Lindsay Lohan: Smoking

All those paparazzi shots from that era had her with a cigarette. Outside clubs, in cars, always lit, always being photographed. There was something about it that read as untouchable—young, exhausted, like smoking was the only sane response to being everywhere at once. Whether she actually smoked that much or the photographers just caught the right moments, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. That’s the image that stuck.

I watched her more closely than I’d admit. There’s something about seeing someone your age become completely inescapable in the culture that makes you study them for clues about how to exist. The smoking was part of how she read—reckless, indifferent, burned out before twenty. I can’t separate the real person from the image anymore, but I’m not sure that distinction ever mattered. The image is what lasted, and it’s still there.