Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields

Episode 1

Part One

Mon, Apr 3, 2023

Brooke's early life up until her early twenties is presented. Her somewhat controversial fame is as a sexualized child, most notably in Pretty Baby (1978) at age eleven. While she did act in other movies, she became renowned for these sexualized portrayals in subsequent projects, such as The Blue Lagoon (1980), Endless Love (1981), and a series of print and television commercials for Calvin Klein jeans. While these projects were directed primarily by older white men, Brooke's overall career was directed by her divorced mother, Teri, who always saw the beauty in her daughter and wanted to present it to the world. Despite Brooke's actual chaste personal life in part a result of she, in her youthful naïveté, disassociating herself from her public image, what happened to her could not be but affected by the public perception of her as this sexualized being. It was also affected by Teri's alcoholism, and Brooke being the household breadwinner, those two items in combination leading to Brooke seeing herself often as Teri's caregiver. Brooke attending Princeton would change her life in many of those people she would meet ignoring her in not wanting her fame affecting their interactions with her, and in being out of Teri's control for the first time in her life providing her with an opportunity to find her own voice.