I have a little thing for Lindsay Lohan.

When I look at Lindsay, I’m overcome with a powerful feeling. Disgust? Admiration? Both?

She ODs. She wears lawn-chair-print clothing. She loses 30 pounds in a week. She’s late on the set. She uses poor grammar. She’s orange-colored.

But I have a soft spot for psychos. Lindsay rose high in my heart after her erratic behavior when she broke up with Wilmer. Skeletor, non-Skeletor, Lindsay makes losing weight look like throwing a yo-yo.

After “Mean Girls,” la Lohan became my household saint. She’s like a younger, sluttier, less interesting but way more approachable Kate Moss. Plus, the little Lolita and I have a lot in common. We’re same age, we both have red hair. Immediately, I bought leggings and started to carry bigger bags.

In understanding la vida Lohan, one must know that Lindsay’s most necessary accessory is her mother, Dina, who is in last month’s Harper’s Bazaar.

Like many features in a fashion magazine, the emphasis is on the visual. Dina Lohan wears the clothes well but the woman could spearhead a sunscreen campaign as whole families could reside in the folds on her face. She is what we call a cougar. Regardless of what she looks like, out of this woman’s magical gams emerged the lovely Lindsay, the impish little thing with the strange fashion sense and open Ecstasy habit.

The focus of the piece was on this cougar’s prowess as a mama. The American public has made up its mind about Dina and Lindsay’s obvious disregard for social norms. Because her daughter acts like a nitwit and Dina lets Lindsay, at 21 years of age, fall on her head and publicly embarrass herself, we’ve decided she’s a bad mom.

In the interview, Dina describes her life as a mother as a dream. “I’m just living the dream,” she said gripping a glass of bubbly. With those words, Dina handed the critics a loaded gun. What kind of mother has a dream that involves her child’s drug use, illicit sex and unwarranted fashion risks?

But I’m asking, what kind of public doesn’t see the distinction between a child and an adult? What kind of public judges a parent who lets their adult offspring live their own lives?

I’m sick of the judgment.

It’s easy to slam into mothers like Dina who wear silly clothes and go clubbing. What isn’t easy is to realize that we’re dealing with adults here on all sides. Dina is under no obligation to play the “mama role” any longer.

There’s a radical moment in a young person’s life when they begin to see their parents as people. The American public, it seems, has had no such moment. Instead, there’s a rigid expectation for parents’ behavior in this country and it is way off base.

This week I received a package from my own mother-unit. She sent me three journals that she kept daily through my early years. Every I time I ate, drank or spoke, the woman wrote it down.

“Gushing noise in Tecla’s head. C-Scan ordered.”

It’s easy to define the role of a parent when we are young. Flipping through those pages, for the first five years of my life, my mother acted in a very “normal” way. But that role is prescribed. Vitamins, exercise, sweet words, bedtimes, bags of Goldfish and unabashed support. That’s the deal when you have little kids. It’s easy.

But that prescription eventually expires and over the course of our adolescence, we develop very different relationships with our mothers and none of it’s prescribed.

My mother is now radically different than the one who penned those pages fifteen years ago. She’s hard to get on the phone. She’s not home on school nights. She travels, she drives the car of her choice. She’s ditched the mom jeans in favor of slimming Sevens. She blows me off to go to the beach.

When a mother acts contrary to cultural norms, we douse her with judgment. But adults have adult relationships. Like nearly everyone else in my life, I have an adult relationship with my mother. It’s private and it’s good. We talk now about men, health, clothes, career and diet. We talk about the stuff of life. She is my best friend the best resource I have. As far as the mother-duck-safety-stuff goes, I know now at twenty-one that dancing on tables and illicit sex and overindulgence has gnarly consequences. But I also know that when I fall on my head, while she won’t stop it, I count on my mom to be around to pick the splattered brains and still be my biggest fan.

I don’t want the American public to script my relationship with my mother and it’s unfair to do that to Dina and Lindsay.

I don’t need any more vitamins. Instead of relying on her for food and to put my hair in a bow, I call my mother for a hand. I call her to ask whether or not I’m in the right or the wrong. I call her with confessions, for cooking suggestions. I call her for advice. Her job duties have shifted from lifeline to guidance counselor. I can only suggest that Lindsay might do the same.

Commenting on Lindsay’s uncanny ability to irritate is old hat but I think there’s a real lack of commentary on the unwavering support of her mother. The public’s impression of Dina is unfairly critical. She shows up, she’s her daughter’s biggest fan and that’s the role of momma after her babies turn twenty.

While I don’t know the Lohans personally and will continue to make Lindsay jokes, I admire their unique mother-daughter relationship and Dina’s refusal to conform to the behavior prescribed by spectators. Twenty-one-year-olds don’t need a diaper change. Instead, we need an adult who thinks we’re pretty great.