I remember vividly the first time I saw The Parent Trap starring Lindsay Lohan. I was in awe of this cute redheaded girl who was playing BOTH twin girls. I wondered why they didn’t hire my favorite actresses at the time, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, but was nonetheless impressed with the girl who I would later come to know as LiLo. 

Lucky for Lindsay, she quickly became known as more than just “that girl from The Parent  Trap” (although I suppose sometimes she’s “that girl from Mean Girls”). She made movies, she made music, she then made … leggings? Point is, she seemed to be everywhere.

Nowaday, she is just about nowhere — well, nowhere good, unless you count tabloids and television shows. But even in magazines and on entertainment news shows, she isn’t really of top interest. 

Ever since her breakup with Sam Ronson and potentially with the concept of lesbianism entirely (who knows) she has lost top billing to people like Kendra Wilkinson and the Kardashians.

In the last few years, Lindsay ceased to be of interest to the public eye and garnered a reputation for being a wild, druggy and irresponsible actress who couldn’t make call times. 

Shockingly, no one really wanted to pay her the millions she had been receiving before. Her reputation preceded her work, and her movies were no longer big buzz teen chick flicks, but dark films or ones that made it right to TV, like Labor Pains.

So now Lindsay is being forced to answer the question that all former child stars are forced to face — “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” (The Clash were clearly singing about child stars in Hollywood.) It looks like she thinks she should stay. 

Why else would anyone put themselves through an interview with Niecy Nash about being a celebrity hoarder? (I would just like to say I have no pity for someone who can’t manage to clean up the piles upon piles of the free designer clothes and shoes they get, sorry.) Why else would someone exploit their past and present for publicity to any media outlet that will listen and pay up?

 Lindsay’s star power rose … and now it has fallen. She will probably never regain the super-stardom she once enjoyed during her Mean Girls days, but she holds on nonetheless. While I would imagine it is certainly difficult to go from a superstar to a “regular person,” it isn’t impossible — lots of former stars have done it. 

Plus, it isn’t even like Lindsay has “star quality” anymore — she is merely a celebrity who has become famous for being famous. Her music and movies are no longer at the forefront.

Kurt Cobain summed it up nicely when he quoted Neil Young in his suicide note — “it’s better to burn out than fade away.” No, Lindsay should absolutely not end her life, but maybe the best thing for her to do at this point would be to leave the spotlight. She is in a world where she doesn’t have the paychecks to keep up with her partying, her father exploits her every chance he gets, and gossipmongers mock her for getting dissed by Sam Ronson. Makes a “normal” life sound pretty good now, doesn’t it, Lindsay?