Wednesday

September 14, 2011

Somniay Bascomb

15-year old Ali on Extraordinary Women photoshoot.

 

If you don’t know who Ali Lohan is and the last name isn’t ringing any bells, she is an American fashion model, singer, actress and 17-year old little sister of infamous actor Lindsay Lohan.  Unless you’re into fashion news, you probably never even heard of her until now and probably wondering why she’s making such a huge splash in the headlines these days. What’s the reason, you wanna know? It’s her new, questionably improved face that’s making all the tabloid buzz.

When you’re a model, I suppose it should be a good thing that your face is drawing so much attention but with Ali Lohan, born Aliana Lohan, it’s actually the opposite. She is sporting a look so strikingly different from before that everyone is speculating the teen must have had plastic surgery. When I saw her photo on E! News for myself, I had to wonder if everyone else had lost their eyesight! I’m not bound by the laws of pc journalism so I’m just going to say what others are too afraid to say; When I did a before and after, it was pretty freaking obvious that her drawn-in, bony facial features were not the result of some surgeons’ handy-dandy scalpel, but were instead a direct result of what I like to call “the failure to eat” syndrome. Starving yourself has a very distinctive look and can do to the face and body what no plastic surgeon could ever stand to accomplish.

Ali, who recently signed with a modeling agency, ignited an internet firestorm after she underwent a serious physical transformation and photos of her new, noticeably thinner frame were released. Her bird-bone thin arms and skeletal face got the rumor mills pumping, swearing somehow that (and I can’t understand how) Ali must’ve fell prey to a surgeon’s knife trying to achieve that modelesque, sunken deep-eyed look. I’m sorry but there is only one thing that can give you a look so unique and so dramatic and that thing is called starvation.

17-year old Ali's new look. But is she healthy?

Even her father went on a rampage about being sad to see his daughter looking so thin and malnourished. (Not his words- mine.) He must have read my mind when he released a statement that, in a nutshell, Ali hadn’t gone under the knife at all… she just plain old wasn’t eating. Her mother fired back saying that he needed to mind his own business and concentrate on his own sobriety and she is probably right. She, alongside big sister Lindsay backed Ali’s startling new look, saying how beautiful Ali’s new look is and so-on and whatnot. But you gotta consider the role her mother may have played in the early demise of Lindsay Lohan’s character, personal life and ultimately her career. So given her parenting history, her opinion should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps I am being judgmental. I don’t know. This is just MY personal take.

Now, the modeling agency representing Ali Lohan naturally declared that she absolutely did not undergo surgery; Ali’s new look is “natural” and “pastoral” they say. Steve Honig, Ali Lohan’s representative, told PEOPLE magazine, “Her success as a model lies with her natural looks and she has no interest in changing that,” the statement continues. “During the past two years, she has gone through a normal teenage growth spurt that has made her taller and slimmer.” He also went on to explain that the “slendering” composure of the face and head is natural for a girl growing up and they typically see this in all the models they represent. They even explained away her eyebrows, chalking it up to a simple matter of all young girls’ eyebrows growing in thicker as they come of age. (I don’t remember that happening to my eyebrows… I must’ve missed that important milestone. No wonder I’m not a model. :( ) They also clarified that as a girl gets older, she tends to slim down, shedding most of her “baby fat”.

Apparently, the baby fat disappears and a young, Skeletor-like adult face is supposed to appear in its place. Thick ass eyebrows and all, right?

Are you kidding me?

Listen. This is way more than some natural, “pastoral” rite of passage by which every young girl must suffer. I know what a girl who has stopped eating looks like and this girl fits the mold. If all of their young models have undergone the same skeletal remodeling, then perhaps someone should position a microscope over the health and care they are really receiving at this agency. This is looking far too ruinous to me…or maybe I’m just passing judgment again.

I will say this: I do believe that her modeling agency reps are telling the truth when they say that Ali has not undergone plastic surgery. Surgery had nothing to do with the look that girl is rocking, honey. The scary transformation that has occurred is far from some natural, coming of age thing and is in no way evocative of the “pastoral care” (whatever the hell that means) that her agency is claiming they give her. I love fashion as much as the next super girly-girl, but no one should put their lives at risk for the sake of superficiality and there is nothing- and I mean absolutely nothing natural about starving yourself.

Can we please start a trend in the modeling business that markets looking and feeling healthy as beautiful? Perhaps then we can get a handle on all of our little girls literally starving themselves to death in order to feel gorgeous and accepted.

Or perhaps I’m asking for too much.

Before & After