Lindsay Lohan and Netflix have gifted us all with another Christmas movie starring the former child star and 2000s tabloid megastar. “Our Little Secret” debuted last weekend to much fanfare, but the buzz hasn’t been about the romcom’s cookie-cutter hijinx and comic misunderstandings. Rather, all the talk is about Lohan’s face.
She hit the red carpet to promote the film with a new blond ‘do, positively glowing — and looking noticeably different. “Is this woman a witch?” went one widely quoted social media comment. Many others marvelled at how this woman, who is only 38, appears to be “aging backwards.”
It’s a sign that we’ve entered what’s been dubbed “the undetectable era” of cosmetic enhancements on TikTok, where something fabulous has clearly happened, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.
What Lohan has or has not done to her face is no one’s business but her own; that is supposed to be the mantra these days. You do you. It’s a personal choice to fight the passage of time with an armament of esthetic procedures or allow your face to age naturally like Jamie Lee Curtis (alongside whom Lohan will star next year in their mom and daughter sequel rematch, “Freakier Friday”). But for celebrities, who live under very harsh lighting indeed, these choices inevitably become part of the public conversation.
Lohan has a particularly familiar face. She has been in the public eye since 1988’s “The Parent Trap,” exploding into the zeitgeist in 2004 with the magnum opus of teen politics, “Mean Girls.” At the peak of her fame, she was one of the young women in Hollywood, along with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who were chewed up and spit out by the paparazzi and the tabloids who paid them. Camera lenses stalked them everywhere, including right up their skirts as they left nightclubs, inevitably the worse for wear.
Like many of her peers, Lohan struggled making the transition from child stardom to stable adulthood. In her twenties, she was court-ordered to go to rehab six times, but has reportedly been sober for a decade now. In 2022, she married investment banker Bader Shammas; the couple now live in Dubai with their 17-month-old son, Luai. Careerwise, she solidified her Lohan-aissance when she signed a creative partnership deal with Netflix in 2022.
Lohan’s comeback story has multiple generations of fans cheering her on, and the response to her new look has been almost universally positive.
When we see a famous face, we can’t help tracking how it’s changed. “We often have this iconic image of a celebrity frozen in a moment of time. Say, Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun,’” says Toronto esthetic surgeon Dr. Jamil Asaria. “These people come and go in our lives. As celebrities age, sometimes the sparkle, that eternal youthfulness, gets lost.” Sometimes, it is esthetically revived.
The human eye can detect small increments of change, says Asaria. “The difference in measurements of symmetry between people we see as extraordinarily beautiful and the rest of us, according to the golden ratio, is only 1%.”
That kind of finesse is the goal now. “We are really entering a golden era in plastic surgery,” says Asaria. “There has finally been a culmination of more sophisticated taste, both from the patient and the surgeon, combined with advanced techniques that are virtually undetectable.”
With the new approach to cosmetic enhancements, “the outcome is fresh and healthy, yet even an educated, discerning eye can’t quite pinpoint what was done.”
That’s likely why we are seeing all this speculation around what celebs like Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera and Donatella Versace have had done. “There are a thousand doctors out there right now, commenting, posting and streaming about their best guess.”
Asaria isn’t interested in participating in conjecture about celebrities’ cosmetic surgery, but he does want to explain why it’s happening. In the past, he says, “when someone underwent eyelid surgery or a facelift, yes, they looked younger and arguably better. But it was a little more obvious that something was done.” The difference now is that many patients are starting sooner, doing smaller tweaks. “They don’t have to wait until the signs of aging are advanced, and then undergo a major overhaul.”
In the past decade or so, Lohan clearly had a lot of filler done. Thankfully, we have come to realize that overemphasizing one or two features doesn’t make someone look better. People are moving away from this look, says Asaria, which he describes as “puffy, overfilled faces, balloon cheeks and sausage lips.” Filler can last longer than previously thought, and can have a cumulative effect, leading to exaggerated puffiness. To that end, there is a lot of filler-dissolving going on right now. “Patients and esthetic practitioners went overboard,” Asaria says.
The new results may be more subtle, but the work isn’t necessarily less invasive. “The pendulum has swung back to surgery, where the goal is to elevate and reposition sagging that has occurred with time,” says Asaria.
The secret to untraceable work, in part, is combining several procedures at the same time. “We are doing a deep plane facelift, which we know will last longer and look impeccably natural, and combining it with a subtle few millimetres of a brow lift,” Asaria says, “removing a pinch of skin around the eyes with a blepharoplasty, and then adding a tiny bit of fat to replace lost volume, and finally treating the skin with laser resurfacing to buff out etched-in lines and wrinkles.”
Lohan herself said “I just take care of my skin,” in an interview with Allure in October, saying that she’s a fan of Avene moisturizer, and Peter Thomas Roth eye patches. She did mention non-invasive medi-aesthetic treatments. “I’ve tried Morpheus, IPL, and lasers,” she said. “I try not to do them too much, but I’m always interested in what else is out there.”
Most clinics are big on laser treatments these days. “Lasers are better than any cream,” says Asaria. “If you keep it up, every six months, you can prevent or delay surgery.” Most are fractionated, which means they target a specific fraction of the skin, creating tiny microtraumas, which heal quickly with less downtime. “It isn’t like doing a whole home reno in one session.”
Different lasers target different things, from lines and wrinkles to uneven texture and pigment changes. “You get a uniform colouring and a smoothness,” he says, which describes the Lohan we see on recent red carpets.
In general, 38 now is visually very different than 38 in the 1990s. “People have children later these days, but they look more youthful,” Asaria says, “It’s lifestyle, with people generally cognizant of what they eat, working out, taking care of themselves. They are also aware there are things you can do to maintain your appearance. Pilates will only get you so far.”
He describes the new esthetic goal as subtle elegance with an emphasis on individuality. “Less and less people are coming in with the goal of looking like a generic Hollywood tabloid sensation.”
