Jonny gets Punked: Does Lindsay have an eating disorder?

Ever wonder how those tabloid articles exposing some star's latest plastic surgery or eating disorder get written?

Well, funny you should ask.

A writer working on the story calls up a plastic surgeon and shows him two pictures. The star a year ago and the star today. The most infamous of these was the Michael Douglas pics shown all over the tabloids a few months ago. Then the writer asks the plastic surgeon — who, by the way, has never treated the star — to comment on whether he thinks the star had surgery.

Most plastic surgeons love to get their name in the paper, particularly when framed by "Top Beverly Hills plastic surgeon (Insert Name Here) says...", so they venture a guess.

Thing is, if someone has a completely different nose or lips or has miraculously lost significant amount of wrinkles, it's a pretty easy guess.

Not so easy when it comes to bodyweight.

I, who love to see my name in the Enquirer as much as the next guy, have commented on both Oprah's lipo / non-lipo and one of the Olsen twins' eating disorder / non-eating disorder for the National Star.

So I know the drill well. It's a variation of the plastic surgery routine.

The writer calls up a nutritionist (for example, me) and shows them pics of a star at two distinctly different weights. Then they ask one of two stock questions: Do you think she had lipo? Or, do you think she has an eating disorder?

Problem is, unlike a new face, you really could get a new body the old fashioned way, without surgery or pathology.

So the truthful answer to the question ought to be: "I have no friggin idea."

If I — or any of the dozen other nutritionists/doctors/trainers they routinely go to to ask this question — were really honest this is what we'd say: Get a life. There's simply no way to tell what someone's private life is like from looking at a publicity pic. Ms. Celebrity d'Jour could have gotten her fat sucked out at Dr. Feelgood's on Robertson Blvd or they could have worked it off in the gym. You'll never know. And people with eating disorders are remarkably adept at hiding them, often even from loved ones. Sorry, cholly, but no can tell. It would be like me showing you a picture of someone having fun at the poker table in Vegas and asking you to comment on whether they have a gambling problem. They might, but you sure couldn't tell from looking at a snapshot.

But I'm a sucker for media, so when a new mag called last week and asked me if Lindsay Lohan had an eating disorder, I (sigh) said, "send the pics over."

They sent me a posed shot of a really nice looking, healthy looking freckled faced teenager in a black dress that obscured her body. I scanned her face and for the life of me she looked perfectly OK, if maybe a little "caught in the headlights" typical of any teenager these days. I told them that as far as I could tell, she looked fine.

Two days later, I saw the cover of two other tabloids — US and the Star — with pics of Lindsay and her pal Nicole Ritchie. Both looked like death warmed over. Now Nicole Ritchie is hardly a sympathetic case, being known around these parts the quintessential poster girl for obnoxious entitlement and self-absorption of the "Do you know who I am?" variety, but the poor thing looked like Diana Ross on crack. Lindsay didn't look much better. I haven't seen anyone in Hollywood look this sickly since Portia De Rossi was on Ally McBeal.

So now, some hot tabloid is going to come out next week with an article on Lindsay Lohan that quotes "Top LA nutritionist Jonny Bowden" as saying that Lindsay looks perfectly healthy at a weight of... what, 80 pounds? (I’m guessing.)

And you know what? I still don't know for a fact if Lindsay has an eating disorder. How in the world could I?

But I do know that there's something really screwed up about a system that tells a slightly plump teenager that she needs to look like an Auswich survivor in order to be attractive.

And something even weirder about a system that produces kids who actually believe that.