Megan Fox on feminism, challenging the patriarchy and teaching her kids about inclusion
Megan Fox is pulling out all the stops in one of her most candid interviews to date.
For the latest cover story of Glamour UK, Fox touches on everything from her unconventional parenting style and challenging of the Hollywood patriarchy to the “psychological breakdown” she had following the years of fame-induced trauma.
Fox, who shares her three sons — Noah, 9; Bodhi, 8; and Journey, 5 — with ex Brian Austin Green, has spoken openly about the criticism she’s faced for allowing her eldest to wear dresses. But, as she explained to Glamour UK, that’s other people’s problem and not hers.
“I can’t control the way other people react to my children,” she said. “I can’t control the things that other children — that they go to school with — have been taught and then repeat to them. That’s also why I don’t really put my children on Instagram or social media. I’m so proud of my kids.”
The model and actress explained that Noah began wearing dresses when he was 2, during which time she and Green educated themselves to be able to address gender identity to their children in a thoughtful way.
“I bought a bunch of books that sort of addressed these things and addressed a full spectrum of what this is,” she explained. “So from the time they were very young, I’ve incorporated those things into their daily lives so that nobody feels like they are weird or strange or different.”
Still, even Fox isn’t immune to feelings of mom guilt.
“I travel for long periods of time and they have to attend school, which is what it is. I wish I could take them out to travel with me, it would make things a lot easier,” she said. “I cry often, every new moon usually. I get in the bath and cry a lot about it, because it is hard and not because of pressures that anybody else or society puts on you, but it is just hard being separated from them in that way. They are my DNA.”
“It’s hard to not feel obligated to be with them all the time or to constantly feel like I’m not doing a good enough job, but I’m also separated from their father,” she added. “So, I can only have them half of the time. That just is what it is. And in some ways that allows me to have moments for myself, where I can live my life as me, not just always being someone’s mother and that’s nice, but you always struggle with the guilt, kind of feeling like, ‘I haven’t done enough’.”
Fox and Green finalized their divorce earlier this year, after being separated for nearly two years.
The model is now engaged to rapper Machine Gun Kelly, 32, whose real name is Colton Baker. The couple had been dating for roughly a year and a half prior, and while their romance has been highly covered — in some cases, scrutinized — Fox explained it’s something she takes with a grain of salt. (And to answer your burning question, yes, they do drink each other’s blood.)
“It’s just a few drops, but yes, we do consume each other’s blood on occasion for ritual purposes only,” she said, noting that she and Kelly do “all these metaphysical practices and meditations” together as a couple.
Fox, who describes herself as a feminist, has always marched to the beat of her own drum. Sometimes that hasn’t always paid off, but it’s only lately, she said, that people are starting to credit her for calling out the patriarchy during a time when most didn’t.
“I think that I was ahead of the #MeToo movement by almost a decade,” she explained. “I was always speaking out against some of the abusive, misogynistic, patriarchal things that were going on in Hollywood back in 2008 and 2009, way before people were ready to embrace that or tolerate it. And I actually got ridiculed for doing it. I think people just have had time to review that, in retrospect.”
“I’ve never felt completely included in the feminist community and I do still think that it’s tricky in an awful way,” she continued. “Whatever I provoke in them is not something that they can digest very well. And so that comes back on me, as they reject me for those reasons. And I just don’t think that I was a very sympathetic victim.”
“I was being celebrated as being a feminist until I had the nerve to call my boyfriend, ‘Daddy,’’’ she explained, referring to the moment during last year’s MTV VMAs when she told reporters that Kelly had told her what not to wear that night: “[He] was like, ‘You’re gonna be naked tonight.’ I was like, ‘Whatever you say, daddy!’” she said at the time, which ultimately created a social media frenzy — with many feminists criticizing her comment.
“My personality is very provocative for people,” Fox, who's since given up posting on social media, referring to it as “evil,” explained of the backlash. “I trigger the people who I trigger. That is something that I, as a famous person, do. That is my purpose in a lot of ways.”
Still, the actress has no regrets.
“The [only] regret I have is that my personality is so lost on people, my sense of humor is lost. My intelligence is not acknowledged,” she said. “And so that is a regret. Sometimes I feel like I just waste my energy, giving myself to people who don’t understand and won’t appreciate [me], but I’ve never had anything where I look back now and think, ‘I really shouldn’t have said that’ Because even the terrible things caused me to do so much work on myself, that I grew exponentially, because of it.”
Fox’s relationship with the “trauma” of fame led her to having a psychological breakdown, forcing her to retreat from the limelight due to the sexual objectification she faced from people online.
“I don’t know if the psychological breakdown was strictly related to being objectified, it was more related to just being dehumanized and criticized and judged constantly,” she says now. “When so many people around the world are thinking about you or have negative thoughts or intentions towards you, that energy permeates and penetrates me. I don’t have boundaries and walls for that. I’m still human. I am still fragile in that way, I can feel. And that was part of the struggle.”
“I shut down a lot and retreated from everything,” she said of that time. “I’m so much better equipped now to deal with it and to experience it in a way where I can actually enjoy some of it and not be so self-conscious and afraid all the time.”
Looking ahead, though, Fox finds solace not in people's opinions, but in her own journey.
“I’d like to be remembered as somebody who was brave, who was unafraid to explore and become myself, regardless of anyone else’s commentary,” she said. “But I also want my legacy eventually to be someone who helped others, either helped others to find themselves in a similar way or helped others to feel love, to feel self-love and to be able to give that love to their own children and to their own family. Because that spreads, obviously. And that’s what we’re all missing right now.”
Want lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Life’s newsletter.
