In an editorial slide-show titled Lindsay Lohan: A Metamorphosis, the Washington Post‘s Liz Kelly revisits the many looks the 23-year-old starlet has cultivates over the years. But this is no style retrospective treatment, a la Madonna‘s chameleon-like fashion choices or Tyra‘s wacky wigs. This slide-show is focused exclusively on each stage of Lohan’s career, and whether or not she looked ugly in it!

Let’s see how Kelly ratesLohan’s attractiveness over the past five years:

2004: “Channeling a bit of Britney Spears’s ‘little girl gone bad’ mojo.”

2005: “Bleach blond”; “rapidly shrinking frame”; “eating disorder”; “possible drug abuse.”

2006: “Apparently at a healthier weight”; “curvy, brunette.”

2007: “Healthy-ish.”

2009: “Bathing suit-clad”; “victim of her own Sevin Nyne brand tanning mist”; “a blond, haggard Lohan.”

Lohan is a celebrity, and part of being a celebrity is having your appearance intensely scrutinized by gossip columnists. Still, why is the Washington Post devoting editorial space on its front page that can be reduced to one catty Hollywood insult—-Lohan looks “haggard”?

According to the slideshow’s introduction, the product was an exercise in edginess. It reads, “Lindsay Lohan has been, dare we say it, looking a bit rough of late. Maybe it’s the bleached hair or the fake tan, but it’s getting harder to remember that Lohan is only 23.” Apparently, publishing a fluffy celebrity slide-show filled with Perez Hilton-ready body-snarking now constitutes a “daring” editorial decision.

Actually, expressing that women look old, unattractive, unhealthy, too fat, too thin, or too blond is pretty much par for the course, as far as media coverage of women’s bodies are concerned. The Post‘s celebrity sensibilities are actually beginning to wear a bit—-dare I say it?—-old.