Brooke Shields - Exploiting Herself or Exploiting the Public?

I just sent this to the Brooke Shield’s official website. It ain’t fan mail, but let’s see if we get a reply to it from Brooke.

The police have stormed London’s art gallery The Tate Modern to grab the picture of a ten year old Brooke Shields standing naked in a bath tub. The picture is seedy; Brooke’s eyes are hooded in black ‘hooker’ make-up and her thin body is slick with oil. Brooke’s mother disseminated the photo (some would call it kiddie porn) to get her daughter ‘noticed’.

Campaigners against child abuse have lampooned the Tate Modern for having housed the ‘art’ in the first place. Michele Elliott, founder of Kidscape argued ‘Brooke Shields was 10 years old when this picture was taken. She could not have given informed consent to it being used.’ Michele Elliott then poured scorn on the intentions of the Tate Modern, ‘if you are using a picture of a naked child to bring people to your exhibition, then you are exploiting that child. It's as if they are using a 10-year-old girl for bait.’

While I agree with Michele Elliott, that the ten year old Brooke could not have given ‘consent’, the root of this exploitation is that Brooke’s mother organised for her daughter to be photographed in this way. Brooke’s mummy thought it would be a good career move, and that the photo would help establish Brooke as a model. Brooke’s mother was a failed actress, and is understood by many to have tried to live her own dreams through her daughter. But ambition, greed and an insatiable desire for celebrity are not good enough reasons for turning your kid into a porn model.

But the point now is that the photo, laconically and ironically titled Spiritual America did have a room to itself in the Tate Modern. The photo and its title are not entirely intended for personal titillation (although paedophiles would be drawn to it) but the photo is meant to symbolise the robbing of a child’s dignity, all for the cause of celebrity and money. In a sense the child is sacrificed for the ‘religion’ of money and fame. The exhibiting of such a photo in a gaudy, gold, glitzy frame is meant to challenge us. But why do we need such challenging? Why do we need to be disgusted, so disgusted that we will sneer at such photography? Disgust is the normal reaction, but what’s really disgusting is that there are parents willing to facilitate the porn-ification of their children. If a parent won’t protect their kid, who will? And isn’t it really quite simple, if Brooke’s mother had not had the photo of a sexed-up Brooke taken in the first place, would it have ever muddied the walls of the Tate Modern?

The photo, however doesn’t just drip with oil, it drips with deceit. The photo captures Brooke’s then innocence and childhood naivety, but is designed to make her look ready for sex; and frankly growing children should not be thought of as sexually available. But the photos had the result of getting Brooke into the movies. Woody Allen gave Brooke a role in Annie Hall in the flash back scenes. The bath tub photo also influenced a French film director who gave Brooke a role in the film Pretty Baby. Brooke’s first proper role was as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby. Aside from the nude shots in the film, photos of Brooke were always a little unseemly. The cover photo of The Brooke Book shows a twelve year old looking Brooke with naked thighs, and a under developed cleavage on display.


Next Brooke became the ‘virgin’ face of Calvin Klein. The notorious caption with a pouting picture of Brooke Shields was ‘nothing comes between me and my Calvins’. Nothing comes between me and royalties more like.

Of course there was then rapacious interest in Brooke’s sex life, or lack of it. If you pose provocatively, then you will provoke prying minds. Ahem, did she go whore-image or virgin –image? Brooke became a renowned public virgin. In defying the expectations of someone who was expected to be sexually permissive in real life, Brook later decided to flaunt her virginity as a means of attention grabbing. She starred in TV commercials warning girls against early sexual involvement. I scoured you tube, but cannot find any of those TV commercials. Maybe Brooke just did the-keep-your-virginity commercials for the money. All very bow-down-to-Mamon. All very insincere. Maybe those commercials with Brooke exhorting girls to stay virginal never existed.

Then Brooke wrote about keeping her virginity in her life story ‘I'm willing to admit I'm a virgin because I feel so strongly about it...Love is what I want to wait for. I don't feel the need to experiment.’ Yeah, but she could have been talking about playing with explosives. There’s no concrete reason such as dislike of disease or heart ache or pregnancy. It does smack of someone who is afraid of sex. And living the chastity lifestyle, and staying a virgin out of fear are two very different things. What might explain Brooke’s literary love of her own virginity is that she made an agreement with her publishers to remain a virgin for some years after the publication of the book.

Brooke’s publically announced virginal status was a bit of an act. It gave the publishers of her book something to grab a headline with. And if she had been serious about encouraging others to keep their virginity, why did she continue to pose so sexually? Perhaps, using her body to excite was just a way of life. Learned when she was ten. To begin with, her naked body was used as ‘bait’ for fame, and then her virginity was used to make her seem pure and wholesome, but always in a ‘who can have me?’ pesky prep girl way. Such girls are sometimes called ‘teases’, and are also an embarrassment to other women.

Now to bring this sordid tale full circle, Brooke came out earlier this year and said she regretted not losing her virginity sooner. Guess what, Brooke’s tale of lamenting losing her virginity at the grand old age of 22 was splashed across ‘serious’ newspapers. Who really was exploited, Brooke or the public? During the course of her career, Brooke never gave one consistent moral message on virginity or sexuality. Embracing sexy photos at ten to become known, then doing the virginity thing to win the heart of the public. Manipulating public interests, but never asking what messages she was giving women.