Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman

When women are praised for their beauty from a young age, it can be challenging to accept aging. With self-deprecation and humor, Shields’s latest memoir (following There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me) weaves together her experiences with postpartum depression, medical issues, menopause, an empty nest, and her insecurities about midlife with reports and statistics about women and aging as she tries to discover who she is at 59. She had been a dutiful daughter, a responsible parent and wife, and a working actress, but as she aged and those roles changed and fell away, she had to learn how to navigate being “a woman of a certain age.” She shares what she has learned: to live for herself, to savor her independence, and to embrace joy. In 2023, Shields starred in a one-woman show in New York City. Her memoir urges women facing midlife to embrace their own (metaphorical) one-woman shows.