Lindsay Lohan's Infamous Leaked 'Hook Up List' Is A Harsh Look At How We Treated Female Stars Of The 2000s
We owe her an apology.
FiledIMAGE & Everett Collection / Shutterstock Lindsay Lohan, the often maligned it-girl of the 2000s, is back in the public eye after a decade-long break from acting.
Armed with a two-movie deal from Netflix for the romantic comedies “Falling for Christmas” and “Irish Wish,” the newly-married Lohan is back in Hollywood– this time, on her own terms.
As a former child star who became tabloid fodder from a young age, Lohan has seen a darker side to fame than most.
Nothing proves that more than a list of Lohan’s sexual partners that was leaked without her consent in a 2014 issue of InTouch Weekly.
Lindsay Lohan’s leaked list of sexual partners featured many famous names — yet she got the brunt of the backlash.
On the list featured men from James Franco to Justin Timberlake yet none of the men were forced to answer for its contents.
At the time, Lohan was in the midst of a public battle with substance abuse and mental health issues. She had been largely cast aside by Hollywood after being mistreated for years.
She addressed the list in an episode with “Watch What Happens Live.”
"You know, I'm going to get serious for a second," the actress told Andy Cohen when he playfully brought up the list.
"That was actually my fifth step in AA at Betty Ford. And someone, when I was moving during the OWN show, must have taken a photo of it. And so that's a really personal thing and it's really unfortunate," she said.
Lohan grew up in the pre-#MeToo era, where there were no widespread public discussions of consent, agency, and control. Her fame arrived when she was still a child and was only heightened by her inevitable move into adulthood.
She came of age in an era where tabloids reigned and paparazzi were especially brutal. Her experience as a Hollywood starlet exposed the deeply-rooted misogyny of the 2000s, a misogyny that was normalized to the extreme.
Lohan was simply trying to survive in an industry that builds women up, only to tear them down for so-called entertainment.
Lohan was interrogated on her body and sex life regularly. Yet she lived in an environment where she had limited control over her image and what it was being used to sell.
When Lohan turned 18, she was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone’s 2004 “Hot List” issue, accompanied by the exclamation, “Hot, Ready and Legal!” The headline framed her as an object. It was the ultimate male gaze.
As Lohan stumbled into young adulthood, her personal life was exposed for even further public consumption.
But it was the rabid publicization of one of Lohan’s private possessions — the list — that truly exemplified the toxicity of the 2000s.
Not soon after the list was leaked, Lohan moved to the United Arab Emirates to protect her privacy.
The violent, negative attention that engulfed Lohan after the list’s release is only one example of the ways in which this sexist society drags women for making decisions about our own bodies. Her second coming — in the post-MeToo era — will hopefully bring her a different fate but we should consider ourselves lucky that Lohan lived to fight again, many other women would be forgiven for never returning to the public eye.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.