Similar to the phenomenon of “hate watching” television—which I fully plan to do with the first season of Smash one of these days—I enjoy hate reading terrible-yet-high-profile magazine articles.

Like Elizabeth Wurtzel’s wonderfully incoherent New York Magazine piece about how tough it is to be an uncompromising free spirit in this world.

Or this week’s Esquire profile of Megan Fox, which has led me to consider the possibility that straight men just shouldn’t be assigned to write profiles of beautiful women. I’m fairly certain that no female writer would’ve strung together these sentences:

The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking. The lip on the left curves exactly the same way as the lip on the right. The eyes match exactly. The brow is in perfect balance, like a problem of logic, like a visual labyrinth. It’s not really even that beautiful. It’s closer to the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly. What she is is flawless. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her.

The article struggles to make the case that looking like Megan Fox is a burden to Megan Fox, because in the age of successful uggos like Lena Dunham, Lady Gaga, and Amy Adams (????????????), beauty has become as obsolete as the fountain pen.

The best thing about this piece? This piece that’s ostensibly about how Megan Fox is running from her status as a sex symbol? Esquire knows which side its SEO is buttered on:

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Alison Hallett served nobly as the Mercury's arts editor from 2008-2014. Her proud legacy lives on.

12 replies on “Today’s Hate Reading: Megan Fox Profile in <i>Esquire</i>”

  2. I think that purple prose from Stephen Marche has less to do with being a straight man (if he is) than being a capital-w Writer, and one with “a doctorate in early modern English drama from the University of Toronto.”

    Also, blame Canada.

  5. I think part of the problem is this thing that journalists do where they have an assignment, and no matter how boring their subject is, they feel they need to describe it like it’s the most interesting thing in the world, because that is what Great Writers do.

    Also See: issue of minor importance that randomly becomes the Most Challenging Crisis to ever face humanity, because a Great Writer is writing about it.

  6. You expected something other than this from Esquire magazine? You saw the cover, right?
    It changed hands several times after the old Esquire era of the thirties to mid-seventies, and doesn’t have much connection. It hovers in the continuum of Maxim, GQ, and Details, as far as I can see. Guys hitting all the keystrokes needed to sound smart enough to fill the spaces around the ads and photo spreads.

  9. I was on the phone with the office of the CEO of Esquire after I read that piece. My friend Ira Lipshitz said it was way out of line.

  10. Oh noes, Megan Fox is the worst human ever because she’s more attractive than 99.9% of the competitive-minded women who hate her. How DARE she!

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