While we’re giving advice, can we discuss this
gesture? We’ve been meaning to say something.Photo: Getty Images
In the past year, you couldn’t drop a tabloid on your bathroom floor without it falling open to a sad story about Lindsay Lohan, be it for wearing drug-laced pants or her unfortunate habit of leaving rehab and promptly face-planting into a puddle of booze. So it stands to reason that her most recent exit from Utah’s Cirque Lodge has put the celeb-watching world on high alert for her first misstep. But! What if it never happens? What if, against all odds, Lohan actually dared to use rehab for, you know, rehabbing?
You may think we’ve lost our grip on reality, but hear us out. In an astounding moment of clarity, Lindsay allegedly volunteered to stay at the exclusive facility past the standard 30 days. Upon her release, she’s taking a chaperone to Los Angeles to shoot a movie cameo, and then the Lohan Self-Awareness Tour reportedly will swing back through Utah for outpatient treatment. Furthermore, Lindsay says she intends to spend more time in New York to be closer to her family. And in a banner move for any child star with a selfish party-girl stage mother, OK! is reporting that our girl LiLo has at long last fired Dina, the Momager From Hell. (Dina denies all of this, naturally, but we tend to greet all Dina’s comments with a shovel.)
Forgive us for assigning positive, practical traits to a celebrity of Lohan’s ilk, but all of this sounds … smart. New York might be just what the doctor ordered. Though Manhattan certainly isn’t devoid of eagle-eyed photographers, Hollywood is the epicenter of the party scene that got her in trouble in the first place, and Lohan — notoriously a lousy driver even when she isn’t being accused of stalking her assistant’s mother — has to navigate L.A.’s streets while trailed by an aggressive army of cameras that can anticipate her every move. The constant stress would make us drink too! For someone who needs to spend less time frequenting her boozy stomping grounds and more time mending professional fences, the West Coast sounds like the loser’s choice.
The climb to legitimacy will be tough, but perhaps the challenge is what keeps Lindsay going. She may, in fact, be quite aware that the party’s over. We assume she’s literate, so she no doubt knows of her own box-office shame spiral. And while Lindsay was sequestered, Britney Spears — the other rehab regular and Ur-Wild Child — made an example of herself by garnering the most negative string of press in recent memory. If Lohan got even a glimpse of how Brit’s mess went down, it’s likely she had no choice but to look at her own situation, add it all up, and realize the party ended ages ago.
Let’s hope Lindsay’s good at math, because her old life wasn’t working — and in any Girl Behaving Badly story, we’d all prefer the Drew Barrymore ending. Maybe getting out of L.A. will be the key. And, hey, at least in New York, she won’t have to drive anywhere. —The Fug Girls
