A century of sex symbols
By Chris Lee and Patrick Kevin Day
Bombshells. Sex kittens. Pin-up girls. In Hollywood, such creatures have always been in plentiful supply. But just about once in a generation, a bona fide sex symbol will come along to stand out from the pack: some beautiful Valkyrie whose mere photograph is enough to flutter the collective pulse and whose appearance on a red carpet causes both flashbulbs and eyes to pop. These women are synonymous with the S-word because they make men think impure thoughts rather than associate them with any particular movie role, product or publicist-constructed persona.
Every era gets the sex symbol it deserves -- at least, so goes pop cultural thinking on the matter. What then to make of Megan Fox? To be sure, she is the newest “it” girl to ascend into the vaunted pantheon of sex-bomb goddesses.
Here is a look back at a gallery of some sex symbols, bombshells and ingenues of yesteryear. Call them the proto-Foxes ...
Megan Fox: Sex-bomb or just a bomb? (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)
When: 1993-present
Sex symbolism: We used to like our bombshells to stay stateside, but with the international appeal of Pam Anderson on “Baywatch,” the bar was forever raised. Therefore, it took Angelina Jolie traveling abroad to adopt children from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, while giving birth to other children in Namibia and France, to really cement her sex symbol status. This is after several awkward phases -- including her “rising sex symbol” phase when she was picked to fill out the extremely form-fitting costume of videogame sex icon Lara Croft in the “Tomb Raider” movies, and her “weird” phase that had her wearing husband Billy Bob Thornton’s blood in vial on a necklace and behaving a bit too lovingly toward her brother at the Oscars in 2000. Her work with the UN and her travels abroad demonstrate that it takes a lot more than sprawling across the hood of a sports car or twirling your hair to achieve major sex-symbol status in the 21st century. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
