There is a nagging problem with Shields' ode to ageing

Brooke Shields’ candid memoir is full of lessons in self-love and self-advocacy, says Annabel Nugent. But fails to engage with the uglier truths about getting older in the spotlight

- Annabel Nugent

The story of Brooke Shields is often told in terms of her age. She was 11 months old when she shot her first ad campaign for Ivory soap. She was 11 years old when she played a child prostitute in Louis Malle's 1978 film Pretty Baby and 14 years old when she starred with an 18-year-old Christopher Atkins as shipwrecked

cousins discovering their sexuality in The Blue Lagoon. She was 15 years old when she appeared as a teen in lust in the Franco Zeffirelli film Endless Love. She was also 15 when she appeared in her first Calvin Klein ad, uttering these words to camera: “You wanna know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

To present her story this way is to highlight just how young Shields was when all these milestones were happening, how young she was when she became a paragon of all-American beauty. For many, Shields, now 59, will be indelibly associated with her teenage dimpled, bushy-browed ingenue self, frozen in time like a butterfly in epoxy. Her new book, then, is aptly titled: Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Ageing as a Woman.

The memoiris part of a current trend of books and films to examine the subject of women ageing. Last week, The Substance – a body-horror film about an ageing, fading star played by Demi Moore – was nominated for five Golden Globes. Next month, Naomi Watts will publish a memoir about her experience of menopause knowingly titled Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause.