You’re not sure how you feel looking at her Brooke Shields in preadolescence. Her beauty is undeniable as the ‘fills the screen’ cliché applies to the fullest. Childlike innocence oozes from her huge blue eyes and her smile full of danger oblivion, she is an “all-American girl”.

Except this girl grew up ahead of time. Her thick eyebrows, her shiny hair in every movement seem to hint at indecent eroticism for her age, an invitation to the most heinous sin.

It is no coincidence, because everything was designed just for this. At the age of 12, Brooke Shields came under his guidance. Louis Maul Violet, the 12-year-old daughter of a prostitute (Susan Sarandon) who auctioned off her virginity (literally) before being embraced by a 30-year-old (Keith Carradine). It all takes place around a New Orleans brothel in 1917. “Beautiful doll” (in translation “The Doll of New Orleans”, 1978).

Shields herself many years later recalled this as her best work. Even if for the needs of the role she is “tamed” by middle-aged men, gives the first kiss of his life on camera with a 29 year old and posing nude on the couch like the other Rose in Titanic.

It will follow of course “Blue Lagoon” (1980), where Shields will play a shipwrecked teenage girl who is sexually aroused with her boyfriend. So much so that “lovers of the Blue Lagoon” will also have to deal with pregnancy.

One year later Franco Zeffirelli would shoot Brooke Shields in his teenage love story “Endless love” and in order for the actress – in real life a virgin – to achieve an “orgasmic face”, the director during the sex scene twisted her toe so that it hurt her, and made the desired grimace. And when the 58-year-old director was asked why he chose 16-year-old Brooke Shields for the role, for him the answer was simple: “Because I’m in love with her.”

The end of childhood for Calvin Klein jeans

If all of the above seems wrong, it’s because it really is. You know it forever when Brooke Shields’ story goes from screen to documentary in just two hours. “Brooke Shields: The Doll of New Orleans”.

Of course, the basic concept was more or less known. A child prodigy receives a baptism of fire from preschool age, posing for a camera (in this case, for advertising) and from the very beginning becomes a hard worker of the show. He was next to Brooke Shields every moment. mother manager Terry Shields, a divorced mother who, she said, was looking for a better life for the two of them, even if it put little Brooks in a difficult position when he had to deal with another mom in the morning and another in the afternoon due to her chronic alcohol problem.

The parent-manager figure has survived in show business for decades—from the Jackson family to the Kardashians—but there must have been no other person of that stature (Shields covers in the 80s, countless) who to be so heavily sexualized from such a tender age with “parental consent”.

The highlight, of course, was the scandalous denim campaign. Calvin Klein in which 16-year-old Shields, with too much innocence, posed with her legs spread, got on all fours to put on jeans that ended up being permanently sold out, and informed the audience that there was nothing between her and Calvin Klein.

Brooke Shields turned into sexy doll and there was nothing to protect her. Literally since the plastic version of her was on the shelves of toy stores for girls who wanted to look like her to take home. I mean everything.

Coming of age in public view

As the nearly 60-year-old Shields explains, the way to survive the “years of innocence” it was easy to be cut off from her body. In a way, it was easy for her, given that she was asked to be the reincarnation of sexuality, when she herself did not yet understand what it was.

Her growing up took place in front of the public. In her TV interviews, she was asked to answer the question that probably burned the whole nation, that is, was she still a virgin, come and confirm it herself, and that she wants to keep her virginity for “the one” and become a good mother. In a way, Brooke Shields was at the same time the most misunderstood fantasy and the most obedient figure of a deeply troubled America.

It was this child-adult paradox that brought her closer to him. Michael Jackson, united by a strange friendship. Within a month, they appeared everywhere together, like a platonic couple, from the union of which Shields sought to have someone next to her who understood her experiences, and Jackson … was looking for a partner, declaring that the two of them were together and were repeatedly married. offers.

Finally, the 80s idol came of age when he went to Princeton she left her mother’s nest for the sake of her studies, but also for a while from the entertainment industry and outside of another, more real world, she also met her first boyfriend. The publicity of their relationship put an end to the “virgin story”.

In the 90s Brooke Shields is like a woman now “wrinkled” entrance to the world of comedy, starting with her time on Friends as Joey’s crazy girlfriend and then on the TV series “Suddenly Susan.” Meet the tennis player Andre Agassi, but their marriage did not last long. But not him and him too Chris Henchy with whom Shields is still together and they have two teenage daughters. Before that, of course, she came face to face with one rape by a Hollywood producer which she does not name, as if it is a tragic seal of how the industry “raped” her childhood for years.

At the end of the documentary, we see her family sitting at the table eating and talking. At one point, Brooke Shields’ daughters say they refuse to watch their mom’s early movies, feeling uncomfortable just thinking about it. They belong to a generation for which what happened to their mother is considered unimaginable. Even if, at the same time, girls their age inadvertently sexualize themselves through their social media without knowing where their picture might end up.

But these two teenagers look cheerful and do not chew. Proof that times can change.

Brooke Shields: New Orleans Doll is available on Disney+.