Brooke Shields questions why her mother allowed her to pose naked aged 10
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WARNING: This article discusses topics that some may find distressing.
Brooke Shields has questioned why her mother allowed her to pose naked when she was just 10 years old.
The 57-year-old actress opens up about the sexualisation she faced as a child, while discussing the wider context of beauty standards facing women today, in her upcoming Hulu documentary Pretty Baby.
Brooke is bravely confronting some of the troubling roles she was made to do as a child, including playing a prostitute at the age of 11, in a movie sharing the same title as the two-part doc.
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When she was 14, she appeared in The Blue Lagoon, a film that featured a lot of nudity.
Although Brooke had a body double, there were other scenes where her hair was glued to her chest, and there's no denying the sexual nature of the movie was highly inappropriate for a young teen to star in.
She also posed nude for Playboy when she was just 10 years old, a move that she questions in a new interview with The Sunday Times.
Significantly, Brooke struggles to understand why her mum, Teri Shields, didn't intervene, with the actress' own daughters Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16, giving her a new perspective on the situation.
When asked if she'd allow her children to perform similar roles, Brooke said, "No. That was... that was hard for me, to not justify my mom to them, but when they asked me, I thought, 'Oh God, I have to admit this.'
"I mean, I could say, 'Oh, it was the time back then,' or 'Oh, it was art.' But I don’t know why she thought it was all right. I don’t know."
Teri passed away in 2012 after struggling with alcoholism, something that garnered press attention at the time.
As an only child, Brooke would try to protect her mum.
"It’s so innate when you’re an only child of a single mother," she continued.
"All you want to do is love your parent and keep them alive for ever, and so I wanted to protect her.
"And by virtue of protecting her, I was justifying everything, and that solidified that bond between us."
Brooke's daughters joined the conversation where they explained that they would never watch Louis Malle's 1978 film Pretty Baby.
Rowan told the outlet, "It’s child pornography! Would you have let us [do that] at the age of 11?"
Despite the fact that Brooke wouldn't dream of allowing her daughters to go through what she had to, she doesn't feel resentment towards her mum.
"Everyone always wanted me to be angry with her, but anger was just too sad for me to take when I looked at how insecure she was," she said.
As well as exploring the exploitation she faced, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields will also demonstrate the star's journey to discovering her power and agency.
The two-parter drops on Hulu in the US on 3 April, with an international release date expected shortly after.
Topics: Celebrity, Documentaries, TV And Film, Brooke Shields
