Prodigiously talented though perhaps a tiny bit overexposed super vixen Megan Fox gained a dose of respectability with her lengthy profile in the Sunday New York Times last weekend. In it she tries to explain: This whole super sexy, smoldering pinup girl thing? All an act.

Women brand her as a whore because she is too pretty and smart to be anything but, she said, and the provocative things she says in interviews have little to do with her actual love life with longtime off-and-on boyfriend Brian Austin Green.

She’s tired of playing that archetype but proud of her media-manipulation skills. Some excerpts from the interview:

On being too pretty to be liked by women:

“Women tear each other apart. Girls think I’m a slut, and I’ve been in the same relationship since I was 18. The problem is, if they think you’re attractive, you’re either stupid or a whore or a dumb whore. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular.”

On her alter-ego who gives outrageous interviews:

“When I sit down to talk to men’s magazines, there’s a certain character that I play. She’s not fully fleshed out, but she shows up to do men’s magazine interviews. There’s something so ridiculous about always being in your underwear in those magazines, and you know the interview is going to run opposite those pictures. So, there’s a character that talks to all of them.”

On getting paid to be ogled by men:

“I do live in a glass box. And I am on display for men to pay to look at me. And that bothers me. I don’t want to live that character.”