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Certainly she was widely considered one of the most desirable women in the world at the tail end of the 2000s.
Okay, just further expounding upon the grim point I made about myself in a comment below:
Whenever I'm considering the relative attractiveness of actresses in movies and shows, I always like to check their dates of birth and when the project was actually filmed. It's like my equivalent of checking the early life section. It doesn't always turn out how I expect when I think to look it up, but it certainly does most of the time.
And of course most people know that 22-year-old Megan Fox in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen mogs all subsequent Megan Fox. But IMO, she is herself mogged by 19-to-20-year-old Megan Fox in the first live-action Transformers, who is in turn super mogged by 14-to-15-year-old Megan Fox in Holiday In The Sun. She's maybe slightly mogged by the slightly younger 14-to-15-year-old Olsen twins in the same movie, but the three of them are all super mogged by 12-to-13-year-old Emma Watson in Prisoner Of Azkaban. Is she mogged by her 11-to-12-year-old self in Chamber Of Secrets? Maybe, I would need to go refresh my memory to say, but I think I've dug myself deep enough at this point.
And sure, a significant contingent of the world's entire male population got a celebrity crush on Emma Watson growing up because she was put in the spotlight, and I'll readily admit that she was above-average attractive. But not that far above average! Not top percentile, maybe not even top decile. If she'd been a bit closer to my age and gone to my school, she'd have just been another physically attractive girl, somewhere towards the upper end of a vaguely-sorted pool that included basically every girl who didn’t have something extremely wrong with her. Because at the end of the day, I don't really intuitively believe in Helens of Troy. I just don't think there are girls all that much more beautiful than a normal baseline girl's lifetime peak, which is around puberty. Now, I'm aware that my personal opinion is both deeply socially unacceptable and not representative of the typical man, but - you see how those two things pull in opposite directions, right? Like, you've seen all those studies where men list what age of women they're attracted to and the graph mysteriously starts at 18 and immediately plummets? Really broken world we've got here.
I could be wrong, but I think I recall Aella's studies (or maybe someone else's?) suggesting peak physical attractiveness for women is somewhere around 16, which matches my intuitions.
But I think there are a couple of dynamics going on that distinguish a "celebrity 10" from an individual 10.
They have to be a celebrity at all. While there were plenty of girls at my highschool who I would have rated as 10s, definitely more attractive than most celebrities, none of you will ever agree with me that they are 10s because you never saw them and don't know what they look like. Short of sharing facebook photos (many of which have been deleted since then), which I wouldn't do anyway and violate their privacy, I have no way of communicating this properly. It isn't shared knowledge, they are not valid candidates for "the most attractive women" in popular discourse, because they are not famous.
Broad appeal. A woman with a specific look that some men really like and others don't might end up a 10 for 10% of the population and a 7 for 90% of the population. Meanwhile another woman might be a 9 in basically everyone's estimation. If you look around you you might find 10% of women have the specific look that appeals to you and conclude they are more attractive than the universal 9, but lots and lots of men are going to agree that the 9 is attractive, so when people average scores together the universal 9 might end up at the top while each of the niches end up lower on average (and then when we grade on a score the 9 curves up to a 10)
Aging gracefully. Due to social concerns and/or cognitive dissonance, a lot of men are not going to admit that the 16-year-old is a 10, even if they are physically attracted to her. So the set of 22 year olds are going to get a lot more external praise and validation. Therefore, a woman who retains a higher fraction of her teenage peak appearance into her 20s is going to be at the top of the ratings as far as people say them out loud, even if in literal terms she is less attractive than other 16 year olds or even her own 16 year old self.
So I think 22-year-old Megan Fox is considered peak due to hitting all of these points. If she were not famous, few men would genuinely treat her as a 10 in terms of preferring her over the top 5% of women they've ever met in real life. But she is famous, and has broad appeal, and was attractive in her early 20s, so the discourse goes the way it goes.
I really don't think this is compatible with the state of law. In the sense that I don't think it's true, because otherwise the law would use 16 instead of 18. Although I suspect a chunk of men like 16 the most, such as yourself. And they tend to be more K-selected, and so are more common in places like these.
There's some evidence the real answer is age 20 because this is when fecundity is supposed to peak. So a one night stand has the highest chance of a pregnancy. There's gonna be a ton of variance though. Some men will prefer 15 if their mating strategy is investment oriented, some men might prefer 25 per chance, maybe 25 is better for cuckholdry or something like that, she will have a family who she can pass off your child to as her own. So it will vary per men and in turn each man not only has a favorite age but also an attraction interval which is arguably more important than his exact favorite age.
The majority of U.S. states and European countries DO use 16 as the age of consent. There are often some caveats and exceptions regarding power dynamics like teachers and students, but broadly speaking most places acknowledge that teenagers are sexually mature, want to have sex, others want to have sex with them, and thus they can consent. Other places disagree with the legal/moral position and set the age higher (or lower, though not in the U.S.), but 16 is roughly the median for a lot of places.
It is important to note though that peak biological age is distinct from the functionally optimal age in modern society. Higher levels of technology and civilization require more education than in the past. Even if a 16 year old can get pregnant and have children, it's going to mess up their education, career, and general life prospects. And in a world where people are free to choose their own partners rather than having arranged marriages, 16 year olds are not likely to pick the best partners to have sex with. Therefore the legally optimal age of consent does not need to line up with the biologically optimal age of fecundity in the first place.
Your point about variation is valid though.
Yes but if it were the most attractive age to most people it would be all, like 18 (meaning all places let 18 be legal). And there would be very little taboo, kind of like dating a 19 year old when you're 45, which seems to go barely commented on. If she were 16 there would be an outrage in a lot of the west. Which leads me to my next point. In most of these places 16 year olds are only partially legal. They can apparently consent to sex even with an older man, unless he's their teacher, but they can't consent to some combination of sexting, getting married, or traveling together.
I think the fact that they are often at least substantially legal means a large minority of men find them very attractive. But not everybody. Not even most men. It's probably something like 30% to 45% of men are «ephebophiles».
Since when has "people want to do thing" ever been a guarantee of "thing is legal?" People want to steal stuff, stealing stuff is illegal. People want to be violent, violence is illegal. People want to do cocaine, cocaine is illegal.
We make things illegal because they have negative externalities and harm people, not because people don't want to do them.
Not a majority of people...
When you live in a democracy, if 51% of people want something to be legal it will be legal.
Ah. So you think the majority of men might be «guilty ephebophiles». The problem is the age of consent is centered around Hamiltonian spite and not harms since being in a consensual relationship does not actually harm a teenager.
In fact I'll provide you with some example:
Stealing but the majority of voters want it: legal in the form of taxation and wealth redistribution.
Violence but the majority of voters want it: spanking children, state violence.
Harmful drug but the majority of voters want it: alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, amphetamine for children.
Harmful sex but the majority of voters want it: adultery, gay butt sex.
What if they don't believe that it's good or want it to be legal? Do you not understand the distinction here? Are you claiming that you have never, in your life, wanted or been tempted to do something that you philosophically believe to be wrong and would not publicly endorse or vote to make legal?
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