Brooke

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to look like Brooke Shields. I can’t fully explain this. She is only five years older than I am, and so I suppose my growing-up followed just a few years behind hers. And because she was so famous for her beauty starting at such a young age, her face must have been everywhere in my young life. I thought then (and if I am to be honest, I still do) that she was the most beautiful woman ever. I think I appreciated the fact that she had those dark, thick eyebrows because she was a famous beautiful woman whose physical appearance diverged from the blonde ideal. That ideal female appearance, I had been taught from everywhere, [still] requires the removal of all facial hair, eyebrows sculpted to be narrow as a leaf. It also [still] includes body thinness to the point of emaciation, and although Brooke certainly has always been very slender, I think I always saw a voluptuousness in her that felt a little more human.

Brooke’s beauty was important to me because I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t aware that my face and body were not right. I can’t ever remember knowing anything other than that I was too fat and too ugly. I was (and am) dark, I had (still do) eyebrows too thick, a body too thick, a nose too big, no visible cheekbones, and a double chin. And as early as age three I remember being constantly mistaken for a boy: I had a little short bowl haircut with bangs, and my mother dressed me in tomboy corduroys and sweater vests crocheted by my grandmother. Being often misgendered as a small child sent me a message as clear as a billboard that I was unrecognizable as female, too ugly even to be the right kind of girl. At age five I refused to allow my hair to be cut and maintained that rule for years in hopes that at least very long hair would clue people in that I was female. That part worked but it didn’t keep at bay the constant messages that I looked bad and wrong.

I distinctly remember when the film Blue Lagoon came out in 1980 when I was 9 years old. Turns out this was the same year that Brooke’s Calvin Klein ads were everywhere, on every building, in every magazine, and the commercials were everywhere on TV. The United States was inundated with Brooke. I fell for it and I fell for her.

By the way, in the film Blue Lagoon she was fourteen years old and in the photo above she is fifteen years old. Fifteen.

I remember watching Blue Lagoon on TV with my best friend Cassandra and being transfixed by beautiful Brooke and the gorgeous hunky blonde Christopher Atkins. Even at age nine I knew I was never going to be able to attract a boy that good looking. Good looking boys all my life had not only ignored me but gone out of their ways to insult me, including all the boys I’d ever had crushes on. So, I knew that only girls who looked like Brooke could get those beautiful boys and men. I remember being mesmerized and fascinated by the sex scene in Blue Lagoon. I had crushes as a very young child and I think early on a romantic heart. Even now I have friends who have said to me, don’t you enjoy having a crush on someone? The answer is no, it’s excruciating for me to have crushes and always has been. Because I also can’t remember a time back then [and still] when I thought anyone would ever find me attractive. My fascination with Brooke having sex with Chris Atkins on TV was wrapped up – even at the age of nine – in a belief that I would never experience that.

Envy is a very familiar emotion for me. I grew up with a mother who was sick all the time and odd-looking because of the ravages Lupus and the treatments for it visited on her body; people stared at her out in public all the time. I had a father who loved me and was present in my life but had moved out of the house when I was five. And being certain I was physically repulsive, it was easy for me to envy any girl who was pretty and not fat, any girl who had a mother who wasn’t sick and wasn’t so strange looking, any girl who had a father who lived with them. Because I was stuck with a whole mess of circumstances that no one would ever choose. Later in adolescence when I came to understand that my mother and I were living on very little money, I learned to envy anyone who had more money than us, which was almost everyone I knew. It was especially my friends in junior high school who had the money to dress better than me and lived in apartment buildings in Manhattan with doormen and elevator men, not like me living all the way up in the scary Bronx at the last stop on the subway in a third floor walk up apartment. Kids who had any or all of these things were to be envied with an unwavering certainty that their lives were perfect. Any girl who was pretty and wasn’t fat had a perfect life, it was obvious to me. (I still think this, actually. Just last night I went to a family style restaurant with my girlfriend, and we sat across the table from a slender, beautiful blonde and I immediately wrote her off and decided that she would snub me anyhow because I’m fat and unattractive. This isn’t how she turned out to be at all.)

In my teens my mother (who knew I loved Brooke Shields) told me admiringly that Brooke was so smart she went to Princeton for college. This fact just made it official: Brooke Shields was perfect and had a perfect life. For my whole life including now, if you ask me how I would like to look I would tell you I want to look like Brooke Shields. Period. Even my closest friends don’t know this about me because it’s embarrassing. But it’s true and always has been.

Over the years, I lost track of Brooke even as she remained my ideal. By the time she was in Suddenly Susan, I had sworn off TV; I lived without a TV for many years from my teens through my 30’s. I did hear at one point that she was speaking out about mental illness and her struggles with postpartum depression and I admired that, as I also thought, well finally I have something in common with Brooke (depression). But I hadn’t really thought about her much until I stumbled on her Instagram just a couple of years ago and saw that she has somehow aged. She appears to be happily married to an ordinary looking man. (This is something that makes me furious. I have a core belief that male celebrities are allowed to be ordinary looking but the women aren’t. I mean, we can count the female celebrities who aren’t gorgeous one one hand, right? And, we very, very rarely see a gorgeous male celebrity with an ordinary looking woman. You always see gorgeous women celebrities with totally ordinary-looking older dudes with love handles. Try thinking of really famous female musicians who aren't beautiful. Now picture in your mind Tom Petty, Neil Young, David Crosby. Try to imagine if Brad Pitt showed up on a red carpet with a chubby ordinary looking woman fifteen years older than him. She’d be receiving death threats on the internet within minutes.) And Brooke has, of course, two beautiful teenage daughters. (This is the moment I say to myself, I really really loved my dad but why didn’t my mom pick someone more good looking so I didn’t have to withstand an entire lifetime of looking like I do? I am sad to admit that I really truly do think this, more often than you’d guess.) Brooke looks like she’s had some plastic surgery but how can I object when her whole job most of her life has been to be beautiful by other people’s standards? She looks happy. But then again, she always did.

A couple of months ago through her Instagram, I learned that there was a new documentary about Brooke. My beloved Brooke was back in the limelight. During my regular check of the new Fresh Air episodes I saw that she was a guest, speaking with Terri Gross to support the film. I listened to that episode alone. I watched the documentary with my girlfriend, who by this time knew about my secret lifetime love of Brooke.

Listening to 57 year old Brooke and watching the film, I was gobsmacked.

Here was perfect Brooke Shields with the perfect life talking about her overbearing, alcoholic mother. I mean, I knew Brooke had a problematic mother but I had thought Terri Shields was just a run of the mill obsessive stage mother with a gorgeous child. Turns out it was much worse than that for Brooke. And Brooke’s good looking Dad wasn’t around to love her all her life like my ordinary looking dad was.

I also listened and watched as Brooke talked about being sexualized as a young child with her mother’s approval. I watched clips of men on TV like Merv Griffin, older middle aged men, leering at a ten year old Brooke on talk shows and asking her disgusting, creepy questions about her looks, her body, about sex and romance. She was TEN YEARS OLD. I saw little Brooke smile like a pretty doll at these men and giggle when they asked a particularly offensive question. I heard Brooke’s voiceover in the film saying that she didn’t know she had any other choice of how to behave, she had been coached to be a beautiful girl in public all her life. I watched and listened in horror as Brooke narrated her experience of acting in the film Pretty Baby at age eleven, when she had to kiss an adult male actor on camera. It was her FIRST EVER KISS. Of course it was, she was FUCKING ELEVEN YEARS OLD, and the actor told her not to worry, it “didn’t count.” My mouth fell open while she described being forced to be in a sex scene at age fifteen in the film Endless Love, when she had never had sex but was told she had to act out an orgasm on camera, and not knowing what that meant, and Franco Zeffirelli, who was an old man at that time, pinching and twisting her toe so she would scream at the right moment. I watched Brooke talk about being raped by an unnamed powerful man in Hollywood in her 20’s. I saw her cry as she talked about her first boyfriend, which came AFTER she was raped, and how she cried every time she tried to have sex with him. I saw her cry on screen as a 57 year old woman as she talked.

Brooke. BROOKE! How could this happen? How could you, the perfect woman, be so unhappy for so long? How is it possible that being the most beautiful woman who ever lived didn’t give you the perfect life? You were wanted by everyone. How is it possible that attracting everyone in the world only made you abused and traumatized? This must mean that it turns out being beautiful doesn’t solve everything. How could they have lied to us so completely, Brooke?

This also makes me think, with a great deal of grief: what does this mean about me feeling soul crushing sadness all my life for being fat and ugly? I have never been sexually assaulted. I have never been raped. I had a good father and a good, loving mother and neither of them forced me to do anything because they both wanted me to do whatever I wanted, whatever would make me happy. I even ended up having [consensual] sex eventually!

I realize now that I cheated myself out of a lot of sexual experiences all my life because I thought I was so repulsive no one wanted me. Or I was too afraid to be rejected (which did happen quite often). Or I didn’t even bother to try to “hook up” because why would anyone want me? But actually it turns out that I have had two wonderful long term partners who both called me sexy and beautiful. Most noteworthy is [current] partner #2 who also thinks I am the embodiment of everything she finds hot and she feels she won the jackpot. It’s true. I think she’s touched in the head, but I am grateful. It’s true that sometimes when I tell someone how she feels about me, sometimes they sort of laugh and say they’re glad for me and “everyone should have someone feel like that about them at least once in their lives” which is meant to be kind but feels really condescending. (Believe me, NO ONE IS AS SURPRISED AS I AM.)

How much time have I wasted wishing I never had to look in a mirror or see a photograph of myself?

It turns out maybe I never should have wanted to look like Brooke Shields because it turns out it’s really dangerous to be the most beautiful woman ever.

Oh Brooke. I am so, so sorry I didn’t understand until now. I mean, I have had some really beautiful female friends and I know from talking to them how complicated their looks make their lives. That they often can’t have the kinds of authentic friendships with men that I have always had. That many of them have been sexually assaulted or abused. I know this. But somehow these new revelations about you, Brooke, just broke me and made me see this all so much more clearly.

Beautiful women of the world: I am sorry that I still hate and fear you. Gorgeous men of the world: I’m sorry I still assume you all find me horrifying looking, especially because it seems to me that all the beautiful men choose only the most beautiful women.

To myself at age 3 and 5 and 15 and 20 and 30 and 40 and 52: I am so sorry that even though I’m a feminist revolutionary I can’t help feeling I am less valuable and lovable because of the way I look.

Thank the Goddess I turned out queer or I might never have made it through.

I know a lot of you must be really tired of hearing about this stuff from me. But over the past couple of years I have been feeling almost worse than I ever have about how I look, while at the same time feeling like I might be close to some breakthrough. And the only way I know how to process all of this is to publicly keep turning this stuff over and over like a piece of beach glass I am trying to see through.

Brooke, I hope you really are happy now, and I hope you love yourself and I hope you love your ordinary looking husband a lot and that he understands and respects you and that your beautiful daughters take control of their own lives and turn out fierce as fuck.