Megan Fox is having a fame revival, whether she wants it or not. The 37-year-old actor spent the last decade maintaining a very private life after her meteoric rise in the noughties, explaining in a recent podcast interview that years of bullying from tabloids and showbiz blogs online made her retreat from Hollywood after her initial breakthrough in 2007 live action movie Transformers.
Speaking about her experience as a teen in Hollywood, Megan explained that the way she was objectified as a sex symbol and then subsequently picked apart and demonised by tabloids ultimately made her want to avoid fame. Now then, as she returns to the public eye thanks to a very high-profile relationship with rapper Machine Gun Kelly and the release of her new poetry book Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, one would hope her experience would be different this time around.
'HA! As if,' we hear you shout. Our misogyny radar also pinging. Quite depressingly, history is simply repeating itself with Megan Fox.
Posting an au natural selfie on Instagram this week, Megan has been subject to thousands of trolling comments. What are people up in arms about? That she doesn’t look like herself, they say. Photo-editing accusations, plastic surgery questions, endless commentary on a woman’s body and how much of it she chooses to reveal – these have all become the most popular ways women in the public eye are currently picked apart online. Megan is subject to it often, this selfie just the latest in a long line of misogynistic responses to the few pictures she chooses to post on social media.
Now, she’s even trending on Google, with ‘Megan Fox before nose job’, ‘Megan fox before and after’ and ‘Megan Fox before plastic surgery’ major breakout search terms. People needn’t be so desperate to uncover what they assume is a dirty little secret though, because Megan is actually refreshingly open about the work she’s had done over the years.
On a recent episode of Call Her Daddy, Megan told host Alexandra Cooper that she’s had a nose job, several boob jobs plus Botox and filler. ‘Can we just talk about plastic surgery?’ Megan initiated. ‘Here’s things I haven’t done that I have been accused of doing… I’ve never had a facelift of any kind, no mid facelift or lateral brow lift or regular brow lift, although I would like one. I’ve never done threads; I have researched them… I just don’t really believe they work and I’m afraid they’ll interfere when I do need a facelift.
‘I’ve never had buccal fat removal,’ Megan continued. ‘I’ll never have any fat removed, I’m a very lean person that doesn’t have enough body fat or fat in my face, so I’ll only ever put fat in, never be taking it out. I’ve never had any liposuction or body contouring…If I could have a BBL I would, but I don’t have the extra body fat.
‘I had my boobs done when I was 21 or 22,’ she clarified. ‘I had them redone after I was done breastfeeding my kids because they went, and then I had to have them redone very recently because I didn’t have enough body fat to disguise them so you could see the rippling of the implant,’ Megan finished. ‘I had my nose done when I was in my early 20s, and I’ve been accused of having six, seven, eight rhinoplasties which is impossible… it’s been well over a decade, and I haven’t touched my nose since then.’
She went on to confirm that she has had Botox and filler, and that there’s one other surgery that she thinks she should gatekeep because it’s not very well known. Outside of the mystery surgery that one can assume she’s not sharing so as not to encourage others, her transparency is rare and commendable. But as she says on the podcast, many will condemn her for opening up about it too. ‘I’m going to be fully transparent, but I still won’t win,’ Megan said. ‘Someone like Kylie [Jenner] has been transparent and people are brutally dragging her just the same.’
And she’s right. It appears there’s not a thing Megan can do without being subject to intense trolling, particularly around her appearance. People are seemingly obsessed with comparing ‘before and after’ pictures of her, looking at images from when she was as young as 15, to now nearing 40 years old. If followers aren’t careful, they’re bound to force her back into Hollywood hiding, she warned on Call Her Daddy, noting that the comments and headlines she reads about herself now are painfully similar to those that crucified her in the noughties.
‘The process of fame has been really haunting, to be honest,’ Megan explained. ‘I don’t know why there’s a need to worship and destroy [celebrities]. I had to wear armour to survive being famous, so there’s this energy of me that I “don’t give any fucks” … but that doesn’t mean I don’t get my feelings hurt and that when I’m being bullied or dragged and that it doesn’t cause me to be mentally unwell sometimes because it absolutely does and did.’