Lindsay Lohan: Perhaps, Momma doesn't always know best!

Perhaps, we just don't get it. But, for the life of us, we cannot fathom why people continue to idolize Marilyn Monroe. Arguably, she was, perhaps, the most celebrated of all actresses. But what exactly was she celebrated for? From everything we have read and seen of this dead icon, she led anything but an exemplary life! In fact, she was the archetype of all we ought to strive not to be. She was a pathetic figure actually, one with the sexual promiscuity of an alley cat, who allowed herself to used and discarded, ultimately, by our famously philandering 60's President, John F. Kennedy, and his erstwhile brother, Robert. Shortly thereafter, she succumbed to a rather undignified death from a drug overdose under what continues, to this day, to be questionable circumstances.

By anyone's standards, Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. However, she was the epitome of the Hollywood "bad girl", the dumb blonde prototype on which Hollywood continues to capitalize through the likes of a Paris Hilton. More importantly, however, and what many still refuse to acknowledge fully, is that Marilyn's spirit continues to invoke a demonic curse, if you will, upon the lives of those who become entrapped into channeling her persona. This is not some paltry euphemism either. For people do channel spirits. In fact, many do it as a profession, promising advantage and personal gain to all who pay for services rendered. More often than not, however, people get drawn rather unwittingly into the rituals that delve them further and further into occult practices. But, don't be fooled. These practices are nothing new; we have been warned against them from time immemorial. Indeed, any "gifted" tarot-card, palm, or tea-leaf reader, or medium worth their salt knows exactly what is speaking to them about your future, and your prospects... and it isn't God, or His angels. Moreover, the unspoken element in your vicarious thrill – and what you are not told explicitly by your trusty medium – is that you have also opened a portal to and made a pact with evil; you have unleashed a "piper" – often, several of them. And, ultimately, this piper will demand "payment in full". Typically, it is untimely death, destruction, and mayhem that is unleashed into your unsuspecting life. More Anna-Nicole-Smith-train-wreck-of-a-life anyone?

And so, it is with much concern, as parents, that we saw the recent nude pictorial done by Lindsay Lohan for New York magazine. Recreating Monroe's legendary 1962 final photo shoot for Bert Stern, Lohan posed for the spread with the veteran lensman himself on Feb. 5 at the Hotel Bel-Air. The idea for shooting Lohan as Monroe came, according to the New York magazine article accompanying the photo spread, from Stern himself. Stern claims his interest in Lohan stems from the fact that "she had a lot more depth to her" than one might suspect from watching her movies. But such a rationale, according to Yona Zeldis McDonough in her commentary for Newsday, "seems just a tad disingenuous." Writes McDonough:

". . . Why Lohan, why Monroe, and why now? Consider the timing: The resonant strains of the 1960s seem to be echoing through the zeitgeist. Barack Obama is being hailed as a latter-day John F. Kennedy (who just happens to have been linked romantically to Monroe); key members of the Kennedy clan have offered their public endorsement. The legacies of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson have been a prominent topic of dispute in the Democratic primary. Fidel Castro, whose ascendancy coincided with Kennedy's, is in the news again, this time for surrendering his stronghold on Cuba's leadership.

Is the Lohan-Monroe spread yet another of these parallels? If so, what are these pictures telling us? Are we to understand Lohan's artifice as ironic, a kind of sly, tongue-in-cheek parody of Monroe and all that she represented? Or are the New York Magazine pictures hopeful and, in some goofy way, optimistic, as if the idealistic dreams of that long-ago decade can be re-created along with the studio lighting and the hair?. . . "

". . . there is something unsettling, even creepy, about watching Lindsay, not just playing Marilyn, but playing this Marilyn, the one whose life was spinning quietly but inexorably of control. . . . "

There is, indeed, something unnerving about that photo shoot. To be sure, there's no avoiding the parallels between Monroe's tragic fate – death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs – and that, recently, of Anna Nicole Smith, who idolized and wanted to become Marilyn, and, now, that of Lindsay. In the past two years or so, Lindsay's life has seemingly spiraled out of control. She's just 21 years old but, already, she's had three stints in rehab for alcohol and drug abuse, been convicted on several counts of D.U.I., and does not appear to have any discretion whatsoever with respect to how she, shall we say, dispenses her sexual favors. But the most troubling to us is the fact that, in all her naked splendor for New York magazine, Lindsay had the full stamp of approval of her manager-mom, Dina! In an interview with People magazine, Dina comments:

"It was very tastefully done. I respect the photographer as an artist, so I look at them artistically. For him to call Lindsay 46 years later and to say can you recreate these photos is an honor. I looked at it as art, and as Lindsay doing a character. So I don't look at them like it's Playboy; she was being a character. So if you look at it that way, you can look at it as a mother. Trust me, I wouldn't have sent my 14-year-old to the set [if the shoot was in bad taste]. And obviously Lindsay wouldn't do anything with her sister there, that was risqué."

"If you look at it that way, you can look at it as a mother"? What about those who wont "look at it that way"? Perhaps, she should've asked for advice beforehand from Lindsay's father, Michael, who, having spent time in prison for a long list of criminal charges and a D.U.I., could have told them both what some inmates do with this kind of "tasteful art". That is Dina's most damning statement, we think, for it is an indictment and recognition of her compromise in personal integrity. Moreover, is this really the kind of example that Dina wants for Lindsay's 14 year-old sibling, Ali, who for most of her life has looked up to her older sister because of her career, the fans, the fame and now wants all of those things for her herself? Really?

Can we, please, just dispense with the inane sycophancy and drivel that passes nowadays as celebrity journalism and call a spade, a spade? Lindsay's pictorial is not just risqué. It is downright pornography. And it is destined for the voyeur market regardless of the fact that the pictorial spread was commissioned by, and appears in, what some would otherwise consider a reputable publication. Just ask any frat-boy on any college campus across America, whose sensibilities aren't as "refined" as Dina's, and he'll tell you. And so, to feign disguise of degenerate behavior through sleights of hand (and scarves, and bed sheets, and PR articles in People magazine that surely serve only to appease Dina's conscience) doesn't change what this debacle ultimately is. I think it was Julia Roberts in her role as the prostitute "Vivian" in the movie Pretty Woman that so artfully made the observation that transferring her profession and craft to another, more tasteful, location only changed her geography.

It is one thing for a clearly disturbed, misguided young woman like Lindsay to have lapses in good judgment. But what's her mother's excuse? Has she lost her personal grip on reality? What is her motivation for pimping out her daughter in such a shameless display? More money? More fame, despite the fact that this kind of depraved behavior has already sullied her daughter's reputation? Or, does it have more to do with the vicarious expression of an unfulfilled dream that Dina herself craved yet failed to attain in her own life? Whatever the reason, it is almost criminal for this woman – this mother – to aid and abet her troubled daughter on the path to self-destruction.

Where are the lessons on virtue here? What about the noble character and integrity that we all should be trying as parents to inculcate in our children, who are our future? What good could possibly come out of this? Judith Newman, in her November 2007 indictment piece for Vanity Fair entitled Celebrity: Moms Gone Wild, pegs it correctly when she contends that a look at the women behind not just Lindsay, but also Paris and Britney, reveals quite clearly that, if your child is your meal ticket and career booster, it's hard to be the parent she needs. Perhaps, momma doesn't always know best!

EDITOR'S NOTE (02-29-08): According to The Daily Mail- UK, a week after posing in her nude photo spread as Marilyn Monroe, Lindsay Lohan remains in "seductress mode."