“Looking back, I’m not even sure how I survived all of it.” – Brooke Shields reflecting on her life as a child model and actor in the first episode of the two-part series, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
A fascinating new Hulu series was recently released in January 2023. “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” is a documentary of Brooke Shields and her life as a child model, actor, and young woman in the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s. With the topic of child exploitation and objectification in the media being an intense subject of debate, we are now reassessing the way women and girls in the industry have been portrayed and treated for decades. In “Pretty Baby,” Brooke Shields offers viewers the perfect lens to dissect the pervasive problem of child sexualization in the media. Through her exaggerated experiences as a woman, from hypersexualized child-whore, to being used as a proselytizing virgin- Brooke Shields is a symbol of how young girls are taken in and chewed up by the industry. Average women experience, misogyny, objectification, and sexism daily however, it is only worse for women and girls in the public light.
Women are treated horribly in the modeling/acting industry
Brooke Shields is a symbol for female actors everywhere who are treated horribly by the media. What happened to Shields wasn’t just about her, it’s about all women. Over the last few years, former child actor Natalie Portman too has shared her experiences of being exploited as a child.
Portman claims that her experiences as a child actor were “detrimental” to her mental health and development. In a recent episode of the podcast, Armchair Expert, she said that at an early age, she understood she was cast in “sexualized” roles, which made her build walls around herself to avoid being objectified.
These roles destroy women’s sexuality
Natalie Portman was 11 years old when she starred in “Léon: The Professional (1994),” where she played a 12-year-old girl who develops a relationship with a grown man. “I was definitely aware of the fact that I was being portrayed … as this Lolita figure,” Portman told Dax Shepard, the Armchair Expert host. She says being portrayed as this character “took away from my sexuality.”
As a teenager, Portman felt like she had to put up a facade “At the age, you do have your sexuality, and you do have your desire, and you do want to explore things, and you do want to be open,” she said. “But you don’t feel safe, necessarily, when there is, like, older men that are interested, and you’re like, ‘No, no, no, no.’” After Portman began receiving unwanted attention from older men, she began acting “conservative” and “serious,” out of fear.
Fear of unwanted male sexual attention is very common for young women. Often girls around the ages of 12, 13, or 14 start to develop physically, and with that comes receiving unwanted attention from older men. This can be a very scary, uncomfortable feeling. However, it is exemplified and accepted when young girls are sexualized so much in the media, it is sending the message to men that it is okay to fantasize about girls that are so much younger than them.
Brook Shields became a sex symbol after she starred in her first Movie, Pretty Baby. “Pretty Baby” is a 1977 film directed by French filmmaker, Louie Mal. Shields plays “Violet,” Susan Sarandon’s young daughter who she raises in a brothel in New Orleans, Louisiana. Shields’s character Violet develops a sexual and emotional relationship with a much older photographer, played by Keith Carradine. Shields was 11 years old when this movie was made. In the film, Violet’s virginity is auctioned off to a lot of older men and sold to a man for $400. Violet is a child who is portrayed as loving sex and enjoying sex with older men which is rarely the case for children.
Women learn to dissociate
Similarly, to Portman, Shields has also talked about pleasing the public and pushing her desires away and not knowing how to form her own opinions. Girls are always under pressure to look perfect, meaning having a certain body type, hairstyle, makeup, and flawless eyebrows. When women are systemically made to be the objects of someone else’s desire, their feelings and voice are overlooked.
“I was just born with this face, I didn’t want to think about it I wanted to think about things that I could control, things that could’ve happened without beauty.” Brooke also said she would try to avoid mirrors. While beauty is expected from women and being pleasing is something young women learn, it can also be a trap. Men are allowed to be attractive, successful, and behave how they please with much less judgment from the media, however, women are held to much higher standards.
Hollywood does not like women to be smart, they want to portray them as objects which becomes dangerous for young women because they lose their sense of themselves and in turn, lose control. That’s why it’s so common for child stars to go off the deep end. Being attractive and being pleasing is part of what young women learn and that’s how Brooke’s oversexualized façade was created by the media.
Both Shields and Portman had to learn how to dissociate from the underage sexualization that tainted their childhood. In the documentary, Brooke says she learned how to compartmentalize at such an early age. Dissociation is a disconnection between body and mind which protects body and physic but at enormous costs, it’s hard to feel in control of yourself because you’re not feeling anything.
Brooke’s image and roles in Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon made her the male fantasy
In “Blue Lagoon,” a 1980 movie, Shields is 14 years old and stranded on an island as a young child with her cousin, played by Christopher Atkins. In this movie, the two children strut around in almost no clothing. Atkins is more naked than Shields throughout the movie although only Shields is criticized because she is a woman. The two kids have a sexual relationship and there is a lot of misogyny portrayed in the movie, as Atkins’s character, Richard, is very controlling and even slaps Shields’s character, Emily once with no retaliation. Some would describe the story as like Adam and Eve because the two are discovering sex for the first time. However, this film stirred up a conversation regarding Brooke Shields’s actual sexual awakening. Even though she was only 14 years old, people began to be fascinated with Sheilds’s sexuality and would publicly discuss her sex life and ask her questions regarding it. Brooke Shields reveals in the documentary that they wanted to make Blue Lagoon into a reality show and sell her actual sexual awakening.
“The irony was I wasn’t in touch with any of my sexuality I was raised catholic they taught me to wait till marriage. I had a lot of shame around a lot of it.” Shields said.
Harvey Weinstein and the Me-Too Movement
Following Hollywood’s reckoning with sexual harassment and misogyny, in 2017, Portman began using her platform to show all the ways sexism and sexual harassment consume Hollywood. At the 2018 Women’s March, Portman spoke about being sexualized as a child actor, as well as the “sexual terrorism” she experienced at age 13 after The Professional was released.
“I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me,” she said. “I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe.”
In Hollywood cinema girls are valued for their looks, virginity, and sexuality. The problem is that there are mostly male directors controlling and destroying young girls. What happened to Brooke had nothing to do with her, it is misogyny. The bottom line is that Hollywood is sending the message to young girls that you must be attractive, and desirable to straight men, and the message that their core and intelligence are not desirable nor valuable. Both of Brooke’s characters in the two movies catered to men.
One major problem with sexualizing women and valuing them for their looks in Hollywood is that the public gets the idea that they own these women and objectify them. We see a lot of these circumstances come to the surface in the 2018 Me Too movement. Men in power take great advantage of actors. For example, Harvey Weinstein, former producer, and co-founder of Miramax entertainment company, now convicted sex offender, was accused of assaulting or harassing at least 100 women between the years of 1980 and 2015.
Emily Ratajkowski is another one of the many examples of women who face sexual assault by the men they work with. Ratajkowski, model, author, and actor rose to fame after starring in Robin Thicke’s 2013 music video, for his hit “Blurred Lines.” In 2021, in addition to publishing her book, “My Body” in which she discusses how she was exploited in the industry by men. Ratajkowski also exposed that Thicke groped her during the filming of his music video. Ratajkowski continues to receive lots of unfair criticism from the public because of her career which portrays her in a sexual way and misogyny.
The bottom line is that there is an overwhelming amount of misogyny toward young girls and women in the media. What’s important is that women are sharing their experiences. However, even though Weinstein was arrested for assaulting many women, there are still many men out there who are getting away with just as much. The Me-Too Movement, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, and My Body are excellent places to start.
“The entirety of my life over and over and over again it was she’s a pretty face she’s a sex symbol and that always just seared me because the nerdy kind of dorky person who was creative and intelligent was at the core of who I was.” Brooke Said in Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
