Infamous Interviews: Megan Fox for GQ and Esquire

Since Megan Fox has been taking over the gossip waves with her engagement to Machine Gun Kelly, this might be a good time to take a restrospective look at the major interviews that have shaped her public image.

Megan is underestimated when it comes to how savvy she is about constructing her image. She played into her reputation as a brash-mouthed sex bomb, eagerly discussing sex, farts, and bizarre shit like leprechauns. But the reputation that made her famous eventually came back to bite her. She suffered from objectification and misogyny for just about all of her career. The self-described feminist blogger Lainey Gossip even called Fox “as stripper skank as they come.”

So let’s take a look at the image surrounding Megan as a sex object and the role, if any, she had in creating it.

Megan Fox Says What She Thinks and Does What She Wants
GQ, August 2008
By Mark Kirby

Just to really drive home the theme of female-empowerment-via-objectification-for-men, the first GQ profile has a photoshoot by Terry Richardson.

Here is how the male interviewer opened the story:

Megan Fox has her fingers in her long black hair, and as she tosses her head this way and that, she runs her hands slowly down her face and onto her neck and chest. She’s panting as if undergoing some very heavy exertion.

She discusses sex a lot in this interview, including when she was photographed cupping Brian Austin Green’s dick in public at brunch.

“Sex is something that everyone does, so why can’t I talk about it?”
“I should be able to talk about sex the same way any man can,” she says. “Women are supposed to be beautiful, we’re supposed to be sexy—but we’re not supposed to talk sexy or talk about sex, because that’s gross. I don’t want to play into that.”

However, never forget that she’s really not like the other girls. In fact, she’s just one of the guys!

Fox adores superhero and fantasy films. “If I get stuck doing comic-book films for the rest of my life, I’ll be really happy,” she says. “I love those types of movies. And I don’t mind being sexy—if it’s a character with a backstory and an arc and something progresses.”
“That’s the upside of dating a woman who’s almost a man,” she says. “She likes the same things that you like, but she has a vagina!”
In fact, she’s just soooo much like a guy that“If my mom were to tell me that I’d been born with male and female genitalia and that she had to make a choice, I would believe her.”

She goes into detail about her romance with a female Russian stripper named Nikita who definitely actually exists:

“I went out of my way to create a relationship with this girl, a stripper named Nikita. I was there all the time—I would go there by myself. I bought her things—perfume, body spray, girlie stuff. I turned into a weird middle-aged married man. I felt like I had this need to save Nikita. I’d get lap dances so I could get to know her, and I’d give her what I thought were great little sound bites of inspiration—like You can do it, you’re better than this! I didn’t want her to be there.”

But she wants to make sure you know she is not a lesbian:

“Are you going to push an ‘Is she a lesbian’ angle?

Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands.

But aside from talking about sex, she does make some very insightful points, especially for the year 2008:

“With any of the Miley Cyrus shit, or any of that Vanessa Hudgens shit—I would never issue an apology for my life and for who I am. It’s like, Oh, I’m sorry I took a naked, private picture that someone is an asshole and sold for money. I’m sorry if someone else is a dick. No. You shouldn’t have to apologize. Someone betrayed Vanessa, but no one’s angry at that person. _She _had to apologize. I hate Disney for making her do that. Fuck Disney.”
Can I get that on the record?
“Yeah. Fuck Disney.”
“Yeah, that was probably a bad move—they own everything. But it’s not right. They take these little girls, and they put them through entertainment school and teach them to sing and dance, and make them wear belly shirts, but they won’t allow them to be their own people. It makes me sick.”

We do get a few glimpses into the stress that must come with being a young woman objectified on such a global scale:

“Before I go onstage anywhere, I take a Xanax now.”

She shows shrewd self-awareness and insight into how the celebrity machine works regarding public profiles:

“My publicist is going to hang herself knowing what I’ve told you. She’s going to quit the business and open a taco stand.”
“This is colorful, and you want something to write that people will want to read. I get bored reading typical celebrity shit also.”

Actually, um, maybe she wasn’t all that self-aware:

“I want people to know me through the movies I do,” she says. “I want to be judged on that. If you start becoming famous for your personal life, that’s when your career goes away.”

Um. Okay.

Good Morning, Megan
Esquire, June 2009
By David Katz

esquire 2013 2.png

She has a journal called her “book of feelings” in which she like to write “angry anti-man poems.”

"Because I'm young and female, people want me to be like some Disney Channel, supersafe, sex-before-marriage-is-bad, Taylor Swift, I-date-someone-with-a-promise-ring, bullshit girl."
"I know I'm seen as a sex object," she says. "I'm just really confident sexually, and I think that sort of oozes out of my pores. It's just there. It's something I don't have to turn on."
“When I go to a party, I always feel like I'm chum. Like my agent is just chumming the waters until I'm circled by all these dudes."

She can be very funny. Like when some Irish actor hit on her as she was smoking a cigarette alone after an awards show:

"He was like, 'Cigarettes? Do you have an addictive personality? Well, what else are you addicted to?'" she says. "Like, I'm unaware that he wants me to say, 'Sex. I'm addicted to sex, I just can't get enough. I just really want a daddy, can you be my daddy?'" She played with him for a bit, gave him a little string — then "cut him off at the knees."

You’re almost rooting for her until she uses the r-word and calls bisexual women “dirty:”

“I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson— who I have nothing against — but I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, 'Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.' I don't want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I'm not a r*t*rd— but I do. And part of it is my own fault.”
"I think people are born bisexual and then make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man."

Finally, her words of wisdom about High School Musical:

"Okay, well, let me tell you what it's really about. High School Musical is about this group of boys who are all being molested by the basketball coach, who is Zac Efron's dad. It's about them struggling to cope with this molestation. And they have these little girlfriends, who are their beards. Oh, and somehow there's music involved. You have to get stoned and watch it."

There is also a third longform interview that provides insight into her mind. I know this post is getting long, so I included just a few quotes. It took place about five years after the other controversial interviews and the resulting backlash.

Megan Fox Saves Herself
Esquire, February 2013
By Stephen Marche

megan 2013.png

The writer is really, really, intent on comparing Megan Fox to an ancient Aztec sacrifice. He writes three damn paragraphs about it. But don’t worry, he sums it up with this little gem:

Megan Fox is not an ancient Aztec. She's a screen saver on a teenage boy's laptop, a middle-aged lawyer's shower fantasy, a sexual prop used to sell movies and jeans.

Sure, Megan contributed to her own objectification, but let’s not forget the role that gross men played in it. Like the one who wrote this profile. Here is how he describes Megan Fox’s face:

The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking. The lip on the left curves exactly the same way as the lip on the right. The eyes match exactly. The brow is in perfect balance, like a problem of logic, like a visual labyrinth. It's not really even that beautiful. It's closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly. What she is is flawless. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her.

Fox on her sex icon image:

"I felt powerless in that image," she says. "I didn't feel powerful. It ate every other part of my personality, not for me but for how people saw me, because there was nothing else to see or know. That devalued me. Because I wasn't anything. I was an image. I was a picture. I was a pose."
"I don't think people understand," she says. "They all think we should shut the fuck up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don't realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you're being bullied by millions of people constantly."