Panning "Lindsay Reborn"

For all the hoopla ahead of time there sure has been a lot of silence since the release of the January/February issue of Playboy featuring a pictorial of Lindsay Lohan. I think most people are afraid of being critical; her fans have been satisfied because she actually followed through on the photo shoot; her critics didn’t have anything good to say about her in the first place. So, for the sake of rectitude I feel compelled to review the final product. It is one of the worst pictorials ever to grace (or disgrace) the pages of Playboy Magazine.

The first noticeable thing that catches your eye upon viewing the pictorial is that it was fashioned to re-create the iconic images of Marilyn Monroe done in 1949. Being an opponent of re-makes notwithstanding, that particular shoot is so iconic that it now stands alone as art and should therefore not be tampered with. Playboy may have the rights to the original but that doesn’t mean they have the liberty to fiddle with Tom Kelley’s masterpiece.

Full scrutiny of the individual photos suspiciously reveals that Lindsay has an unblemished body. I’m pretty sure that the attraction men have to her is due in part because she isn’t perfect, she has faults, physical and otherwise, and there are a multitude of paparazzi produced evidence that prove the fact. To attempt to pass her naked body off as that of a perfectly unblemished (freckle-less in fact), flawless, well-kept prima donna is offensive to our intelligence. In fact, the black-and-white picture shown on the playbill page in the front of the magazine with photographer Yu Tsai proves a much more freckled bare shoulder than any of those in the pictorial.

Any novice user of Adobe Photoshop is aware of its ability to alter an image. After experimentation with the program it is easy to conclude that one’s handiwork can certainly be recognized in the final product lest only slight modifications are used. Therefore, it astonishes me that an experienced publisher such as Playboy would let obvious altered photographs appear in their magazine. Skin tone and texture is one thing but these images just have an unnatural feel to their appearance, the obvious result of re-touching. Having been shot with a basically solid background gives even more credibility to that fact since it is much easier to make changes to images photographed in that manner.

This pictorial was aptly titled “Lindsay Reborn” since Playboy attempted to make her into a woman that she clearly is not. While Lindsay Lohan’s career and popularity will probably not suffer much from her naked body being displayed in Playboy, the integrity of the magazine, at least in my view, has been  forever compromised.