Megan's Body: Women in Entertainment

I'm not gonna lie, I love writing about entertainment. I'm like Kathy Griffin in that I'm completed fascinated by some celebrities. How very American of me. I especially like looking at gender issues in the entertainment industry. But not just from the tired angle of "women are discriminated against and sexually objectified." I could whine about that all day and still not have told you anything you don't know.

I really like focusing on powerful women in entertainment, who are not passive objects of the male sexual gaze but actively take part in their own sexualization. I'm not putting a value judgement on that; I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying it fascinates me.

Megan Fox is one of those women. My boyfriend's obsessed with her, I'm fascinated by her. I've heard a lot of things about her - especially after the entire cast of Transformers turned against her and basically said she was a spoiled bitch who's full of herself. You know, like every other powerful man in the industry. I wanted to decide what I thought of her based her words from her own mouth. So I stumbled across this website with almost 40 Megan Fox-isms, not to mention a super-hot picture of her to go with each one: www.nbcnewyork.com/enjoy-this/Megan-Fox-isms-63678167.html

My favorite quote was this one:

"I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That's what our purpose is in this business. You're merchandised, you're a product. You're sold and it's based on sex. But that's okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009.

Not only does she recognize the exploitation and superficiality of Hollywood, but she also seems fully aware of her own objectification in Hollywood, which means she's definitely not stupid. And instead of rallying against it, she relishes it. My first reaction to that was, "Of course you can feel that way, you're f***ing Megan Fox." Other women in Hollywood may not feel so comfortable with it. Is Fox anti-feminist by saying that women should feel empowered as sexual commodities? Who knows, I'll leave it up to you to decide.

I love what she says about her own sexuality - it's so in-your-face and she does not give a shit what anyone thinks, especially other women, who all hate her, she assumes. She knows she's attractive and sexy, and some might say that makes her superficial, but on the other hand, she doesn't feign humility and ignorance of her sexuality, which can be just as annoying. She's definitely on one extreme of the "Madonna-whore" complex that seems to plague women, but at least she seems to choose that image for herself, which is feminist enough in my book.

I actually recently saw her latest film, "Jennifer's Body" - I used to hate any kind of horror but the double entendre of the title intrigued me. Not only was it a reference to Jennifer as a corpse, but also her body as a sexual object. The movie is actually full of black humor and is very entertaining, even though it only seems to skim the gender/sexuality issues the title implies. I won't read too much into it, but I'd say it's definitely worth a watch to see Megan Fox transmogrified into this insatiable sexual monster-literally. It's an interesting reflection of the image that Megan Fox herself projects to the outside world.