Gilded Butterflies Poem by gershon hepner

We laugh at gilded butterflies,
and know we shouldn’t gild a lily,
but who can ever turn their eyes
away from either? Willy-nilly,
our eyes are drawn to what exceeds
our expectations, and the gilt
on butterflies and lilies feeds
our fantasies, but God built
can’t be improved, and it’s uncouth
to try to go one up on Him;
He made the world with naked truth,
and gilding makes it grim and dim.

Chris Lee writes about Megan Fox in the LA Times, September 23,2009 (“Megan Fox: Hollywood’s Outrageous Girl”) :

There are a handful of salient facts about her that have exploded into the public consciousness, mainly because the 23-year-old, Tennessee-born ingenue has said them for maximum effect in numerous magazine cover stories. It's helped that the articles invariably arrive accompanied by suggestive photos of Fox in a bikini or lingerie or Daisy Duke shorts or perhaps naked beneath a faux-fur blanket or in a towel that leaves just enough to the imagination to linger in the imagination after you close the magazine.
What we have come to know so far: that she carried on a lesbian love affair with a Russian stripper at age 18; that Fox was once 'obsessed' with porn star Jenna Jameson; that Fox struggles with the idea she has a 'mild form of schizophrenia, ' fearing she'll wind up like her idol Marilyn Monroe (whose face is tattooed on Fox's right inner forearm): and that Fox 'was always übersexual.'
Which is just as well because at least once over the course of each of these stories, the model turned actress, who was named sexiest woman in the world last year by FHM magazine, will say she is at peace with being a sex symbol. 'I know I'm seen as a sex object, ' Fox told Esquire. 'I'm just really confident sexually, and I think that sort of oozes out of my pores. It's just there. It's something I don't have to turn on.'..

'She oozes sex and isn't ashamed to do so, ' said Trent Venegas, author of www.pinkisthenewblog.com. 'She seems very willing to use her sexuality to her maximum benefit without giving too much away. She definitely became a Hollywood it girl because of her looks rather than her talents.' While other on-screen ingenues, models and TV stars are undeniably attractive - foxy, even - few outside Fox (nickname: 'Mega Fox') can be viewed as having embraced the adulation as a means to an end in itself. While, say, Jessica Biel laments in an interview that being named sexiest woman alive has been a liability to her stated goal of being a Serious Actress, Fox abides. 'I didn't decide I'm going to be an actress cause I want to be respected for how I play chess, ' Fox told 'Entertainment Tonight.' 'Part of Hollywood is being perceived as attractive.' With her mane of black hair, taut physique, eight tattoos (including the Shakespeare quotation 'We will all laugh at gilded butterflies' from 'King Lear') and bedroom eyes, she projects an unapologetic sultriness whether she's wearing a bikini in GQ or bending over a '76 Camaro in a tiny blouse in her breakthrough role in 2007's 'Transformers' (which not coincidentally has taken in more than $700 million in worldwide box office) . And that's another crucial difference between a sex symbol and a comely superstar like Angelina Jolie, to whom Fox is frequently compared. Jolie is undeniably hot stuff, but her pronouncements on such subjects as the need to ban land mines in Southeast Asia or repatriate Afghan war refugees can come off as attempts to mitigate her sex goddess image.

9/23/09