“Is Lindsay gay?”

That’s what the weekly gossip mags are asking — in giant World War III typeface — as Lindsay Lohan continues her openly affectionate friendship with deejay Samantha Ronson.

Who knows? (And don’t say, “Who cares?” because lots of people do.) Miss Lohan, who recently celebrated her 22nd birthday with Ronson by her side and a blazing cake with Marilyn Monroe icing, hasn’t seemed so pulled-together in, well, several years.

What we do know is that girl-on-girl romantic action doesn’t freak people out the way male homosexuality does. Every few years, lesbians actually become “chic” — remember the Gina Gershon/Jennifer Tilly movie, “Bound?” That sparked a wave of trendy gal-pal commentary, photo shoots and generally benign discussion. Of course, it helped that Gershon and Tilly are hot, and fulfilled straight-male fantasies. (I always hoped for a sequel — did those two tough cookies who outsmarted the Mob live happily ever after on their windfall?)

Far from destroying Lindsay’s career, this “is she or isn’t she?” gossip has put a sexy new gloss to her battered image. So, yes — maybe it’s clever public relations, and soon Lindsay will be back in the arms of some young man, with a twisty little edge to her red-carpet image. (The boyfriend she met while in rehab, Riley Giles, accepted big bucks from a British newspaper, and offered the opinion that Lohan was "a nymphomaniac." You can see why she might want to go another way!)

For now, whatever the truth of the relationship, Lindsay looks very happy. And I know none of you out there are so mean-spirited as to deny this girl — who has had so many troubles — some happy-time?

——————————

When the glossies are not speculating on Miss Lohan’s love life, they are pathologically monitoring the “bumps” of female celebrities, trying to figure out who’s pregnant.

Of the many new and mostly unbearable media inventions/obsessions, this one I find perhaps the worst. The phrase alone, “baby bump,” makes my skin crawl. Do the men (and women!) who edit and publish and caption these photos have no idea what a woman’s body really looks like? The feminine ideal, based on the continuous “bump patrol,” requires women to be literally concave and sport zero body fat. It would also help never to wear a shiny fabric, or indeed never move. The slightest shadow is a “bump” and by implication, if they are not pregnant, then they’re fat!

And while it is something of a myth that women were allowed to be much plumper back in the show-biz world of the mid-20th century, there was wiggle room; certainly not every star with a few extra (or normal) curves was immediately thought to be pregnant!

——————————

The Christie Brinkley divorce matter has been settled to the satisfaction of the former supermodel and former Mrs. Peter Cook.

During the trial, which Miss Brinkley insisted be a public event, I had a chat with one of New York’s venerable PR men. We were discussing this and that on the what’s-happening-now meter, and when we got to Brinkley he said: “She’s been married four times. And I am sure it is not all Peter Cook’s fault. Their story is just like millions of others. It is just that she is famous and loves publicity. But I don’t think she is getting the sympathy she expected from this trial.

“He probably wasn’t getting treated well at home, just like Alfred Bloomingdale. He wasn’t getting it at home, so he took that mistress. I think someone said at the time, regarding the Bloomingdale mess, “Why not go out for steak when all you get at home is hamburger?”

My eyebrows were on my hairline. I appreciated the historical leap and link between Peter Cook and his teenage lover to Alfred Bloomingdale and his infamous18-year-old, Vicki Morgan, but I was struck by the blame-the-wife theory. Did I mention this was a PR man I was talking to?

He ended the Brinkley critique with a philosophical overview: “Marriages in trouble have to do with only one thing — they get tired of having sex with each other and they don’t have enough going on to keep the marriage alive.”

We can file this under the eternal “Men are From Mars …” category.

——————————

Another conversation with a pal of mine who loves baseball … I asked what he thought of the Madonna/Rodriguez debacle. He said: “Nothing. There’s nothing there for somebody like me to think about. As long as he continues to play ball and play well, nobody cares. He’s worth his $250 million ten-year contract and sports fans are unmoved by gossip that doesn’t have to do with the game. They don’t care about Madonna and they don’t care about Cynthia Rodriguez, when you come right down to it. The feeling out there is, ‘Mrs. R. knew what she was getting into.’ Now she’ll collect big-time. The fans won’t turn on him unless he starts to crap out on the field. To them, he’s a god, and not confined to mortal obligations.”

——————————

Endquote: “I haven’t done it yet. It’s just like the years went past and I haven’t had it done. I think I will do something, but I’m afraid of what I’ll look like. But soon I will, because it’s gonna get ridiculous after a while!” That’s Cybill Shepherd on plastic surgery and/or Botox.

Cybill’s brave face still looks good. So far she has mastered the near-impossible feat for a beautiful actress: aging naturally.

Click here on this text to read my nationally syndicated daily column.