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Brooke Shields’ childhood success story rings as a cautionary tale because, throughout that time, the former child star was heavily se*ualized. Although she had started modeling at just 11 months old, her life took a drastic turn when she was made to pose naked for Playboy at just 10 years old.
Things went even more haywire when the actress starred inPretty Babyas a child pr*stitute. A recent TikTok trend dragged those dark days back into the light after Brooke Shields herself pointed it out effectively starting a public discourse on the matter.
To make matters worse, the ones making these decisions for the former child star were none but her mother. She also controlled Shields’ career well into her adulthood, until the actress broke free from her in a swift but powerful move.
Brooke Shields posed nude for a Playboy magazine at 10 years old
Many people have jumped on the trend that starts with“You’re so funny”and shared traumatic events that unfolded in their childhood on social media.Brooke Shieldsdid the same as well recently, and the post quickly went viral because of how wild such a situation seems from a 2025 point of view.
we don’t talk about brooke shields enoughhttps://t.co/oBKri8Wx4F
Basically, Shields’ mother, Teri Shields, sanctioned Garry Gross to photograph her child naked in a bathtub, with oil glistening on her skin, and make-up enhancing her features at just 10 years old. The photos were actually published in Playboy publication’s magazine Sugar and Spice.
A year later, Brooke Shields was starring in Louis Malle’sPretty Babyas a child postitute, who had her vrginity sold off in a scene. As perThe Guardian, Teri tried to rectify the former mistake in 1981 by suing Gross with the allegations that continued marketing of the nude photos was harming Shields’ image.
In response, Gross’s legal team argued that her accusations were unfounded, as the child star has utilized her fame from the photos to make a career as “the Lolita of her generation.”
The judge praised the photos in court and moved on by saying only someone of a perverse mind would find the photos s*ually alluring. However, her appearances in questionable movies and ad campaigns remained regular at that time.
What Tom Cruise Said About Brooke Shields’ Fight With Depression and Why It’s Not Okay
At any rate, although Brooke Shields herself never refused the movies, her mother as the adult was the one responsible for the final decisions in her daughter’s career.Home AlonestarMacaulay Culkin has also commented on his father’s controlling behaviorthroughout his childhood. Thankfully, like him, Shields got to set herself free as well.
Brooke Shields broke free of her mother’s control in a swift move
Teri Shields was relevant in Brooke Shields’ career as her manager well into adulthood. Things changed for her when the actor started dating tennis champion Andre Agassi in 1993.
According toThe Sydney Morning Herald, the actor claimed that Agassi has been just as controlling of her career as her mother until slowly he took it over from Teri.
Shields, at the time, happily obliged, and even employed his managers to come and pack up the office she shared with her mother over the weekend without notice and relocate things to Agassi’s place in Las Vegas.
It obviously came as a shock to her mother when she learned of the situation the following morning after arriving at the office. Shields claimed that she really regrets the abrupt pain that the incident caused her mother. Especially as their bond never healed from that completely even until her death in 2012.
“I just wanted to be funny”: Brooke Shields Gave Matthew Perry a Taste of His Own Medicine on ‘Friends’ but the Prank Left Her Injured
Interestingly, even through it all, she justified her mother’s decisions until her teenage daughters put things into perspective. In her biographical documentaryPretty Baby, she finally confronted the truth when her daughters raged,“It’s child po*nography!”while insisting how Shields wouldn’t have let them do the same at that age.
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.
According to Brooke Shields, these past few years have also helped her to neutrally analyze the emotional abuse she suffered from her mother, due to her struggles with alcoholism.
Especially as she had to mature early taking care of her mother like an adult during those episodes. Her 2014 bookThere Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Medelved into her complicated relationship with her mother more.
Anushree Banerjee
Articles Published :595
Anushree Banerjee is an Anime Writer at FandomWire with over 550 published articles. She has a post-grad in English and years of experience working with some of the biggest companies on the pop culture, and anime scene, such as, Sportskeeda, Pinkvilla, and MovieWeb. Staying on top of everything anime consumes her days, while bingeing on everything horror, and thriller keeps her up at night. Be it superhero flicks from Marvel and DC, or Shonen, and Seinen, like Bleach, The Apothecary Diaries, and Attack on Titan, she can probably state facts about them faster than she can recite her home address.
