Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination.

“And yet, no one knows what to do with me. After all, Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old. The sixteen-year-old Calvin Klein model? Time magazine’s face of the ’80s? It’s sacrilegious!”

Shields writes about the invisibility that comes with being a middle-aged woman, especially in the entertainment industry. Advertisers and producers are not inclusive of women at midlife, and the roles for Shields are limited. Many still expect her to be the teen model she was in the 1980s and are troubled when confronted with her age, reflective of a larger social problem with gendered ageism.

“But there is nothing to ‘overcome’ about aging. That’s the whole point!”

Shields contends that aging is not something to lament. Rather, aging is a privilege because it means that one has lived. Survival is something to celebrate.

“It’s freeing not to have external pressures or timelines around marriage or fertility or parenting, but it’s also confusing.”

Shields finds middle age to be a time of liberation from the responsibilities and obligations that come with youth and are specific to women, like the pressure to get married and have children before their fertility ends. Now that these concerns no longer dominate her life, she finds new freedom, but this new phase also means transitioning away from familiar and comforting circumstances.