Wednesday, November 15, 2017
So ... When Are We All Going to Apologize to Megan Fox?
The Mary Sue: n a recent interview with Prestige Hong Kong, Megan Fox made comments about the way women are undervalued in film. She was incredibly on point, and I couldn’t help but think about how her career has gone. Megan Fox is an actress with a very mixed public reception, and a limited filmography despite her being fan-cast in multiple projects for years. In many ways, Fox has been dealt a bad hand when it comes to her public image because for much of her career was defined by the lecherous gaze of one man, and once he cut her off, no one tried to help her.
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I appreciated this article a lot when I first saw it online as Megan Fox has been one of the most obvious recent victims of Hollywood's misogynistic power structure. Megan Fox was used by Zach Snyder as object, a way to sell his film through close up shots to stroke the male gaze that framed her character (though technically the most well-rounded in the film from a written standpoint) in such a way so that the audience was left to only see her as a vapid pretty face. And what Snyder set up became Fox's new normal. Hollywood as a whole had no interest in allowing her to move away from this sexist, denigrating portrayal of herself and actually let her explore her talent as an actor. From then on she has only been allowed on screen as some version of a sexy Barbie doll who fills in exposition and is forced to have some sort of body-sweeping, bare midriff shot in each of her films. She is occupying the only space she is allowed to occupy in the industry and she is constantly ridiculed for it. It's awful and she, and every actress like her, deserves better.
The quote that really stuck out to me in this article is that Megan Fox isn't the right type of victim.
And that really tells us a lot about feminist circles, especially white feminist circles. Megan Fox was continually forced into the male gaze. That was passed off as her fault. But can we really blame Fox for being traditionally attractive and for doing what she needed to do to pursue the career she needed.
We as a society can't forgive Fox for being "hot" but we can forgive Lena Dunham for molesting her little sister. I don't know in what world that makes sense. In some feminist circles, it is often said that we have to support all women. That courtesy, though extended to Dunham who is a known sexual predator to women and men alike and also a racist, but is not extended to Fox. Fox is a victim yet was treated like a perpetrator.
I'm not here for the feminist ideal that we shouldn't chastise women for their behavior. But if that's the ideal feminism is moving towards then we truly have to include all women, not just easily digestible women.
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