “four hours,” “ripping the muscle between my ass and my vagina.”
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She added vivid medical details about the delivery’s aftermath, saying her OB/GYN used her fingers “to repeatedly spread my vagina,” which she wrote “scratching both me and my son’s delicate, nearly translucent scalp,” leaving her to find “tiny scabs” on his head after discharge.
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On the cheating allegations, a report cited Page Six quoting someone close to Bear-McClard: “He cheated. He’s a serial cheater. It’s gross. He’s a dog.” Neither side commented publicly on the claims.
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Before meeting Bear-McClard, Ratajkowski had split from musician Jeff Magid in January 2018, and she began dating Bear-McClard shortly afterward (they married in February 2018).
Emily Ratajkowski published a raw, deeply personal essay in The Cut on June 12, detailing how her marriage to film producer Sebastian Bear-McClard fell apart after the birth of their son Sylvester in March 2021. She wrote that the couple stopped having sex six months after delivery and separated less than a year later.
The essay, titled "Mother F---er," also describes a traumatic childbirth — she pushed for four hours after a nurse told her it would take 30 minutes — and her life after the split, including casual dating and a self-described "villain" persona she adopted to move on.
A Traumatic Birth That Cracked the Marriage Open
Ratajkowski writes that a nurse told her, "Pushing will be easy. You'll be done in 30 minutes." Instead, she pushed for four hours, tearing muscle tissue in the process. Her son weighed eight pounds. She describes the delivery's aftermath in graphic detail, saying her OB/GYN used her fingers to repeatedly spread her vagina in a way that scratched her newborn's scalp — she later found tiny scabs on his head at home.
She frames the postpartum period as a "violent transition" — one that immediately swallowed her identity. The physical demands of caring for a newborn, she writes, made intimacy disappear fast. By September 2021, six months after Sylvester was born, she and Bear-McClard had stopped having sex entirely, The Cut reports.
Cheating Allegations and a Rapid Collapse
In July 2022, Ratajkowski was spotted without her wedding ring. Reports quickly followed. Page Six quoted someone close to Bear-McClard: "He cheated. He's a serial cheater. It's gross. He's a dog." Neither Ratajkowski nor Bear-McClard publicly confirmed the claims, though she reportedly "liked" several tweets referencing the infidelity.
Bear-McClard was reportedly forced out of his production company, Elara Pictures, in August 2022 amid complaints about his behavior. Ratajkowski filed for divorce in Manhattan Supreme Court on September 8, 2022. Then in March 2023, Variety reported that three women accused Bear-McClard of sexual misconduct, including allegations of grooming teenage girls.
Fear of Single Motherhood, Then an Embrace of It
Ratajkowski writes that before the split she feared becoming a single mother. She believed having a child with the "wrong man" was the fastest way to "ruin your life as a woman" — stripping away freedom and leaving no "emergency exit." She had married Bear-McClard in February 2018 after only a few weeks of dating, just months after splitting from musician Jeff Magid.
After the divorce, she says she flipped the script entirely. She wrote that she had slept with only eight people in her life before the separation — four of them long-term partners. Post-split, she pursued casual sex and dating, describing herself as wanting to feel like "a sexual being, not just a mother," The Cut reports. She had not had one-night stands before the marriage ended.
The 'Poison Ivy' Persona and the Divorce Ring Moment
To mentally separate herself from the single-mother identity she had feared, Ratajkowski adopted what she calls a "villain" dating persona — "sexual but scary," modeled on the DC character Poison Ivy. She describes using New York City's dating scene as a place to rebuild herself outside the dependency that marriage had required. The strategy was deliberate: destroy the "Madonna" archetype the public had placed on her.
In March 2024, she marked a formal turning point by debuting "divorce rings" on Instagram — jewelry made from her original engagement diamonds, The Independent reported. She reaches nearly 28 million Instagram followers, giving her single-mom narrative an outsized cultural platform. Critics, however, note that her version of single motherhood — martinis, high-profile dates, strollers in a New York walkup — is one most single mothers cannot afford.
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