Don’t Call It a Comeback: Notes on the Lohanaissance
Words: Ryanne Probst
Make it stand out
Of all the Y2K girlies to dominate my headspace growing up, Lindsay Lohan has a permanent residence in my frontal lobe. Several snapshots feel formative to my coming of age: Lindsay as Hallie Parker in 1998’s Parent Trap serving butch realness wearing a green bomber jacket and annihilating bunkmates at a Camp Walden underground poker game; Lindsay baring a strip of perfectly toned midriff on almost every one of her movie posters from the years 2003-2007; Lindsay flashing a bedazzled (and court appointed) ankle monitor; Lindsay riding in the front seat of Paris Hilton’s car.
At 37, she’s just five years older than me, and yet, Lindsay feels permanently frozen in time, forever oscillating between spunky preteen, homeschooled jungle freak, and paparazzi princess. A play in three acts. I worshiped at the altar of her low-rise jeans.
I bring up Lindsay Lohan because recently I’ve noticed a trend of women of her generation reclaiming their careers, particularly those women who made careers off of their oversexualization and “bad behavior.” Over the last two years Pamela Anderson has become something of a feminist icon. The 2022 release of Hulu’s Pam & Tommy and 2023 release of Netflix’s Pamela: A Love Story forced audiences to reckon with the media’s misogynistic response to Pamela’s infamous sex tape with Tommy Lee over 20 years after it was leaked to the public.
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Jennifer Coolidge is treading similar ground. She made a name for herself playing Stifler’s Mom in the 1990s/2000s era American Pie franchise — a career move that relegated Coolidge to doing “cute little jobs” and sexed up caricature work until Mike White scooped her out of obscurity to play the now infamous Tanya on The White Lotus. Her leading role in the HBO show has made many declare Coolidge a cult icon, asking aloud why it took so long for the star to land mainstream success.
The Lohanaissance is the latest in this comeback trend - the term itself suggesting a cultural shift towards redefining attitudes towards the maligned women of the Y2K glory days. Yet the movies responsible for this said cultural shift are less cinematic art pieces and more, as one Vulture critic put it, “crypto-fascist, AI-generated harbinger(s) of doom” masquerading as Netflix originals and skeptically I can’t help but feel the Lohanaissance is indicative of a few more sinister things. “Comeback” as a concept is a deeply American one. It speaks to America’s fascination with underdogs and rags to riches narratives. As Sarah Banet-Weiser notes in an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, it’s a highly commodifiable concept too.
As an aughts queen, Lindsay starred in slew of decade defining movies including Life Size (2000), Freaky Friday (2003), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), and Mean Girls (also 2004), the latter of which was recently remade to lacklustre controversy. But the real financial gain of Lindsey Lohan being rechristened as an It Girl comes at the expense of those moments in Lindsay’s career where she was most villainised.
Who could forget the New York Post’s infamous “BIMBO SUMMIT” that made front page news in 2006? Or the 2013 David Letterman interview in which Lindsay was brought on to promote her role in Scary Movie 5 and was instead interrogated by Letterman about her sobriety. (“Aren’t you supposed to be in rehab now?” is a haunting piece of dialogue). Or, maybe most concerning, the Rolling Stone article where the adult editor Mark Binelli assessed the state of Lindsay’s breasts for his “Hot List” issue - conveniently released a week after her 18th birthday. In the 2020s, you can buy a t-shirt with Lindsay’s mugshot on it. The BIMBO SUMMIT can be hung like a piece of art in your house. Her pap shots make for a gorgeous flag to hang above your bed in the background of your TikTok video. Lindsay’s back and her pain has never been more in demand.
“What’s being labelled a comeback story is really these women finally coming under control.”
These comeback stories are problematic in their profitability because of the certain stipulations that surround them. I think we forget (I could never forget) that Lindsay did try to re-enter the spotlight on her own terms in 2019 with MTV’s Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club, a reality “docu-series” that followed Lindsay as she expanded her business empire into the Mykonos beach club scene. It lasted all of one season. It wasn’t until Lindsay conformed to what the world wanted her to be, rather than how she wanted to present herself, but her status as a celebrity was - somewhat - returned.
What Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Coolidge, and Lindsay Lohan have in common is their reputations for being uncontrollable. Pamela was the hot bimbo seductress, Jennifer the MILF, and Lindsay the wild child, party girl. The successes of their second acts in Hollywood have been dependent on their shedding of these identities and immersion into traditional, ‘age appropriate’ roles.
What’s being labelled a comeback story is really these women finally coming under control. Lindsay couldn’t see success as a beach club mogul, she refound fame as a tamed heroine in a Christmas movie, a lonely girlboss in a Netflix Original. Pamela, one of the imperial sex symbols for over two decades, retired her bombshell look for a more conservative, makeup free aesthetic. Jennifer leans into humour mocking her femininity, age and sexuality. The success of a comeback then is dependent on committing to the patriarchal rule structure.
I do want the Lohanaissance and other Y2K comeback stories to succeed. I’m happy to see Lindsay back on my screen. But the Lohanaissance is no progressive shift in our cultural perception of women’s stories, rather it more fully outlines the penance for daring to exist outside of traditional standards of womanhood.