Pretty Boys Are Poisonous

Megan Fox, of all people, gets it right

It would be easy to poke fun at actress Megan Fox, who has recently identified as a love addict and written a book of poetry being sad about it. You, Megan? You just noticed that you’ve bent and distorted yourself for a lifetime to get the sexual attention of men? That your career is built on your ability to give teenage boys boners? You just noticed this? Do you own a mirror?

But I won’t poke fun at her. Because I was pretty much the same. I was just working with cruder clay.

“There’s never a point in my life where I loved my body. Never ever,” said the objectively gorgeous actress. “I don’t ever see myself the way other people see me.” Can you relate? We who call ourselves love addicts know that it takes someone else to tell us how we look, for us to know how we look. Someone else has to affirm that you are hot, and desirable, and lovable. And this is scary, because they can withdraw that affirmation at any point. And then you’re fucked.

“The journey of loving myself is going to be never-ending, I think,” says Fox. I’m on the same journey. Just because someone is beautiful or famous or rich or talented doesn’t make them immune to low self-esteem, otherwise all those pricey rehabs in Malibu would be empty and, trust me, they are not.

Megan has a poem called “a beautiful boy is a deadly drug.” I have a Post-It note on my bathroom mirror that reads: “He is a 6’3” pile of cocaine. Walk away.” She’ll make more money from her poem than I will from my Post-It note, but we both made the same discovery.

I’m not going to comment on Fox’s very public, very stormy relationship with actor/musician Machine Gun Kelly (as I write this, they are engaged… and he’s 6’4”, by the way) other than to post his picture and note that sex and love addicts do end up in relationships with other sex and love addicts. We can find one another in the dark, blindfolded. It think it’s the pheromones…. or the neediness. But, of course, we are not reliable relationship material because of that whole terrified of losing the constant affirmation thing.

So why am I giving Megan Fox publicity she doesn’t need, other than as an excuse to post sexy photos? Because I need to be reminded — and maybe you do, too — that what the disease tells me is a lie. The little Tasmanian devil that sits on my shoulder (that is my personification of the disease of addiction) and tells me if only I looked like her I would be okay… that Tasmanian devil is lying. When Taz croaks that if only I had him I would be okay… also lying. That if only I was richer or younger or taller or blonder or… anything other than, better than, me, I would finally be okay. Lying.

Because Megan Fox looks like Megan Fox, and she’s still a love addict. And it still hurts.