Megan Fox is the cover girl for yet another magazine. Perhaps some men’s mag, full of scantily-clad women in varying degrees of wet? Perhaps some budget women’s mag, where Megan would be given the chance to explain in detail her particular brand of “feminism”? Oh, no. No no no no. Megan Fox is the cover girl for this week’s New York Times Magazine. Yeah… it’s enough. This chick does twenty magazine covers per film… and let’s see, what is she promoting this time? What’s that? Nothing? She got the NYT Mag cover and she’s not promoting anything. For the love of God.

The cover story is already online (it will come with out in print with the Sunday NYT), and this crap… well, it’s pretty bad. Instead of maybe doing an expose of how vapid and ridiculous Megan is, the NYT writer (Lynn Hirschberg) seems to be doing an analysis of Megan’s media strategy. The piece is called “The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox” and Hirschberg details how Megan’s team of agents, publicists, et cetera, are starting to worry that women hate Megan. So they’ve decided to try to put Megan out there with a “softer” image, in the hopes that women would go see her films. Good luck with that. I don’t think I’m speaking for all women, but I think I represent a substantive portion of women who think Megan is a nasty, vapid, stupid little a-hole. Hirschberg first details some of Megan’s greatest hits (comparing Michael Bay to Hitler, or saying she would “eat” Robert Pattinson), then asks this question: “The only problem is, having come so far so fast, how do you stay this year’s girl when the year is almost over?” Please God, let it be so. The piece is really wordy, so here are the highlights (full magazine piece is here):

How Megan appears to Hirschberg: Fox is small and narrow, with a tiny waist, and she wears her long, thick dark brown hair parted in the middle, which gives her a vaguely Indian quality… For all her raunchy talk, Fox is surprisingly dainty and ladylike. She took ballet for much of her childhood, and she has a natural stillness and grace. She’s not warm or particularly friendly and doesn’t seem at all interested in small talk. Instead, she’s self-contained and a bit wary. She will answer any question, but she resists true dialogue. With Fox, it’s not a conversation but a presentation.

Megan on the box office failure of Jennifer’s Body: “People expected ‘Jennifer’s Body’ to make so much money,” Fox said flatly. “But I was doubtful. The movie is about a man-eating, cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader, and that pretty much eliminates middle America. It’s obviously a girl-power movie, but it’s also about how scary girls are. Girls can be a nightmare. ‘Jennifer’s Body’ wasn’t rated PG-13 like ‘Twilight.’ It was a hard R, and kids couldn’t get in. So they bought a ticket to another movie and snuck in. If I was to have a message, it would be to be a different kind of role model to girls. With ‘Jennifer’s Body,’ I want to say, It’s O.K. to be different from how you’re supposed to be. I worry that’s totally lost.”

Megan on trying to appeal to women: “Women tear each other apart. Girls think I’m a sl-t, and I’ve been in the same relationship since I was 18. The problem is, if they think you’re attractive, you’re either stupid or a wh-re or a dumb wh-re. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular.”

On whether she’s a feminist or just a media-hungry provocateur: “If I had been a typical starlet and said all the right things, I wouldn’t have escalated to this level. I sit down and do an interview and I talk like a person and that, for some reason, is shocking. All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. You’re sold, and it’s based on sex. That’s O.K., if you know how to use it. It’s been a crazy year. I’ve learned that being a celebrity is like being a sacrificial lamb. At some point, no matter how high the pedestal that they put you on, they’re going to tear you down. And I created a character as an offering for the sacrifice. I’m not willing to give my true self up. It’s a testament to my real personality that I would go so far as to make up another personality to give to the world. The reality is, I’m hidden amongst all the insanity. Nobody can find me.”

Hirschberg details at length how Megan has copied Angelina Jolie, and then Megan complains about the comparisons: Fox…complains that the Jolie comparisons are now “the bane of my existence,” which is part of the reason she wanted to host “S.N.L.” Her complaints seem exaggerated — who wouldn’t want to be compared to Angelina Jolie? — Fox maintained that, unlike Jolie, she has a sense of humor and that her interviews are meant to be funny rather than provocative. “People compare me to Angelina Jolie, and she’s so serious and stoic,” Fox explained. “I’m the opposite. When I do interviews, I say things that I think are hysterical. But because we live in a world of sound bites, you’re not allowed to have a sense of humor. Sarcasm doesn’t translate in print at all. And neither does self-deprecating humor. I’m not a tigress like Angelina. Of course, people want me to be. But I want to be the contradiction of that.”

Megan on the whole “Michael Bay is like Hitler” controversy, and the open letters from crew members that followed: “I got myself in this whole mess. But it doesn’t matter. I know that the things they said about me in the crew letter were not true, but Bay is not happy with some of the things I’ve said about him. I was waiting for someone to defend me, to say, ‘That’s not accurate,’ but nobody did. I think it’s because I’m a girl. They left me out there to be bludgeoned to death.”

On trying out a film that would appeal to women: “It might be a good business move. And I get sent romantic comedies. But I’m fearful of doing those. I’m 23 — I don’t belong in a romantic comedy yet. Those movies are very safe. They’re tailored to middle America, which is why they make the money that they make. But I don’t want to do that yet.”

[From The New York Times Magazine]

Notice how easily she fell into the tragic victim position when she discussed calling Michael Bay “like Hitler”? Oh, poor little Megan, they were being mean to her because she’s a girl! Not because she’s an a-hole, right? Also, if her “team” is really serious about getting Megan to appeal to a wider female fan base, perhaps they should get her to stop staying sh-t like “Girls are awful. But, in their defence, girls are awful because of the way society is set up – we’re constantly in competition for male attention. Our fathers raise us wrong and we spend the rest of our lives searching for boys to pay attention to us, which validates us. So no girl can really be your friend, because if she takes attention from you, your daddy doesn’t love you.” This is why women hate Megan. Not because she’s not demure enough. It’s because she says dumb sh-t like this. All. The. Time.

NY Times Magazine cover via Jezebel