"Image-wise, it's certainly a departure for Lohan."
Everyone's favorite tabloid darling seems to have classed things up...at least, for some definition of the word "class". Lindsay Lohan, the infamous child star turned problem child, did a Playboy shoot whose contents recently leaked into the internet. The photos are remarkably vintage, with Lindsay taking on more of a Marilyn look than a strung-out Paris one. Her bleach-blonde hair and exaggerated red lips make her seem less like herself and more like an archetype she usually fails to reach.
Image-wise, it's certainly a departure for Lohan. She built up her adult career by being sort of girl-next-door attractive; ginger and cute to be sure, but not outright bombshell. The whole peroxide and lipstick look is somewhat dated as is. She--or her stylists, or publicists, or whoever makes decisions for addicted celebrities looking to regain a grip on the public eye--must have had a plan for adult feminization in mind. She's no longer high-school good looking, but real world attractive.
Playboy itself is an interesting choice on the part of the Lohan camp. I can't imagine people really buy the periodical much anymore, at least not for the traditional reasons, what with the gamut of porn across all of the internet. Playboy's more of a theoretical institution than a titillation these days. To feature in it is more of a tame career prod than anything else. It's not quite as negative a scandal as a leaked sex tape or nude photo, mostly because it's an intentional display of sexuality. But it's also a curious anachronism. This isn't Maxim, after all, where modern and aggressive modes of sexuality are imposed on the centerfolds. It's an excessively stylized Playboy shoot where the old world modes of beauty are distended so far as to remove a certain level of sexuality from the images.
I mean, she doesn't look real. She looks like a wax sculpture, some kind of barely-living doll. By mimicking classic beauty so closely, Lindsay looks completely unlike herself. Maybe that's her strategy for re-entry--to dissociate herself visually from what she's used to being seen as, to start in the '60s and work her way back up to the present. Maybe she'll even start acting again in movies that aren't crap. Or maybe she'll be at the beck and call of the public eye, bouncing around to whatever gig her agents think could possibly bring in revenue at the time. I'm not sure how much agency she has in her career, but this is at least an interesting move.