From "It Girl" to punchline: Lindsay Lohan deserves a cultural reckoning, too
Is the Lohanaissance enough to transform her past tabloid reputation?
Lindsay Lohan has a new holiday film called Our Little Secret out today on Netflix, so what better day than to advocate for her cultural reckoning?
During my millennial ‘00s childhood, Lindsay Lohan was one of the “It Girls” I idolized. Lindsay had it all: a successful acting and music career, topped off with her own My Scene Barbie doll. As a prepubescent Barbie connoisseur, I was captivated, and at 13, I saw her as my role model—a decade before “girlboss” became a buzzword.
In lieu of authentic friendships, I clung to Lindsay and other young women in entertainment, including her peers Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who had lifestyles I adored. However, when the Bimbo Summit photo dropped on the front page of the New York Post in November 2006, the "It Girls” I once idolized suddenly became the poster children for everything society despised.
2006 brought a pivotal tone shift toward’s Lindsay’s public image. In July 2006, 70-year-old Georgia Rule producer James G. Robinson sent a letter to a then-20-year-old Lindsay calling her “irresponsible and unprofessional” for repeatedly missing set shoots without notice.
In early 2007, Lindsay checked into a drug rehab program for the first time, but that didn’t stop her from starring in I Know Who Killed Me. As she publicly struggled with rehab stints, the media painted her as a reckless party girl, fueling the tabloid frenzy that dominated her life. Lindsay continued shooting IKWKM by day and returned to the rehab facility each night. While on set, she couldn’t leave her trailer without being greeted by paparazzi, so much so that photographers ended up in the background shots of an early cut of the movie.
The attention climaxed after an arrest on July 24, 2007, two weeks after checking out of another rehab stay. This arrest interfered with her promotional tour for IKWKM, including its premiere and a then-canceled appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Released on July 27, IKWKM would soon be deemed as "one of the worst films ever made" by (mostly male) movie critics.
In summer 2008, a year after its release, I watched IKWKM late at night for the first time in the living room, after my parents went to bed. It felt like a secret, as if my parents discouraged and even forbade me from hanging out with Lindsay because of her party-girl reputation.
Amidst production of IKWKM, Britney—a once-friend of Lindsay’s—experienced an extremely publicized mental health crisis in February 2007, thanks to intrusive paparazzi photos and exploitative tabloid headlines. A series of events avalanched into a court-ordered conservatorship, on the basis Britney was too mentally unstable to carry her own responsibilities as a performer, mother, and overall human being. Lou Taylor, the architect behind Britney’s conservatorship, would later suggest to Lindsay’s mother, Dina, putting her daughter under a similar conservatorship to curb her substance use and excessive partying. Thankfully, the idea never actualized.
As an adult, I grew protective over Lindsay like I did Britney. Compared to Britney and Paris, Lindsay was particularly chastized for her relationship with substance use. During a 2013 appearance on the David Letterman Show, Letterman's first question to her was, "Aren't you supposed to be in rehab?" In an interview with Oprah Winfrey the same year, just four days after Lindsay’s return from rehab, Winfrey's first question was, "Are you an addict?" She even tried to play into this bit, but rather unsuccessfully. In a Funny or Die skit also from 2013, Lohan creates a fake eHarmony video where the punchline, again and again, is distastefully her substance use.
As a young girl, I consumed these media narratives without question. I laughed at the jokes about Lindsay’s wild behavior, thinking it was all just part of the fame game. As I grew older, though, I realized how deeply unfair it was. These were young women—often just a few years older than me—being relentlessly torn down for every mistake they made, while their male counterparts seemed to escape the same scrutiny.
Over the years, the media machine commodified every misstep these women made, turning their pain into profit. From Lindsay's mugshots to Britney's shaved head, these moments became pop culture icons—merchandise to be consumed without empathy. Even in 2023, this commodification endures. At a Britney-themed drag night in Williamsburg, I saw people celebrating the moment she attacked a paparazzo with an umbrella. After everything we’ve learned? Are you fucking serious?
“How do we not see that the treatment of ‘It Girls’ translates to the treatment of all girls in our culture?” asks Paris—also a once-friend of Lindsay’s—in her 2023 memoir. Between her memoir and 2020 documentary This Is Paris, Paris finally gets to speak up about the stark realities behind her glamorous public persona, such as the trauma she endured at a boarding school. Both the doc and her book explore how these experiences shaped her and contributed to her well-known "party girl" image, a facade she maintained to protect herself and cope with the pain of her past.
Lindsay’s rise and fall mirrored a larger cultural pattern of how we expect women (similarly to Britney and Paris) to be perfect, docile, and agreeable—yet, when they stray from these roles, they are punished, not just with criticism but with personal and professional ruin.
Over a decade later, the #FreeBritney campaign among Britney’s fan base sparked a cultural reevaluation of the pop star’s reputation in mainstream media. This discourse highlighted how Britney’s conservatorship was used to control and silence one of the most popular performers of our time. Following the #MeToo movement, there has been a much-needed reassessment of how the media attacked prominent female actresses during this era, including Lindsay.
Lindsay’s return to the spotlight is a small victory, not just for her but for a culture that’s beginning to realize the damage it did. The ongoing Lohanaissance isn’t just a nod to her acting talents, but a chance for us to reclaim the narrative that once sought to destroy her.
We’re at a turning point, where we’re finally acknowledging the harm done to Lindsay, Britney, and Paris—but this isn’t just about them. We owe it to them—and to ourselves—to rewrite the rules of how we treat women in the spotlight.
Great post. I was a part of the Free Britney campaign (not an organizer or anything, just a voice), and I always thought Lindsay Lohan got severely mistreated. I saw the sexism and personal greed and hunger for power behind what happened to Britney, but dismissed (wrongly I guess) what happened to Lohan as just another situation where the public eats its celebrities. Of course it does do that a lot more to the female celebrities, doesn't it?