Brooke Shields Has Some Things to Say About Aging

Here at REAL SIMPLE, we love advice from a multi­hyphenate woman about how she gets it all done. And while Brooke Shields (a CEO-actor-model-author-thinker-social media phenom-mom-friend-wife) could speak endlessly to that, she’s here to talk about aging. Her new book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, drops this month, and with it her witty, insightful thoughts on entering “this next third” of her life. The gist: None of us are really allowed to get old. So what’s the woman who’s been the symbol of beauty for generations doing about it? Skipping the major procedures, for one. Being kind to herself, for another. And fashioning herself as a new kind of symbol—one of aging unapologetically. 

LAUREN IANNOTTI: Can you explain the title of the book and why it’s so resonant? Because it’s so resonant.

BROOKE SHIELDS: It’s something I’ve felt for a long time. People imprint onto me what they remember from a certain era of my life, and they’re attached to that. By virtue of that fact, I’m a disappointment as an older person. Not too long ago, a gentleman and I were speaking about years of wine vintages. I said my age—I was 58 at the time—and the minute I did, he stopped in his tracks and said, “You really shouldn’t have told me that.” And I thought, Wow. He wasn’t being mean; it was just his honest reaction. And while I’m not comparing myself to the likes of Marilyn Monroe, she died as Marilyn Monroe. If we saw her as a 70-year-old woman, we’d probably be like, Oh, she’s no longer Marilyn Monroe. There’s something that happens to the human psyche with a face we’ve gotten attached to for some reason. 

LI: That seems like the extreme version of what we all go through.

BS: Yes. The more I talked to women who are over 40, the more I realized that part of chasing youth is not just for themselves, but for other people. It’s for partners, it’s for the way you’re looked at in public, and it’s a dangerous, slippery slope. We’re not allowed to just grow and experience our life and be OK with it. 

LI: What’s your hope for the book?

BS: I hope it opens up a conversation about what the ideals are and what beauty really means. Beauty can come in different forms. It doesn’t have to be associated with youth. It’s a fine line because you want to look your best, and there are myriad ways to do that. But I want to at least give people the forgiveness and freedom to really look at their whole lives and say, “OK, I may want to do this because I want to look better in this,” or “I don’t like my wrinkles,” or something—only after looking at their cumulative experience. Because all the women I know over 40 are extraordinary, and they’ve had unbelievable experiences. Good, bad, all of it. 

LI: We hear a lot about aging naturally as a “trend.” Your thoughts on that?

BS: I think if it’s a trend that’s positive, and if we really talk about the entirety of these upper ages, then great. But the fact that I’m 59 and I’m called “aged” doesn’t feel right to me. I hope the trend is for us to still want to feel our best and look our best, rather than chase something that’s unreal and unfair to put ourselves through.

LI: But how weird is it that it’s considered exceptional to embrace aging, an inevitable part of being alive?

BS: I also think it’s rebellious. All of a sudden everybody’s got a lot to say about Pamela Anderson without any makeup on. OK, so she’s not wearing makeup. So what? It’s so interesting that it’s considered edgy. 

My girls read all the comments on my social stuff, and one of them made my older daughter laugh. She said, “Oh my God, Mom, someone was trying to be nice, but they said, ‘Oh, it’s so nice to see that she hasn’t had any work done and she’s just aging naturally.’” I would be lying if I said I didn’t care. When did this happen? [Points at jowls.] And it’s like, Oh, maybe I’ll just do a ponytail today. It can be a shock for me to look at myself and go, Whoa, just where did that go? How come it’s lower, and what do I do about it? And I don’t know that I want to do anything about it, but I’d like it to be a little bit better. We all fall into it.

Self-improvement, no matter what that means to you, is great. I’m all for it. But our society has become so myopically focused on youth, we lose sight of the value that comes with age and experience and time. I look at my two girls—everything’s higher and tighter and smoother. And I know it’s all appealing and it does sell, but I want my girls to not be terrified to be my age.

LI: You open the book with a scene of yourself walking down the street with your daughters, Grier and Rowan, and they’re the ones getting noticed. How do you talk to them about beauty?

BS: I don’t shy away from telling them they’re beautiful, because they are, in my eyes as a mother! So I’m allowed that; it’s my prerogative. But it has to have a caveat. I tell them that beauty means different things to different people and different cultures. And it’s not all you are. It is a piece and part of your individuality. Of course, we have a culture which homogenizes. Defines. I was called the face of a decade. Who the hell decides that? A particular face gets stamped with this? Whatever it is, it’s ridiculous. 

LI: It’s a singular kind of pressure.

BS: It is. And when Rowan was a baby, people would say immediately, “Oh my God, you don’t look like your mother. How come you don’t look more like your mother? Your mother used to be the most beautiful person in the world!” So now you’ve told my daughter she’s not pretty because she doesn’t look like this person. And you’re telling me I’m no longer pretty because I don’t look like what I used to look like. That’s just f**ked up in every possible way.

LI: Your youngest wants to be a model. How do you feel about that?

BS: I fought it for so many years because she was just too young. And then when she turned 18, I said, “OK, look. I can’t say no at this point, because you’re starting to become your own person. But here’s the thing: I’m not going to be your manager. I don’t know the industry now. You want to walk in shows; I never walked in shows. I do know stuff and I do have history and I do have opinions, but I need you to have an agent. And if your agent disagrees with what I say and they give you reasons why, then you have to decipher what you believe. And you can’t just want to be famous, and it can’t just be to make money. It has to come from a deeper place because it’s not fun. It’s hard and it’s thankless.” She’s a beautiful girl, but there are a lot of beautiful girls around. 

LI: It’s interesting that you say she was too young, considering you started modeling very young. And your own mother was famously your manager. 

BS: Yes, but I’m not coming from a place of desperation. When I was a kid, our only source of income was that $50 an hour I got for Gimbels. My mother was too proud to accept alimony from my father. She was in complete control, for better or worse. So I told Grier, “I’m not going to fight this. But you are going to learn what it really means to do this. You’re going to learn how hard it is to be a model.” And her first job was with Bruce Weber in Montauk. I brought her there, and they put her in this unbelievable, minuscule Zac Posen dress. I left, then when I came back, she said, “Mom, Mom, Mom, this hurts my ribs.” I’m like, “I don’t know what to tell you.” She said, “They already took pictures.” I said, “You’re not done until he says you’re done. And when he says you’re done, don’t move a muscle. Wait until his assistant takes the camera from him. Then bolt. Because if you don’t, he’s going to put another hundred rolls in the bag, and it’s going to be another hour.” And she said, “I’m so tired.” And I said, “Yeah, keep being tired!”  

LI: That’s some tough love. 

BS: I knew I couldn’t be as much of a tiger mom or a helicopter mom or whatever my mom was to be able to keep the bad people away from me. I needed Grier to start speaking up for herself. She’d be like, “Can you call the agent?” And I’d tell her, “They don’t want to hear from the mom. They have to pick up my call because they’re afraid of me because I’m famous. But they don’t really care about you as a kid. So you have to ask the right questions, and your mommy can’t speak for you, because they won’t respect that and they’ll just push you aside because you’re too much work.” Sometimes she asks for my advice, and sometimes she fights it, and she’ll say that she knows this business. And I’m like, “Oh, really? Oh, good. I’m glad. So glad you do.”

LI: So they all do that? I’m relieved to hear it. 

BS: But then I ran into somebody who was backstage at the Tommy Hilfiger show, and he said, “That was your daughter? Oh my God, we had no idea! She was tall and gorgeous, but also polite. She worked hard. She kept her wits about her. She was sweet! Good job, Mom.” And I thought of every time I gave her a mandatory way to behave—bring your dishes to the sink, say please and thank you, thank the parents for having you over. 

LI: What are the little ways you show your girls that you love them?

BS: Oh, I love writing little notes. I love notes in hidden places. I love knowing who their friends are and what their names are. And that’s getting so much harder because they’re in college, but it really matters to them. So I try to have these mental notes, like OK, this is the blond girl, and her parents live here. And I constantly ask them about So-and-So, or how are So-and-So’s parents doing.

LI: Your girls obviously are very connected to each other, and even go to the same college! Do you think there’s anything you did to foster the closeness between them?

BS: Honestly, if you’d seen them the day before they went to college, you would’ve been like, Oh no, this is not going to work out. My older daughter couldn’t wait to go and was immediately in Greek life and loved every minute of it. My youngest had a really hard time separating from me. And they fought unbelievably, since they were born. I’d walk by a room, and it’d be like, “She bit my head!” How do you even do that? Or they’d be walking along, and one would just hip check the other. I’m like, “I saw that!” And one would always say the thing to the other about something she’s insecure about or mad about. And they’d just go right in there and then smile when they twist the knife. 

Then we went to parents weekend, and I overheard my younger one say, “So, Rowan, what night this week is going to work out for me to come over for dinner?” And Rowan was like, “Let’s do Wednesday.” I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t say a word, but they’re closer now than they ever were, and I really didn’t think that was going to happen.

LI: With Valentine’s Day coming, I want to talk a bit about love. What’s your love language?

BS: That’s a tough one. That’s changed. It used to be just kissing. I love kissing, and since I’ve gotten older, I kind of love things like riding in a car and not talking with your partner. I love being around my husband and not talking to him. Sorry, honey! But there’s this comfort zone that you have. You don’t feel the pressure of having to be funny or smart or whatever. You’re just in your time. 

LI: What’s something about love that your 50-something self knows that maybe your 20- or 30-something self didn’t?

BS: It’s kind of a cliché, but God, you really have to learn early to love yourself. No one can do it for you. And if you search for that outside yourself, it’s a bit impoverished for you. And it’s not that you can’t be satisfied, but there’s just such freedom in finding all the ways you like yourself, to grow to love your unique self. And it’s so hard to do.

LI: What are the ways you take a moment and show yourself some love?

BS: I love being pampered—even just going around the corner to the nail salon and getting a 30-minute back massage, and I’ll just zone out. Or spending time with the people in my life who make me laugh, who I leave either knowing a bit more about myself or remembering something I liked about myself through them.

LI: Do you think you’ve been able to override your inner critic with a nice inner cheerleader?

BS: I mean, listen, the inner critic is always going to have the first response. But I’m finding a sense of humor about myself. And it’s not just self-deprecation, which used to be my source of humor, but after 30, 40 years, you start to believe your self-deprecation, and that’s dangerous. I walk into rooms bigger than I used to. There’s something empowering about that.

LI: And you’re a CEO for the first time, in your late 50s! Tell us about Commence.

BS: It began as a platform during Covid. I started it to see what would happen for women over 40 to just talk about where they are in their lives and what they love and what they don’t love and how they think the world treats them. It grew very quickly, and what I realized was that people love beauty. There are different obstacles we face in this era of our lives, especially with hair and scalp health, and the way that piece of your identity can be challenged is difficult for so many of us. I never thought I would be in beauty, and I’m not motivated to do skin care yet, but hair care and scalp health were just really important in this community.

Every woman asked me about my hair, and my eyebrows, and how they’ve changed throughout my life. And so we created a line of hair care for women over 40, all plant-based. The efficacy is amazing. I said at the onset, “These cannot just be products already in existence and we’re just slapping my name on ’em. We need every ounce of testing.” And when you see an actual strand of hair have more elasticity because of something you’ve put on it, it’s so thrilling. 

LI: You say in the book that you couldn’t have launched the business in your 20s, because you needed to accrue experiences, and the ones you list aren’t work experiences but life experiences. Can you talk a bit about the value of that?

BS: I think a life experience is the biggest gift we can be granted because it allows you to glance back, look at a life lived. Don’t qualify it—“well” lived, “badly” lived, whatever. Just a life that was lived. It’s like, to a painter, the black marks are as important as the bright, pretty colors because they give depth and dimension. I look at my life as having dimension. What I don’t know about business or what I don’t know about a startup or being a CEO? Those are things I can learn.

 LI: I wanted to ask you about the love between friends and how important that is to you.

BS: I would not be alive today without it. I would not be alive without Lisa from high school, or without Diana, my sister from when we were 4 and 5, or without Karla or Ali. There are different types of friendships. I’m going to a wedding this weekend, the daughter of one of my roommates from college. And it’s going to be, I don’t know, 150 people, and maybe 90 of them I don’t know. It’s my real life, and nobody’s going to take a selfie with me or think of me as anything other than Mary’s really good friend and roommate. And it’s those kinds of friendships that are the backbone of my experience, my fun. I’m on a group chat with my high school friends, and we’re always just laughing. I also think it’s really important to have friends so it’s not all on your partner.

LI: Speaking of, you’ve now been married for 23 years. What’s the beauty of enduring love? What are the positives of being together for so long?

BS: We have to really look at the words “enduring love” because I think we are so tied to the romantic part of it. I may never fully feel that feeling of falling in love again. I can reintroduce myself, and there will be something that makes you go, Oh, he brushed my arm, and I felt something there. But I got over the fact that the way it is in the movies is just not reality. It grows into something else. I watch his behavior toward other people, and that thrills me. I watch what kind of a dad he is. I watch him make people laugh. I watch him treat me in a way that’s kind and funny and smart. So it’s that kind of stuff. I want to be old with him, but we have to keep growing. And that’s the toughest part of relationships, that you don’t grow at the same rate. It can feel really jarring to the other person, so you have to be willing to talk about it. I’ve had to say things like “I used to find that cute. Now it hurts my feelings, and I don’t know why, but I don’t like it anymore.” What does he do with that information? Enduring love takes a lot of work, and you have to be willing to do the work because your purpose has changed.

LI: The job descriptions change.

BS: Yeah. I remember saying to my husband, “I have the babies now, so be careful. I don’t need you the same way I needed you before.” It sounds harsh, but there’s something to that, the biology of where we are. So I think that if you like each other enough, love can surface and show itself differently, and it becomes comforting. I have a friend who says, “I’m too cheap to get divorced!” And I’m laughing. But really, I’m like, Do you really want to go through that? Because your partner’s not as cute anymore? We can’t go along disconnected either, because it’s not healthy. So you have to be willing to stir the soup a little bit and keep adding something to it.

LI: And it’s very different once your kids have flown the coop.

BS: Yeah, kids are just—they put you on a train and you don’t even know you’re on it. Then you’re shoved off of it, and you’re just standing there without the kids, and you’re like, What are we supposed to do now? You no longer have your point of reference. 

LI: Our bodies are constantly replacing cells, and the structure of our brains changes in middle age. It’s almost like we become new people. Do you feel like a new person at this stage in your life?

BS: I feel like more of a new person now than I’ve ever felt. Part of the reason is I’m not focused on the things I felt I had to do before a certain age, whether it was having babies or these sort of milestones I was setting for myself. I’m still setting them, but I’m a bit more in my own life and skin. I’m sitting with myself more. I don’t bore myself. I think there’s something to be said for this next third of our lives. 

LI: Is there a next birthday you’re looking forward to?

BS: My next big birthday is 60, this year. I’m not looking forward to it, because I haven’t identified what kind of celebration I want! I don’t want a big party. It’s just too much pressure. One girlfriend from college, she spent her 60th year in various special ways—with travel, seeing theater, going somewhere with her best friends, planning her daughter’s wedding. And I thought that a year of celebration is a great idea. I love that. And it can be anything you want—however you want to spend your time and with the people you choose. 

LI: I love that too. And happy 60th to you!