Megan Fox: Hollywood's outrageous it girl

The scene was one of barely controlled pandemonium at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. A crush of paparazzi and screaming teenage fans you could hear from a block away had mobbed the Canadian cultural capital's Ryerson Theatre for the premiere of "Jennifer's Body," the horror-comedy written by Oscar-winning "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody. But the glitzy event's undeniable focal point was a femme fatale of a different stripe: Megan Fox. The 5-foot-3 screen siren worked the red carpet like a veteran, frequently turning and posing so the asymmetrical hem of her strapless mini-dress showed as much bare thigh as possible. "This is outrageous," a stunned Cody told a reporter. "It's a little intense."

Fox portrays a demon-girl cheerleader who (literally) devours her horny high school classmates in the film, which hit theaters Friday and earned a lackluster $6.8 million at the box office over the weekend. But her movie stardom is almost beside the point, anyway. Fox is becoming to the current generation what Farrah Fawcett was during her '70s heyday or Pamela Anderson was at the apogee of her "Baywatch" / Tommy Lee sex-tape fame in the '90s. That is, a sex symbol of the highest order: a woman whose hotness has become emblematic of a specific era. Call Megan Fox the first bona fide sex symbol of the 21st century.

While such lithe enchantresses as Paris Hilton, Bar Refaeli and even Tila Tequila have come to be associated with the S-word in recent years, their public images are all too stage-managed, too contained, too inextricably connected to selling products -- reality TV shows, lingerie, a "famous for being famous" myth -- to confer them reigning sex symbol status.

Not so Fox. Time after time, to the deep chagrin of her publicist, she has displayed a refreshing candor, blurting out whatever's on her mind -- damn the consequences. Especially on carnal matters.

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.