Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman

rocedure could have on her fertility. She only found out from her woman physician years later when she was going through in vitro fertilization. Shields finds the lack of informed consent reprehensible. Eight years later, she faced another unsavory situation with a male doctor who performed additional work without her consent when she underwent a labial reduction procedure: “I struggle to believe it’s a coincidence that both of these really disorienting medical episodes (not to mention the interrogation about my salt intake after my seizure) occurred with men” (84).

Thus, when Shields was later hospitalized with a broken femur, she was prepared to self-advocate. Girls and women are socially conditioned to be polite and deferential, which inhibits them from advocating for themselves for fear of being deemed problematic. Older people, research shows, have more experiences in healthcare settings that lead them to practice self-advocacy more frequently. When an emergency room doctor performed surgery on her broken femur, Shields could tell that something was not right in recovery. This time, she argued for a reassessment, in the face of dismissals, and eventually got a second surgery to correct the first doctor’s mistake. Yet she still “felt bad for him” (89). Women are consistently expected to comfort others, even those who harm them.

She listened to her providers’ conversations while hospitalized, so much so that she was able to ask informed questions about her care, leading one physician to suggest that she had spent too much time on the website WebMD: “We are the experts of our own experiences. And yet as women we are not always encouraged to familiarize ourselves with our own bodies” (92). However, with age comes the knowledge and confidence to self-advocate, even if women should not have to do so.

Women are taught from a young age that they are imperfect and should fix their physical flaws. Shields admits that she played a role in perpetuating “unrealistic beauty standards” as “the cultural norm” when she was a young Calvin Klein model (95). She did not realize that she was contributing to unrealistic expectations at the time, and she was simultaneously a “victim” of the same standards she helped to uphold (95).

Girls begin critiquing their looks around age 12, and this self-criticism continues into adulthood. Shields’s age has not silenced her inner critical voice but has “turned down the volume” (96). Beauty’s definition has become more nuanced with age, moving beyond the physical. The public deemed Shields beautiful when she was a child: “My face was anointed” (98). She modeled, but only in print because she was not thin enough for runway shows. After she appeared in a Calvin Klein ad as a teen, her body became “public domain” (99). Shields believed that her value lay with her looks, which eroded her self-confidence in other areas. Today, the public still lays claim to her face when others criticize her for aging, with some even telling her daughters that their mother “used” to be attractive (99). Shields, however, no longer seeks outside validation because “it doesn’t do much to change how you feel on the inside” (100). In fact, she feels like the same person she was at 20. This self-perception, known as “subjective age,” has a positive impact on mental health, according to research, but can also create a disconnect between what people see in the mirror and how they feel.

Shields’s confidence in her aging body contributed to her motivation in writing her books and the establishment of her hair care line, Commence. She and her middle-aged friends felt overlooked despite their confidence. She wanted to create a platform for women over 40 to share their experiences.

Today, Shields focuses on physical activity for strength and mobility more than for appearance purposes. She also pursues activities based on her enjoyment, and she understands that others’ critiques of her aging reflect the critics’ issues with age: “My getting older is a reminder that they’re getting older, and perhaps they haven’t come to see their forties and fifties as the empowering rite of passage that I do” (107). Shields continues to care for herself so that she can remain active and healthy but is not obsessed with maintaining the body and face of her youth.

Shields experienced her first hot flash while filming in Savannah, Georgia, in 2016. She was unprepared for the experience and did not realize that it was a sign of menopause: “I loved turning forty, but fifty sounded old. I hadn’t yet realized that all my preconceived notions of what that age represented were rooted in myths rather than reality” (110). She feared “going downhill” because of the myths and mystery surrounding menopause (111). Society treats women past the age of fertility as irrelevant and undesirable. Research confirms that most women get little information about menopause from physicians; women who are informed get their knowledge from friends or the internet, and most only get this information after they have entered menopause. Physicians are not well educated on menopause and are ill-equipped to discuss it with their patients. This silence makes the experience more frightening.

Shields only raised the issue of menopause with her gynecologist a couple of years after her first hot flash, as her symptoms progressed. She began hormone therapy, which alleviated her discomfort, but she found the end of her fertility difficult to come to terms with because society perceives women who can no longer procreate as irrelevant. Shields, however, finds freedom in this change and notes that it is less scary than pre-menopausal women perceive it to be. Knowledge and respect for aging are essential to ending negative stigmas surrounding menopause and preparing women to enter a new phase. She asserts that women are more than their bodies.