In a contempo account with Prestige Hong Kong, Megan Fox fabricated comments about the way women are undervalued in film. She was abundantly on point, and I couldn’t advice but anticipate about how her career has gone. Megan Fox is an added with a actual alloyed accessible reception, and a bound filmography admitting her actuality fan-cast in assorted projects for years. In abounding ways, Fox has been dealt a bad duke aback it comes to her accessible angel because for abundant of her career was authentic by the carnal boring of one man, and already he cut her off, no one approved to advice her.
Framing Megan Fox
Like abounding people, I was aboriginal actively apparent to Fox in her aboriginal Transformers cine (although she had been in Confessions of a Boyish Drama Queen before), and I was smitten. I was fifteen, and I anticipation she was the best gorgeous woman in the world, abutting to my babe Angelina Jolie (someone Fox was generally compared to). I additionally admired that her character, Mikaela Banes, was a badass who was acceptable with cars. From again on, I was a Fox fan. I alike sat through the additional Transformers monstrosity, spending the absolute time apprehensive why Shila LeBeouf’s appearance couldn’t accomplish to Megan Fox. Like bro are you okay? Aback I heard she had been replaced in the third movie, it dead any absorption I had in watching it. Aback I was a jailbait at the time, I had no abstraction that alfresco of my little fangirl balloon that best of Hollywood was boring Megan Fox for actuality a hyper-sexualized model-actress—as admitting that’s her fault.
In her amazing alternation “The Accomplished Plate,” video columnist Lindsey Ellis spends adventure 7 discussing Megan Fox in the Transformers alternation and how, alike admitting Mikaela is the best-written appearance in the franchise, that’s absent because of how Megan Fox is affected in the film.
As Ellis credibility out in the video, Mikaela (on paper) is a smart, banal babe with a juvie accomplished due to issues with her father, and throughout the advance of the aboriginal movie, she discovers her self-worth and becomes a hero in her own way. Yet, alike in the arena area Mikaela shows off her ability and says, “Men don’t like it aback you apperceive about cars than they do,” the camera pans over her anatomy so that a ample allotment of the admirers doesn’t apprehend annihilation she says. So, admitting the fact that she “is the alone appearance who self-actualizes not because others acquaint her to … but because she realizes her self-worth on her own,” she’s alone remembered for her body by far too abounding people, through no accountability of her own.
This framing has followed Fox everywhere and has accustomed every account she’s made, acceptable or bad, to be beheld aural the blind of “all you are is a sex object; your opinions do not matter.” Megan Fox, because of Transformers, became accepted as eye-candy-only, and the actuality that Fox acquainted that her best way to be a role-model for adolescent girls was to be adequate with her changeable led the accessible to accept that, aloof like Mikaela, her changeable was for them and not an addendum of her own opinions or values.
So aback she batten out adjoin Michael Bay, it was accessible for bodies to agitate their active at her because who did she anticipate she was?
Bay vs. Fox
In 2009, Fox gave an account with Wonderland Magazine, in which she said that Bay was “Like Hitler” on set. Now, this account was aloof as hell, and it was not okay. Fox has put her bottom in her aperture at times—her comments about her bisexuality were messy—but because we accept had celebrities say and do abundant worse things and have flourishing careers (half the casting of Daddy’s Home 2 proves that), the bulk of acidity she got for it was acutely unfair, abnormally because all the things she brought up about how Bay advised her:
MH: WELL, I WONDER: DOES BEING A BETTER ACTOR MATTER IF YOU’RE JUST REALLY HOT?MF: Yeah, it does matter. Not to Michael Bay because those are absolutely his admonition sometimes. “Be Hot.” I’ve had that agenda on set before. “Mike,” I’ll say, “Who am I talking to? Area am I declared to be adorable at?” And he responds, “Just be sexy.” I get mad aback bodies allocution to me like that.
MH: WHEN DID YOU REALIZE YOU WERE HOT?MF: I don’t anticipate that’s commodity that accustomed bodies anytime realize. As a female, you attempt with connected insecurities and anatomy image. So there’s never a day you deathwatch up and think, “I absolutely did it today. This is a hot day.” That doesn’t happen.
MH: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT MICHAEL BAY TELLING YOU TO BE HOT?MF: All of us who are alive appropriate now, we all do the aforementioned shit, it’s aloof allotment of how you advertise yourself. Because you’re a product. All of us are. Shia’s a product, a absolutely altered kind. Rob Pattinson is a fucking product. It’s what the industry’s consistently been.
The absolute account is a mess, with the columnist acutely fanboying Fox throughout. It’s absolutely array of annoying, but Fox’s comments on actuality a “product” deserve some thought. In a 2009 account with Jimmy Kimmel, she talked about aback she was 15 years old and Bay had her in a bikini and six-inch heels as an added on the set for Bad Boys II. Because she was 15 and too adolescent to alcohol at the bar, the “solution” was “to again accept me dancing beneath a avalanche accepting assimilation wet. And that’s… At 15. I was in 10th grade. So that’s array of a apple of how Bay’s apperception works.”
Even Shia LaBeouf told the L.A. Times how afflictive Fox was on the set with how she was treated: “This is a babe who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in advanced of the accomplished apple and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a adamantine time accepting it.” The account of Bay’s atrocity with women goes on and on afore and afterwards Fox.
Yet, aback Fox was alone from the Transformers franchise, abundant bodies bought into the Bay’s angel of her that they couldn’t see accomplished it—especially afterwards Jennifer’s Body.
Jennifer’s Anatomy and Box Appointment Poison
Jennifer’s Anatomy was Fox’s aboriginal cine alfresco of the Transformers series, and it gave her a attempt to be a “serious” actress. It was accounting by Diablo Cody, who was benumbed aerial on Juno’s success two years before. Admitting putting Fox advanced on the posters and alike putting a queer-baity girl-on-girl kiss into every bivouac (à la Black Swan), it underperformed at the box office. While the critics put the accusation on the bawdiness of the anecdotal and absolutely accepted Fox’s performance, it accumulated with her actuality alone from the Transformers authorization to actualize the abstraction that she was “box-office poison.” Nevermind that they were business an R-rated cine to boyish boys, who couldn’t go see it afterwards a parent. That, followed by Jonah Hex—probably the alone cine that absolutely was a huge misstep—and the bankability that Fox had from Transformers was gone.
She would be fancast as Catwoman, Adulteration Ivy, and alike Wonder Woman from time to time, but bodies did not booty her seriously. From 2010 to 2013, she was in films, but annihilation exciting. In fact, the better affair she did in those years was the “Love the Way You Lie,” Eminem ft. Rihanna video.
So why were bodies so afraid to assignment with Fox? Why did no added administrator see her and think, “Hmm maybe she needs her Monster movie moment?” And why didn’t feminists acclaim her for continuing up to as acclaimed and accurate a pig as Michael Bay?
Because she’s not the appropriate blazon of victim.
A New York Times commodity from November 2009, by Lynn Hirschberg, independent this animadversion about the abridgement of admission sales for Jennifer’s Body: “… men did not buy abounding tickets. Neither did women, who tend to adopt movies that affection added approachable, beneath changeable actresses, like Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Aniston.” [Emphasis mine.]
We may not like to accept it, but in feminist circles, abnormally aback then, appropriateness backroom were rampant. In 2009, Fox’s loud, queer, and (awesomely) unapologetic attitude were apparent to comedy into the macho boring because of how she looked. She was not activity to be anyone’s sex-positive role model. Fox said in the aforementioned Times interview, “Girls anticipate I’m a slut, and I’ve been in the aforementioned accord aback I was 18. The botheration is, if they anticipate you’re attractive, you’re either brainless or a whore or a impaired whore.”
Fox was too abrupt for the era—too unpolished to be taken seriously—and her acting abilities were never apparent as able abundant to escape her affliction image, clashing Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron. Alike admitting agnate macho and changeable actors accept gotten assorted chances, Fox never got them.
Then the turtles came.
Back to Bay
When Fox larboard the Bay camp, she was 23 years old. Aback she alternate to Bay for the Boyish Mutant Ninja Turtles Cine in 2014, she was affiliated and a mother of three. The agrarian canicule of Megan Fox were gone and instead, in the time she chock-full authoritative movies, she begin a comfort that acutely wasn’t there while she was in the accessible eye.
Still, she concluded up abiding to Bay—the man she’d compared to Hitler and fabricated calumniating comments about—and candidly … who could accusation her? Who was giving her the chance? Alike in those movies, Fox is acutely one of the highlights, alike admitting the camera still can’t advice but about-face her into a sex object.
Her assignment on New Babe was able-bodied received, and Jennifer’s Anatomy is now advised a band archetypal by abounding adolescent anomalous girls. Bodies now are able to say that admitting how they may accept anticipation then, in retrospect, Fox was generally the best allotment of a absolutely bits film.
So What’s the Truth?
Fox has consistently been abrupt about her animosity on her acclaim and what that meant to her. She was in her aboriginal 20s aback she was placed into the spotlight, accepted to be annihilation added than a pin-up babe and she, for the best part, went with it because it was what she had.
Fox was consistently afraid in the spotlight, and arena an exaggeration of herself was a way of arresting with that. Yet the agreeable of what she was saying, over the top or not, had accuracy in it.
“Sometimes I say things that I anticipate are acutely acerb and bodies booty them absolutely literally. In America we’re still actual anxious about sexuality: it’s advised atrocious for women to be animal or allege about sex in a amusing way. For some acumen it makes bodies actual uncomfortable, possibly because our association is still actual angry to ancient biblical attempt that we try to force on anniversary added and force on our children. It’s actual adverse because men are accepted for their animal accomplishment and women beat from it” (via Telegraph)
If a changeable celebrity said that now, we would acclaim them for actuality empowered sexually. That was not the case for Fox several years ago.
Now in her 30s and a mother, Fox still finds herself in the aforementioned box she as aback in 2007, and that is arresting to watch because, as addition who has been a fan of chastening for years, I accept apparent men acceleration up from the ashes of abundant bigger bullshit. Taylor Kitsch, while talented, has not done annihilation of account aback Friday Night Lights, has several box appointment bombs and yet is activity to be headlining a appearance on HBO. Mark Walhberg is an unfunny, talentless man who addled a Vietnamese man in a racist, bashed rage, and yet gets to be in cine afterwards movie. Mel Gibson is on his improvement bout appropriate now, starring as the “cool,” “hot,” “badass” grandfathering in Daddy’s Home 2 (gag me) and was able to get an Oscar choice for Hacksaw Ridge—this is admitting him adage that he capital his then-girlfriend to be “raped by a backpack of [n******].”
When women abort and accomplish mistakes, it follows them forever. It taints them. A woman enters this industry a sex object, and unless she “proves” herself, she is a sex article for life, and no more—yet a man can be a sexual and a accomplished star.
Megan Fox was never admirable of the petty banish she was put through, nor the dismissive comments bodies fabricated about her. While she has never corrective herself as the victim, it was still a bits appearance and acutely unfair. As we allocution about the way women are advised in Hollywood, we don’t altercate how we anatomize actresses’ amount based on what they attending like and how accomplished we anticipate they are. We still subscribe to the “ingenue” and the “femme fatale” and acquiesce PR to advance those account as if it makes us affliction about actresses more.
I achievement that whatever projects Fox gets now will acquiesce her to be the funny badass she has consistently been. Not alone is the abeyant is there, but she has continued paid her ante for the opportunity. It’s time to admit how everyone, prompted by how she was portrayed on-screen, corrective Megan Fox as a asinine sex object, instead of continuing to abode the accusation on her.
“I accept to cull aback a little bit now. I do alive in a bottle box. And I am on affectation for men to pay to attending at me. And that bothers me. I don’t appetite to alive that character.” (Megan Fox)
(image: Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com)
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