The beautiful actress is both a devout Christian and an admitted free spirit. She’s a sex symbol who believes in “saving it for the wedding night.” She’s not contradictory — she just refuses to conform to anyone’s standard. She won’t stop being Meagan just to please the public. And she isn’t ashamed of her sex appeal.
“I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with being sexy,” she says matter-of-factly. “God created our bodies as women. He created us to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be powerful, to be fearless — to be amazing. I do respect and understand the fact that when you come into the sanctuary, you need to be dressed appropriately because you are not the star — Jesus is the star. That I agree with 100 percent.” While she understands that dressing appropriately is necessary, Good also wants more people to recognize that “appropriate” is always relative. Especially outside of Sunday morning service.
“ ‘Appropriately’ is in each person’s own heart and each person’s own mind,” she says. “When you speak to me about ‘appropriately,’ you’re talking about a girl who, at 9 years old, was getting completely naked and dressed around a bunch of drag queens. So my upbringing and my experiences as an actress my entire life and the liberalness of my childhood and surroundings, [that shapes] my opinion of ‘appropriate.’ ”
Good believes in walking her own path and that path led her to an unexpected place in 2011, when she reconnected with DeVon Franklin, an executive at Columbia Pictures and preacher at Mt. Rubidoux, a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Riverside, California. The two married in 2012, and the fiercely independent young woman has found a peace of mind with her husband that she didn’t believe was possible before.
“Marriage has taught me that it’s OK to let somebody take care of me. That it’s OK to depend on somebody,” Good says. “I grew up being responsible for a lot of things — since I was 15 [I was] taking care of a lot of people. My father is amazing, but he wasn’t in the home, so my mother raised us with the mentality of not needing anybody. We were never the girls that went after the guy that had the money because we were taught to have our own money. I’ve always been extremely independent to the point where it probably intimidated some guys. Now, it’s nice to just feel like it’s not a bad thing to trust someone to have your best interest at heart.
“His acceptance of me has allowed me to grow in areas where I was struggling in the past because I felt so unaccepted,” she explains further. “I was angry, and that anger created a rebellious spirit that didn’t really want to change. Because it needed to be accepted first, before it could even consider being better. Marriage has made me better, assured me, made me happier; I’m way more at peace. I feel like I’m consistently growing into a better person and I feel like I can help him grow into a better person. He sees all the positive things in me that I felt like a lot of other people didn’t see — I always felt very judged. I always felt like people were coming for me. He was the first person, outside of my sister or mother, who said ‘I see you. I see who you really are.’ ”
When Good’s engagement to Franklin was announced, many seemed to be surprised to learn that she and the preacher were committed to forgoing sex until after they wed. That decision is indicative of who Meagan Good is — she stands by her faith, even if she may apply it in ways that confound traditionalists. So there are certain gray areas she openly acknowledges — but there are other tenets of Christianity that she believes are steadfast and unquestionable. “It’s very clear in the [Ten] Commandments that you shouldn’t have sex before marriage. And to me, you can’t change the perception of that by saying ‘Oh, I’m going to marry this guy one day, so technically that’s my husband-in-spirit, so we can have sex now,’ ” she shares. “To me, that’s taking away from the Word.”
But for Good, the areas that are less cut-and-dried have to be navigated by one’s own moral compass and relationship with their faith and God. She believes that that relationship should be the foundation for one’s spiritual existence — not the judgments of others.
“I feel like religion can get very judgmental and a lot of people don’t approach you with love,” she says, pausing thoughtfully. “I try to be conscious of the responsibility I have as a Christian, but if I did everything everyone told me to do or tried to please everyone, I couldn’t have my hair a particular way, I couldn’t wear certain clothes, I couldn’t play certain characters, I can’t hang out with certain people, can’t wear a certain amount of makeup — and you can’t let people run your life. You have to look to God. People will fall in line.”
