Lindsay Lohan recounted for Good Morning Britain hosts how she was “racially profiled” at London’s Heathrow Airport while traveling to New York. Lohan said that the incident stemmed from her wearing a headscarf, which she said an airport agent asked her to remove.
“When I was flying to New York recently, I was wearing a headscarf and I got stopped at the airport and was racially profiled for the first time in my life,” the former child star and Mean Girls alum told co-hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. “[The agent] opened my passport and saw Lindsay Lohan and started apologizing but said, ‘Take off your headscarf.’”
Lohan said that she complied with the request but then described how shocked she was, especially considering, “How would another woman who doesn’t feel comfortable taking off her headscarf feel? That was really interesting to me.”
I don’t think “racially profiled” is the phrase you’re looking for—that is, assuming you were even targeted for wearing the headscarf, Lilo. But no doubt biases run rampant in airports. Muslim women who choose to wear hijabs (or other coverings) have long recounted their own difficulties traveling (Google is a plethora of information; you barely have to look). And one would imagine that things have not gotten any better in light of President Donald Trump’s “Not-a-Muslim-Ban” Muslim ban.
The 30-year-old added, “It was strange ... I’m from New York, born and raised. I was a little intimidated.”
Lohan said that she was wearing the headscarf because she was coming from Turkey and chose to do so “out of respect” for the Turkish women she met on her trip.
“I was ... leaving Turkey and ... when I see certain people, I feel more comfortable acting the same way as the other women—that’s just a personal respect issue for me that I have,” she said.