The Psychological Power Of A Makeover: Demi Lovato And Lindsay Lohan’s Reinventions

What year is it again? Lindsay Lohan is fresh-faced, booked, and busy, and gracing the screens of our theaters in a Freaky Friday movie. Demi Lovato is snatched, serving feminine grungy rocker chic, and reclaiming her she/her pronouns. 

Both of these Disney stars look like they’ve rewound the clock, not just by reversing signs of aging but by reclaiming old aesthetics and identities. It’s sparked a lot of discourse: speculation about facial and body enhancements, whether beauty is really a reliable signifier of health and recovery, and discourse about the discourse—is it appropriate to comment on women’s appearances at all?

Lindsay Lohan: The 2000s Trainwreck

Let’s start with Lindsay. I’ve always had a soft spot for Lilo. I’ve been an unashamed Lilo stan for as long as I can remember. A child actress nearly born into fame from such early modeling and acting gigs, but without the nepotistic factor to rob her of any of her right to claim it was all due to talent, I genuinely think Lohan was on the Oscar pipeline had she been able to keep her head above water. Of course, we know how the story goes. After a string of very successful commercial (mostly Disney) films like Get a Clue, Life Size, Parent Trap, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Freaky Friday, and Mean Girls, she began to slip into a world of partying, substance abuse, fraught relationships, and family turmoil, all in the public eye. 

Very abruptly, her image as a squeaky-clean, talented Disney darling turned into a tragic cautionary tale. Her career became overshadowed by DUIs, court appearances, jail sentences, probation violations, house arrests, and court-ordered rehab stays. Too many to count. Each time she tried to claw her way back to industry respectability, the stories kept piling up about her habit of showing up late to set or not at all—that she was costing production hundreds of thousands of dollars and was uninsurable. No studios wanted to hire her anymore. Her troubles seemed to be swallowing her whole, and she appeared allergic to accountability. 

By the 2010s, her life in the tabloids had usurped her career on the silver screen. Her reported run-ins with the law, continued tardiness to set, and allegations of being difficult to work with overshadowed several attempted comebacks. She was cast as Liz Taylor in Lifetime’s 2012 biopic, Liz & Dick, and as Tara in Paul Schrader’s 2013 film The Canyons alongside adult film star James Deen. Both were presented more as opportunistic media spectacles than serious artistic attempts. 

The public was outraged at the offensive casting of Lindsay Lohan as the late Liz Taylor when she hadn’t starred in a film in five years. The film was a commercial disaster, never taken very seriously because of its association with the Lifetime network. The director embraced the attention such a controversial casting entailed, seemingly more interested in working up “any press” than honoring Taylor’s memory or facilitating a legitimate return to industry esteem for Lohan. Her follow-up film, The Canyons, received even harsher reviews from audiences and critics, rated a dismal 3.8 on IMDb.

It feels almost cruel to say it outright, but pretending that the spiraling version of Lindsay Lohan still embodied youth and vitality is the greater dishonesty. 

After posing nude in Playboy and starring alongside a pornstar, Lohan’s image became a grimier one. Between her troubles, more scintillating adult projects, and yes, her seedier appearance, these choices combined to paint a picture of someone who was deeply unwell mentally, physically, and spiritually. Her once-effervescent presence now read as tired, strained, and troubled. It feels almost cruel to say it outright, but pretending that the spiraling version of Lindsay Lohan still embodied youth and vitality is the greater dishonesty. 

Her demeanor, voice, and eye contact all exuded chaos, mischief, and lack of self-reflection. It looked like someone in the depths of the darkness of addiction, unwilling to take accountability, always undercutting the severity of the situation, and shifting blame. If Jane Fonda said she was three hours late to set, she protests it was only three minutes; that every story about her is a tabloid fabrication. Between shifty eyes, an increasingly chaotic, unkempt appearance, even when appearing in court, and a body that was wasting away, Lohan’s repeated claims that she was recovered didn’t pass the smell test. 

Her inability to claw her way out of the deep hole she had dug for herself looked so clinically pathological that many speculated she might have deeper problems, like a personality disorder. By 2013, she seemed done with the clubs, the drinks, the drugs, and run-ins with the law, claiming she was ready to turn over a new leaf. I could tell she meant it this time, no matter how much the world continued to laugh at her or David Letterman poked fun at her vulnerability and pain on live national television. On the face of it, there was no reason to believe this time would be any different. She was about to enter her seventh court-ordered stay in rehab, and it was rocky, to say the least (her final rehab stint was more like a revolving door of three different rehabs).

Why would it stick this time, especially if she wasn’t even going of her own volition? But I sensed a fatigue in her spirit, crying out for help, asserting her desire to do and be better; to rise above the family and career trauma, to regain something whole in her pursuit of greatness. Her appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman before she went to rehab showed a poised Lohan. One who held her head high, expressed sincere, vulnerable maturity in the face of Letterman’s relentless digs and audience laughter. She emerged from that interview a deeply sympathetic character. I knew from her serious tone of voice, the sincerity in her eyes, the gravity of the words that escaped her signature raspy voice, that she meant every word. However, that doesn’t mean it would be a smooth journey or that there wouldn’t be relapses.

The Path to the Lohanaissance Is Paved With Fraught Reinventions, Shaky Rebrands, and Grit

What followed was a decade of uneven reinventions—her career a Sisyphean hill she’d tumble down, then claw her way back up. In 2014, Oprah gave her a docuseries, Lindsay, which was supposed to be her big redemption. It was impactful in that it was the first time Lohan ever publicly admitted to having a problem with addiction; that she knew she’d used up all her chances, that everyone had lost their faith in her. That this was it. It was a vulnerable but chaotic production characterized by missed shoots, arguments with her assistant and producers, documented slip-ups, and a miscarriage revelation. The show felt like the wrong tone to handle such a delicate issue like addiction, and hasn’t aged well on Oprah’s part, feeling more exploitative than anything.

She would move from country to country. First, London to complete a run of David Mamet’s West End play Speed-the-Plow, which was a promising return to professional acting, despite mixed reviews. She made headlines for an allegedly abusive relationship with Russian entrepreneur Egor Tabarasov, with videos leaking of him twisting her arms to grab his phone and her screaming on a balcony that she was in fear for her life and that he was always strangling her. Her next move was to Dubai, inspired by the country’s strict anti-paparazzi laws, but this inspired a wave of odd behavior: a bizarre new accent and attempts to assimilate into Middle Eastern culture.

She started donning headscarves and carrying around a Quran, sparking rumors that she was converting to Islam, rumors she was evasive about in a Good Morning Britain interview. Lohan claimed she found solace in studying different religions and cultures, the same way she finds solace in meditation. Her thirst for spirituality was evident, but she still seemed lost. 

In 2018, she shocked the world with a bizarre Instagram live showing her seemingly attempting to help a homeless Syrian refugee family, but her insistence that the mother’s children get into her car became a story about Lohan trying to kidnap Syrian refugee children, leading to her getting punched in the face. People speculated Lohan was back on drugs, but she successfully brushed the entire thing under the rug, barely ever acknowledging it had happened. 

She rebranded as a daytime club mogul with MTV’s Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club after opening a string of beach clubs in Mykonos and Rhodes (and a nightclub in Athens), but the show was canceled after one season. She did have a viral moment on TikTok, pulled from a candid dancing moment on the show, which the internet dubbed “do the lilo.” Following the pandemic, she released new music, launched a podcast, and landed a multi-film Netflix deal. Slowly, the tide was turning. She kept herself out of the headlines for personal drama, legal troubles, and other antics, instead only popping up when a new career stride was in the works. 

She returned to our screens in 2022 with Netflix’s Falling for Christmas, which was followed by two other Netflix films, Irish Wish and Our Little Secret, both released in 2024. She made a cameo in the Mean Girls remake and, in her most considerable career momentum yet, worked her way back into the good graces of Disney, reprising her role as Cady Heron in Freakier Friday. In between these projects, she got married to financier Bader Shammas, had a child, and buried the hatchet with long-time frenemy, Paris Hilton. 

After a string of successes, a miraculous makeover, and years of good press, she’s angling for more serious roles, openly admitting she doesn’t want to live in the romcom asylum forever. She’s most recently been cast in the Hulu mini-series Count My Lies alongside Shailene Woodley. A project from the same showrunners as This Is Us, based on the 2025 Sophie Stava novel. It sounds like a promising, meatier role that will likely slate her for a return to prestige film and television. This rehabilitation of Lohan’s career and public image has been so swift and so palpable that it’s been dubbed “The Lohan-aissance.” 

The Lohan-aissance: Reinventing Lindsay

Content creator Zoeunlimited, ‘your marketing bestie,’ distills Lohan’s comeback into four marketing principles that turned her from tabloid mess to marketable talent again: mystique, nostalgia, associations, and a visual rebrand. Zoe explains that a major pitfall of her brand was her overexposure in the media, and for all the wrong reasons. By retreating from the spotlight and leaning into that old Hollywood mystique as we entered the influencer age where oversharing is the norm, a “less is more” approach allowed her to quietly leave the spotlight in paparazzi-free Dubai and reemerge on her own terms, giving people enough time to forget, or at least loosen the vice grip on her baggage. 

After disappearing, she quietly rebranded by leaning into a holistic lifestyle focused on health, wellness, and spirituality. This time, when she was ready to make a comeback, Zoe explains, “she selectively used elements of her nostalgic legacy (particularly her early years of heartwarming, family-friendly feel-good comedies) as tools to reintroduce herself while adding new dimensions to her image.” This made Netflix Christmas movies and riffs off her most iconic roles in films, commercials, and social media posts, the perfect recipe for reminding people what she used to be known for before the party girl image. 

After demonstrating her reliability by conducting herself professionally, fulfilling her obligations, and growing up (by becoming a wife and a mother), a cascade of positive associations began to form. No longer was Lohan associated with partying, drugs, alcohol, rehab, bad influences, but major streaming platforms, Christmas, Mean Girls, growth, and success.

The final, and perhaps most controversial element of her rebrand, is, of course, the visual one. Lohan has been looking remarkably healthy in recent years, a stark contrast from the chaotic looks of her 2010s party girl years. Beginning in the early 2020s and accelerating between 2022 and 2025, her face seemed almost perpetually optimized: wrinkles and blemishes fading, features sharpening, skin appearing taut and luminous. Everything subtly refined, as if defying both gravity and time, especially as previously speculated botched fillers and surgery left her with what seemed like the opposite of the intended results.

While it sounds like a real triumphant underdog story, many aren’t so optimistic about the sudden, endless well of goodwill Lohan has stumbled onto. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the final rebrand to stick was one accompanied by a reclamation of youth and beauty, could it? After so many years of industry, media, and public resistance to a Lohan comeback that could stick, she was making headlines for how “rejuvenated” she looked, how she’s “glowing,” and at 39 years old, was “ageing backwards.” Debates erupted on social media: is it plastic surgery or “just good skincare,” as Lohan insists? 

She really has leaned into the old Hollywood playbook in just about every aspect, beauty enhancement gatekeeping included. That’s my and the internet’s speculation, of course, but it’s well warranted, given the drastic overnight physical transformation that’s been hyper-analyzed by plastic surgeons all over the internet. 

Some fans insisted her physical transformation was nothing more than the manifestation of sobriety, inner healing, and, well, good moral character. Uh oh, don’t people know you can’t suggest that beauty and virtue have anything in common? That became the new debate: are people only giving Lohan another chance because she’s easier on the eyes? Are only the beautiful indicative of goodness and worthy of our consideration?

As ZoeUnlimited’s marketing analysis notes, “a huge part of her visual rebrand also has to do with her new aesthetic choices. Soft glam makeup, natural tones, understated elegance perfectly aligns with the Gen Z and millennial preferences for authenticity and sophistication.” She explains that “as humans are highly visual creatures, this aesthetic shifts the visual cue away from her chaotic past and ties her to a broader cultural movement about minimalism, calmness, and reinvention.” And in her view, “subtle wardrobe changes seen in sleek suits, flowy dresses, and neutral makeup choices symbolize control, maturity, and a new era of stability.”

Demi Lovato’s Transformation Parallels Lindsay’s

Lindsay isn’t alone in this spiritual and cosmetic transformation. It appears to be the age of metamorphosis, thanks, in large part, to the revolution of undetectable cosmetic surgery. Demi Lovato’s rise to stardom as a Disney child actress, struggles with a broken home, substance issues, and cycles of recovery and relapse, all parallel Lindsay’s. 

Add to that severe mental health issues from a very young age, everything from eating disorders and suicidal ideation that started at seven and eight years old to self-harm and a bipolar diagnosis by 19 (though she’s later stated she believes she was misdiagnosed). Like Lindsay, she was in and out of rehab and inpatient psychiatric treatment over the years. Five times, to be exact, but had scarier run-ins with addiction. 

Namely, a near-fatal fentanyl-laced heroin overdose in 2018 that left her with permanent brain damage and impaired vision. She suffered three strokes, a heart attack, organ failure, and pneumonia from asphyxiating on her vomit. She also claims the drug dealer who sold her the drugs she overdosed on that night sexually assaulted her. 

It was a long road to recovery, but Lovato remained largely esteemed, respected, and sympathetic until a bizarre stint of cringe behaviors, appearances, and personality traits took hold sometime in 2021. She started presenting more androgynously, with a janky short black haircut which evolved into a mullet and an edgier rocker aesthetic, complete with a terribly unflattering wardrobe. 

Her identity seemed more confused than ever: coming out as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns only to arbitrarily revert back to accepting she/her pronouns because it was “absolutely exhausting” to explain. Her public image shifted away from her music and onto an annoyingly abrasive tone-policer and oversharer. Between shaming small businesses on social media for serving sugar-free frozen yogurt, which she claimed triggered her eating disorder and ruined her whole weekend, and doing a reality show hunting for extraterrestrials where she sings to an extraterrestrial entity to heal their sexual trauma, it was clear that Lovato wasn’t lying when she said she had suffered permanent brain damage.

More than exhibiting a distasteful and annoying aesthetic during this era, however, was a myopic, self-centered way of interpreting the world around her. Random beeps on an EMF detector in an abandoned brothel convinced her there was a “star person” in the room who had a distrust of men from sexual trauma. Lovato empathized with the nonexisting entity, “I have trauma too, so I feel you and I get it.” What are the odds? And that frozen yogurt shop? They weren’t just serving the demand of their clientele’s diverse dietary needs; they were “perpetuating diet culture” and setting back Lovato’s ED recovery, specifically. 

So, when Demi did a full 180 rebrand this year, laying this cringe-sona to rest for good, everyone noticed. She slimmed down, grew out her hair, leaned into her femininity (pronouns and all), and was suddenly glowing. You could see, for the first time in a long time, that this newfound confidence wasn’t being feigned. And, as a consequence, she became far less insufferable, even tolerable, perhaps even likable. She got married to Jordan Lutes, undoubtedly an upgrade from the alleged stealth hater and secret Selena Gomez stan she was previously engaged to, who ironically accused her of using him for publicity. 

She began poking fun at her past blunders, even returning to the scene of the froyo crime to cheerfully pose with a cup of frozen yogurt as if to say she’d outgrown the embarrassment of her trigger-happy past. By laughing at her old, tactless comments and social media cringe, she proved what healing self-esteem can do: it gives you perspective on how insecurity can warp into self-absorption and victimhood. Now that Demi is glowing, she’s laughing at herself. Naturally, speculation swirls about her weight loss. Ozempic has been floated, and as that drug’s popularity has skyrocketed, with even prominent fat activists suddenly slimming down, the body positivity movement’s silence has been deafening. 

Physiognomy: Beauty as Virtue

Writing for Dazed Digital, Ellen Atlanta observed that celebrities often deny cosmetic work, no matter how obvious it is, suggesting a deeply embedded cultural belief that natural beauty is a moral achievement. That there is a shame inherent in changing your face in an “artificial manner,” hence why celebrities often attribute jarring transformations to moralistic lifestyle changes or natural bodily phenomena.

“By framing beauty as a moral achievement rather than what it often is - a combination of genetics, resources, and medical intervention - we create an impossible standard. Women are expected to meet increasingly demanding beauty standards while maintaining the fiction that their appearance is entirely ‘natural.’" Even further, she argues, “the pressure to be beautiful becomes entangled with the pressure to be ‘good.’" Atlanta warns that these narratives are nothing more than recycled historical narratives, such as physiognomy, a pseudoscience that attempts to determine character from physical features, linking moral virtue to physical beauty. 

Yet, recent AI neural network studies have complicated this dismissal, showing facial images alone can be used to predict traits such as sexual orientation, autism, and even political affiliation. Atlanta’s argument is that beauty is an indication of nothing; it’s not worthy of our attention, praise, or positive association. Of course, we intuitively know this to be false. Physiognomy may be a discredited practice in modern science, but that doesn’t mean we don’t make regular, valid moral judgments based on people’s appearance all of the time. We often can intuit things about someone’s personality and temperament from a quick sizing up of their facial expressions and features.

We even have physiognomy-adjacent accepted practices in modern science, like the reading of micro expressions: the brief, involuntary facial expressions that reveal a person’s true emotions, even when they’re trying to hide them. Based on the furrowing of a brow or puckering of the chin, trained micro expression interpreters can predict the true thoughts and feelings on someone’s face with remarkable accuracy. Is this not an extension of the same physiognomic idea that we can make judgments about one’s temperament and personality from their appearance?  

Beauty isn’t proof of goodness, but it is a proxy for inner order.

Do we not often have intuitions about whether someone is a kind or cruel person based on the way they hold their face? Is there not a stereotypical giveaway for narcissism and psychopathy in the dreaded “dead eyes” of people who commit mass atrocities? Do people not express themselves through their clothing choices, or do aesthetics exist in a vacuum? Is an unkempt appearance and neglect for personal hygiene not a telltale marker of mental illness? Historically, shaving women’s heads has been a tactic of punishment and humiliation because of the link between a woman’s hair and her femininity. Can we really believe it’s meaningless when done voluntarily? That this is not a trauma response or a subconscious yearning for attention? 

The truth is that we all know someone’s spiritual, mental, and physical healing is closely linked to their appearance, in one way or another. Beauty may not be the end-all, be-all of moral character, especially as we can so easily alter our appearances artificially. External presentation is certainly a signal, though, and a meaningful one. Even the left tacitly acknowledges this, which is why the past decade has been marked by campaigns for visible representation of certain bodies, skin tones, and identities in media. It’s why brands now push size-inclusive marketing and casting.

We understand, on some level, that how people look communicates something beyond aesthetics. Just as a cluttered room is often a manifestation of internal chaos, an unkempt appearance, too, can be an indicator of disorder. Beauty isn’t proof of goodness, but it is a proxy for inner order. Denying this only makes it more obvious. And is the coexistence of goodness and beauty so terrible, in reality or in acknowledgment?

This isn’t advocacy for bullying people for what they lack. It’s an argument that healing, in all its forms, including the physical beauty that emerges with it, is worthy of celebration. The alternative is to glorify ugliness as a noble resistance to beauty. If the recent vibe shift in advertising, fashion, and entertainment is any indication, we’ve recognized worshipping ugliness to be a false god. 

It didn’t liberate us or produce better outcomes; it only emboldened our worst instincts. External ugliness amplified the ugliness inside of us, like the oppressive environment produced by brutalist architecture. Rejecting beauty is as absurd as protesting the awe inspired by a sunset. We don’t catch a glimpse of the horizon and think we need to exalt an uglier, imperfect imitation. We delight in its beauty for itself—a sudden glimpse of order, inspiration, and otherworldliness.

Closing Thoughts

As beauty becomes more accessible, people are growing less parasitic on societal expectations. It seems fair that to receive “pretty privilege,” one should have to do the work of achieving and maintaining beauty. If you’d like to opt out of this game altogether, more power to you. But often what people usually mean by deconstructing societal beauty standards is some communist ethos of beauty where we have to enforce equality of outcome, and no one is permitted to be more beautiful than anyone else. 

Not only this, but they still want to reap the benefits of concepts like pretty privilege by virtue of existing instead of accepting that the price of embracing ugliness as activism might just be invisibility. A physical transformation has always played an inextricable part of a spiritual transformation. It’s why women feel compelled to change up their appearance following a breakup with a dramatic haircut: it’s symbolic of a shifting inner state. For Demi and Lindsay, the shift towards beauty, poise, and elegance has reflected a more mature stage of life marked by greater stability, commitment, and personal responsibility.