Megan Fox Spotlights Mom Shaming in Hollywood
In a series of recent interviews, Megan Fox spotlighted the way moms are treated by Hollywood and shamed by public opinion. While her roles in movies such as Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles established her as an actor and a beauty icon, Fox has admitted her frustration with gender attitudes in the industry.
Megan Fox says moms are harshly judged
In an exceptionally candid interview with InStyle, Fox said there’s a lot of malicious judgment directed at moms for simply living their lives.
“There’s so much judgment,” Fox told InStyle, adding that people will often ask her where her children are when she’s walking a red carpet or spending time with her boyfriend, Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly).
Do people ask the same of her children’s father? She posed the theoretical question.
“No, because you don’t expect a dad to be with the kids all the time, but I’m supposed to not be seen and be at home with my kids,” she told InStyle. “They have another parent. I have to leave, and sometimes I don’t want them photographed and they don’t come with me. This whole year I’ve been very surprised by how archaic some of the mindsets still are in some people.”
Fox said being a young mom in Hollywood has added pressures
In a May 2021 interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Fox spotlighted the difficulties posed by both pregnancy and early motherhood in the entertainment industry.
Past a certain point, “they don’t want you on camera,” Fox told host Kelly Clarkson about being pregnant.
“[Then] once you have the baby, it’s like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to leave to nurse every two hours, and that costs us money, and now we’re dealing with insurance,'” Fox said.
Beyond that, said Fox, there’s immense pressure to return to work too early or risk being disregarded as ‘just a mom.’
“You don’t want to lose opportunities, and also, there is that thing in this industry of like, Well, are you giving up? Are you just a mom now?” Fox said. “There’s this weird pressure, which also then creates guilt.”
Fox discussed the immense pressures of perfecting one’s appearance in the midst of pregnancy and childbirth. She added Hollywood still isn’t ready to accommodate and acknowledge moms in a healthy way.
“Hollywood is not adapted to women and us actually having lives and being moms,” she told Clarkson. “I don’t have an answer for what we can do about that, other than, as more women rise up the ranks and are in control and in power in Hollywood, then obviously those things will change, because it’s been a patriarchy for so long.”
Megan Fox says gender shaming extends to dating
In her interview with InStyle, Fox also challenged assumptions about age gaps and dating, calling backward attitudes “ridiculous.” Fox has endured scrutiny surrounding the fact that she is several years older than Baker.
“You want to talk about patriarchy?” she said to InStyle. “The fact that he’s four years younger than me, and people want to act like I’m dating a younger man. He’s 31, and I’m 35. Granted, he’s lived like he’s 19 his whole life, but he isn’t 19.”
The double standard, she indicated, is eye-opening at the very least. “No one would blink twice if George Clooney was dating someone four years younger,” she told InStyle.
Nevertheless, Fox believes changes can happen for women and moms. And it starts with putting people who have real empathy in positions of power.
“The power’s been in the hands of people who don’t understand and haven’t been made to understand,” she told Clarkson.
