Background
Published in January 14, 2025, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman by Brooke Shields is a memoir in which the actress reflects on entering middle age and challenges prevailing cultural attitudes toward women of her age. Through candid storytelling, Shields explores personal milestones, including her experiences as a child star, her marriage and divorce, health struggles like a grand mal seizure, and her evolving identity as a mother of adult daughters, while weaving in research on ageism, women’s health, and midlife empowerment. She critiques societal invisibility of women over fifty, recounts both intimate and painful events, such as inappropriate remarks from doctors and harassment in Hollywood, and celebrates newfound confidence, autonomy, and perspective.
My Thoughts
This book was OK. I’m not really much of a Brooke Shields fan but I was interested in what she had to say. I didn’t know this was her 3rd book, but given the subject matter of the first two, I was glad I started with this one.
Like many child celebrities, she seemed to have a hard childhood full of uncommon and uncomfortable experiences. Her narrative of how she used to be a people pleaser and now just doesn’t care seemed to be a little over the top and I felt like she was trying to persuade herself more than anything. Several of her stories made me want to dig into it more as they felt one sided or possibly misunderstood.
While I have nothing against her and wish her all the success in her ventures, I came away from the book a little less impressed than I was before.
Recommendation
I’d skip this one.