Reading through an otherwise insipid Esquire profile of Megan Fox (bitch believes in leprechauns!) about how she's aiming to "escape from her fate as a sex symbol" (which she goes about doing by posing in her bra and panties for the magazine?), one is suddenly slapped with this gratuitous little nugget from the piece's author Stephen Marche: "[W]omen no longer need to be beautiful in order to express their talent. Lena Dunham and Adele and Lady Gaga and Amy Adams are all perfectly plain, and they are all at the top of their field."
If time seemed to stop for a second after reading that, I think it's because we somehow managed to stutter the rotation of the earth with the power of our collective side-eye. Seriously though, how rude!
And also, how inane! It could probably be said for Marche that men no longer need to be cogent in order to express their opinions. While Lena Dunham has had the sheer nerve to create the kind of normal girl character that is apparently displeasing to men like Marche and Howard Stern, anybody who has working eyeballs would never describe Lady Gaga as "perfectly plain." And for all his salivating over the symmetrical marvel that is Megan Fox's face, he seems to not recognize that kind of flawlessness in the faces of women like Adele. You could probably guess why. And what the fuck is with the Amy Adams dig? That girl is nothing if not conventionally attractive.
But Marche has never really made much sense, and has already demonstrated the problem he has with women when they aren't being nice enough. Now he's going on about how they aren't being beautiful enough. In his profile on Fox, he bemoans the lack of the modern-day bombshells. According to him, they're a dying breed. There just isn't enough room for them in the show biz with these fatties taking up all the space!
Megan Fox is a bombshell. To be a bombshell in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like movie palaces or fountain pens or the muscle cars of the 1970s or the pinball machines in the basement. Bombshells once used to roam the cultural landscape like buffalo, and like buffalo they were edging toward extinction.
Is he trolling? He must be! Right? Because nobody really believes this kind of bullshit:
Today, unfettered sexual beauty is an impediment.
WHAT. Yeah, OK. Because when you're sexy and beautiful you run into all kinds of speed bumps in life—like landing on the cover of Esquire.
You know, even if Marche were correct, that "women no longer need to be beautiful to express their talent," here's the thing: Men never did. And he should know. He has a face for writing!
See, it doesn't feel good for someone to bring up your appearance when discussing your career, does it, Stephen? It comes off as kind of stupid and petty—unnecessary, even.
Megan Fox Saves Herself [Esquire]
DISCUSSION
"[W]omen no longer need to be beautiful in order to express their talent."
We did it ladies. We won feminism. Congratulations. Welcome to the new world.