In ‘Brooke Shields Not Allowed to Get Old’, Actress Addresses Female Aging: NPR

Brooke Shields at the New York City Ballet in October 2024. Her new book, Brooke Shields won’t be allowed to grow old released January 14, 2025.

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Actress Brooke Shields’ new memoir, Brooke Shields won’t be allowed to grow old hitting shelves Tuesday, is a reflection on aging and agency as a woman — particularly focused on those, like Shields, who grew up in the public eye.

Shields, 59, got her start in the entertainment industry as a model when she was just months old. When she was 11, she appeared in films like Alice, sweet Alice and soon after, Beautiful babywhere she posed naked. In her memoir, she writes that appreciating herself at 59 is her “most provocative choice.”

In the book—and in an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel Monday—Shields discusses the importance of self-advocacy for women, especially in medical fields. Reflecting on her own experiences, she also opens up about having labia reduction surgery – and waking up to find that the male doctor had also performed something called “vaginal rejuvenation” (the medical term that this tightening process generally refers to is vaginoplasty) without her consent.

“I was horrified, but also at a loss,” Shields writes in the memoir. “I didn’t want to sue this man — or maybe I did lack to, but I didn’t feel like I could – because I didn’t particularly want to talk about my lady parts one more time on the front page of every newspaper.”

On the advice of her gynecologist, Shields had chosen to undergo a labiaplasty, a procedure that would reduce the size of her labia, to relieve chafing-like discomfort she had experienced since high school.

But when she woke up, as Shields writes, she had been given “a younger vagina” – which was not something she wanted or consented to. She did not tell her husband about it for several months, she writes.

“My shock and disappointment was so acute, but it felt so familiar. It just felt like, oh, here we go again… I don’t know why you think it’s going to be any different, Brooke.” Shields told NPR.

In the interview, Shields also shared that to this day, she has not sued the doctor or gone after him in any way.

“I think I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t feel confident enough in my career to make it about my anatomy again. … I finally felt like I was over being defined by my virginity, do you know?” she told NPR. “I think if it happened in this era, it would have been received much better.”

In Shields’ 1985 book, On my own, she shared that she was a virgin, which quickly became a topic of public discussion.

In a 2022 episode of her podcast, What now? with Brooke Shields, she said she regretted sharing the status of her virginity so publicly. Although Shields said the attention to her virginity led to “creepy” interviews, she also shared that it prepared her for her career as a woman in the media industry.

“Being in the line of fire at such a young age like that gave me a resilience and set me up to be ready for anything in this business, which can be difficult,” she said on the podcast.