In the era of #MeToo and #FreeBritney, righting wrongs with female stars is something we’re becoming increasingly familiar with. But there’s one woman whose apology is long overdue: Megan Fox. Fox is having something of a renaissance these days, celebrated now rather than Sєxualized and critiqued. The script has flipped and women are finally able to object to being objectified. But we forget that Fox was one of the authors of this script, we just weren’t willing to listen to her.
In an interview with InStyle, Fox has discussed her reemergence into the spotlight, thanks to her high-profile relationship with Machine Gun Kelly, and opened up about what pushed her out of the limelight in the first place. Megan Fox saw Hollywood’s mistreatment of women before we did.In 2009, Fox was on a press tour for “Jennifer’s Body,” a film that was misrepresented as a smutty horror film for men before it eventually resurged as a feminist classic.
Fox, already in the midst of Sєxist press, became the victim of intensified abuse after she labeled “Transformers” director, Michael Bay, a “nightmare to work for.” Bay enlisted the help of male crew members to target the then-23-year-old in a scathing, misogynistic letter that would end any director’s career today. “Megan really is a thankless, classless, graceless, and shall we say unfriendly b****,” the letter read. “Maybe, being a porn star in the future might be a good career option.” The same year, Fox appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” discussing working with Bay for the first time when she was just 15.
In the aftermath of the public feud with Bay, Fox was fired from the third installment of “Transformers” and only appeared in a handful of movies during the 2010s.
The #MeToo movement left Fox behind.Her disappearance from our screens was the kind of thing that would make a problematic star cry “cancel culture” these days, but Fox wasn’t in the wrong here — she was just ahead of her time.
Fox’s lack of “likability” betrays a weakness in modern feminism. Physically, Fox resembles all that men desire so, inevitably, women despise her.
She challenged both ideals of feminity and powerful men in a way that her era did not really know how to process.“I was brought out and stoned and murdered at one point,” Fox said recently. “And then suddenly everybody’s like, ‘Wait a second. We shouldn’t have done that. Let’s bring her back.’”
Fox is still targeted for mom-shaming.That said, Fox still has not been let off the hook entirely. Returning to the spotlight as a 35-year-old divorced mother-of-three has opened her up to a whole new brand of criticism: mom-shaming.
Fox is still as disruptive as ever, breaking the new boxes people insist on putting her into. How the critics represent her now entirely exemplifies the Madonna-whore complex.
“You don’t expect a dad to be with the kids all the time, but I’m supposed to not be seen and be at home with my kids. They have another parent,” she says.
Ironically, Machine Gun Kelly is also a father but doesn’t receive any of the same criticisms.Fox also opened up about the backlash she received for dating a younger man, yet another unfair double-standard she has been subjected to. “You want to talk about patriarchy?” she said. “The fact that he’s four years younger than me, and people want to act like I’m dating a younger man.”