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It has come to the attention of many that twenty-year-old Lindsay Lohan is quickly careening off the rails and is headed for both heartache and emotional meltdown. When this talented girl burst on the scene with a bravura film, "Mean Girls," she seemed happy and well-adjusted and suddenly on the fast track in the ultra-cool and exciting world of Hollywood. She had the kind of life that her young fans admired and envied and soon accepted that she was a strong influence on teenagers and pre-teens. Even with an unstable father who was branded as "dangerous" as far back as 2003, Lindsay Lohan appeared to be handling the troubling dynamics of her dysfunctional family. I marveled at her resiliency and perpetual sunny disposition, achieved at such a young age and I remember thinking, "This gal is going places. Her acting talent won accolades from co-stars and her legion of fans became known as "The Lohan Nation." Her jailed father had gone on a verbal tyrade several years ago, ranting that O.J. has nothing on him and that he will destroy his family in a much more violent way than Simpson did. That is not a direct quote, but rather a sense of what this extremely troubled man believed in his dark and forboding fantasies.
Personally, I don't know how Lindsay prevailed after this unfortunate event. Her life and all aspects of it were splashed all over the Internet and in print Hollywood celebrity sheets and suddenly, the world was privied to this family drama. But still, an inner strength prevailed for a year or so and she appeared friendly and open with her fans and was beginning to be a positive influence on them. It was amazing at Lindsay powerful resolve. How did she do it? I recall thinking as she became more and more famous. I know that I could never possess that level of maturity and in essence, my life, in many ways, resembled Lindsay's. I had not dealt with my own disturbing life and family dynamics and I wished that I could have been as well-adjusted as this young and gifted young woman.
Here she is, soon after she'd finished "Mean Girls" and prior to a staggering weight loss in the spring of 2005. She was a slightly plump young girl and seemed to handle not being stick-thin with maturity and a firm resolve to be good to herself and handle her success in a positive way. I remember her first stint on Saturday Night Live when she came out smiling and saying something along the lines as, "I'm seventeen years old! This is amazing!" In her skits, she was smart and funny and her fans loved her for it. The sky was the limit for Lohan at this crucial point in her young life.
. . . .
That was about to change, as Lindsay reached her late teens and began to despise her chubbiness. "My thighs were HUGE!" She was quoted as saying and so she resolved to lose every last bit of her baby fat as quickly as possible and when she began her publicity stints for "Herbie, Fully Loaded," she had a dramatic new look: Her red hair was bleached blonde and her body had shrunk in such a disturbing degree that her appearance overshadowed interest in her latest Disney film. Her arms looked like toothpicks and her clothes hung limp and lifeless on a frame so wraith-like that people became quite concerned about her. Lindsay explained her transformation as a case of her growing up and becoming concerned with exercising and eating right. Nobody bought this, however. This was the first sad step in the disintegration of a previously healthy, happy young girl. There would be many other factors at work with the purpose of shoving Lindsay into the quagmire of despair and self-loathing.
I may be tooting my own horn, so to speak, but back in 1997, I had a book published that deals with my downward spiral into borderline personality disorder. A good portion of the autobiography deals with my three major and life-threatening struggles with anorexia and bulimia:
