Lindsay Lohan Is Great

Looking back at everything written about Lindsay Lohan, someone should actually stand up for her instead of just piling on. Yeah, she did the drugs, the drunk driving, all of it, but who hasn’t been stupid in their twenties? The difference is your failures weren’t stalked by paparazzi. She’s difficult now, her music got bad, she got scary thin. But that’s not the whole picture.

What actually matters is what she did in those moments that counted—how she landed in that vicious friend group in the movie before she figured out who actually cared, that heartbreaking song for her father, the body-swap film that was funny and sad and weirdly smart. She was genuinely talented at those things. That’s not nothing.

And I’m not going to pretend that’s my whole reason for thinking about her right now. There’s the matter of those freckles scattered all over her face and shoulders, little brown spots that somehow work perfectly. The color, the distribution, the way light hits them in certain pictures. It’s one of those things that probably sounds absurd to say out loud but there it is, and I’m saying it anyway.

So I’m not apologizing for it. She’s great. The work holds up. Those freckles do what they do. And I’m keeping those pictures.