Is Megan Fox really Hollywoods ideal mother?

For a woman who says shes not interested in her career right now, Megan Fox sure is doing everything a woman in Hollywood could do to raise her profile. The 26-year-old actress, in just the four months since the birth of her son, Noah, has managed to leverage motherhood into the pinnacle of celebrity success. And nowhere is that more evident than in her cover story in the new U.K. edition of Marie Claire. In her interview, she trots out all the most beloved of maternal party lines including the classic I-have-the-very-best-job-in-the-worldline.The sultry Ms. Fox, who was also recently the subject of the most slobbering fanboy cover story in the history of Esquire (The symmetry of her face, up close, is genuinely shocking Its 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) declares that acting isnt my job anymore because my job is to be with her baby Noah.

In just one brief, glossy magazine profile, Fox has given the mainstream media all the fodder it needs to exploit every desirable angle on how to be the perfect mother, circa America, 2013. First and foremost, of course, shes got to be flaunting her post-baby bodybecause, as everyone knows, after you have a child, you are obliged tomelt ba! ck into totally bangable, bikini-worthy shape as soon as possible.

But while youre flaunting that new body, make sure youre clear on having no thought about anything in the world but your baby obviously. As Fox says to Marie Claire, The ultimate satisfaction for me is being with my son. And even if youre still silently burning through tubes of Preparation H and your nipples are cracked, its important to let the world know that youre totally into having more babies. I want to have more kids, says Fox. That is where my heart is.

Thats good, because if you are a woman, no one is ever going to stop asking when youre going to have a baby, and when youre a mother, no one is ever going to stop asking you about when youre going to have more. You should probably just repeat what Megan Fox says every not-pregnant moment of your life between now and age 50. Also, if theres some way you can credit your baby with something miraculous like, I dont know, curing your anxiety disorder, thatd be swell, too. When they come out they are covered in all kinds of stuff, says Fox, who announced in 2010 that shes OCD. I took [Noah] right on my chest and, from that moment, nothing he does freaks me out. I dont want to give him a complex.

Look, motherhood is amazing, and if its your dream to take a break from your career to spend time with your baby and you can do it, rock on. But why does being a mother have to be a job at all? Its not as if raising a child is like leaving one company to go work for another, and it sure as hell isnt like starring in the Transformers franchise. I! ts its ow! n thing. So when Fox says, Ive never been validated by work or fame or Hollywood or any of that I have to ask, has anyone suggested that being No. 8 on the Maxim Hot 100 is supposed to be an equivalent to parenthood?

More than that, though, why does motherhood have to incessantly spun this way in the media? Why is the narrative always peddled in the same repetitive manner, again and again in the convenient, conformist tale of the still superhot, post-baby mom who reassures everybody that her professional career ambitions have now been reassessed and appropriately downgraded? Because if a woman doesnt toe that line, well, just look at all the hell Marissa Mayer caught. Foxs awe and delight at her new baby are no doubt utterly sincere. But its a drag to see her story crammed into an all too familiar and damningly unrealistic and limited ideal of the complicated, challenging and definitely not a job experience of motherhood.