Megan Foxation

History, and intelligent men, will forgive director Michael Bay his painfully silly, phenomenally juvenile, and excessively metallic Transformers movies for one and only one reason: introducing Megan Fox and her various delectable attributes to a vast, international brotherhood of Meganomaniacs that stretches all the way from Sao Paolo to Swat (check out pakstop.com).

It will remain a conundrum how a man whose cinematic imagination seems largely limited to enormous heaps of mutating metal bashing each other up suddenly acquired the vision and discernment to not only cast Megan Fox, but also to make her denim-skirted, bare-midriffed, orange-topped, belt-buckled self bend over the very long hood of a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro — a scene from Transformers (2007) that came like balm to millions of men emasculated on the one hand by the declining influence of patriarchy and deadened on the other by the easy accessibility of cyberporn.

Like all great cinematic moments, this one, too, retains its mystery, no matter how many times you watch it, or how hard you try to unravel the secret of its ability to not just attract the male gaze — which just about any half-clad woman can do — but to arrest it, handcuff it, and put it behind the bars of desire itself. And it is this special talent — if one can use that word in this context — that sets Megan Fox apart from all the other hot women who crowd the celebrity universe.

This ability to grow beyond an inane scene and make a connection was again on display in Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, a two-and-a-half-hour-long robotic WWE in which Fox provides a few moments of welcome visual relief. In a sequence that is breathtakingly dumb even by Bay's modest screenplay standards, Fox has to persuade an alien robot, a member of the evil Decepticons, into helping them decode a secret message.

Fox, of course, is so irresistible that even a mean-minded, emotionless machine turns into a blubbering, love-sick idiot who tries to climb all over her, panting the way sexually excited robots do. Again, like the Camaro scene in Transformers, Fox transforms what could have been a tacky moment into a somewhat intelligent, plausible one, and you end up thinking: if this is the effect she has on a machine, what about ordinary men?

Who better to answer that question than Shia LeBeouf, her co-star and boyfriend in both the Transformers movies. LeBeouf, who developed a mega crush on Fox during the shoot, felt crushed when she declared publicly that he was like a 'brother' to her. This is how he accepted his rejection, like a man: "She is a very attractive girl and I am a red-blooded 23-year-old. It [dating her] makes sense to me, but it is just a professional relationship regardless of what my wishes and hopes would be." Not surprisingly, LaBeouf's most convincing moment in the film is when he 'acts' (he didn’t have to) jealous while the robot tries to mount Fox.

But can Fox's interplanetary appeal be reduced to just 'looks'? Is it just physical perfection that makes a star hot? And 'hot' in her case is a huge understatement, to put it mildly. For the record, this is how Chickipedia (Wikipedia's hot younger sister) describes Megan Fox: "amazing body, flawless face, sexy personality, fierce eyes, long hair, spectacular a**."

Presumably, the spectacular aspect of her personality may have a lot to do with the effect Fox has on men. But what really sets her apart, and makes her appealing to men even after they have discovered all there is to discover about her physical features, is that she is an original, just as Marilyn Monroe was an original.

First, unlike 90% of Western culture's sex symbols — from Monroe all the way to Pamela Anderson, Scarlett Johansson, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton — she is not blonde. That is why despite being barely two films old she is already being compared to the only brunette to have ever made it to the big league as a sex symbol: Angelina Jolie.

Secondly, unlike traditional sex symbols, Fox is neither dumb nor does she play dumb. She is the first to admit, much to the irritation of her director Bay ("Megan needs to grow up") that her two Transformers movies have nothing to do with acting, and were all about special effects. "It's not a movie I want to stand on as far as acting ability goes. I mean, I'm not going to win an Oscar anytime soon," Fox says candidly in a GQ interview. This is such an obvious thing to acknowledge, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a star, either in Hollywood or Bollywood, who is as honest about her work — neither taking credit where it's not due nor spraying you with fake modesty.

The third factor can only be described as that aspect of her sexiness that emanates from her Foxiness, and thus makes it different from the general sexiness of sexy women. This quality is a unique amalgam of her rebelliousness, sense of humour (a rarity among sex symbols), a certain vulnerability born of her free-spiritedness, and a genuineness and spontaneity that is refreshingly unlike the guarded, calculating, calibrated celebrity that is manufactured for us by the Page 3 press.

This — for want of a better name — ‘Fox appeal’ is probably what drove her to get eight tattoos done on her body — despite it being pointed out to her that so many tattoos could limit the kind of roles she would get or play; it is what drove her to cup her boyfriend Brian Austin Green’s family jewels in public; it is what made her spit out that famous '**** Disney' quote she was lucky enough not to pay for with her career; it had a lot to do with why she had an affair with a Russian stripper called Nikita and then spoke about it in the media; it's what has made her assert that not only her, but everyone is potentially bisexual; and it's what made her proclaim boldly that yes, she has done marijuana and it's idiotic to ban it.

In other words, it would seem that the secret of Fox appeal, apart from her looks, is that she is everything a hot celebrity should be, minus the bull****.