Brooke Shields' shocking documentary, where she reveals sexual abuse and recounts its objectification

What is the price of the great beauty, commercially famous?

What pain and loss accompany it?

And what happens to

?

These key questions are addressed in

, a thoughtful and moving documentary about Brooke Shields that premiered on Hulu.

Brooke Shields was

, a ubiquitous vision—in magazines, TV ads, and movies—of astonishing natural beauty.

Her luminous dark blue eyes under hers famously dark brows of hers, delicate features, dimpled smile and glossy brown hair.

As a preteen, her appearance evolved—or rather became—an unlikely mix of renaissance angel and vamp.

Brooke Shields, as seen in the documentary "Pretty Baby".

AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

innocence and maturity

She was a living contradiction, conveying both doll-like innocence and premature sexual knowledge.

At age 11, when she played a child prostitute in the

, she had to do a kissing scene with then-29-year-old actor Keith Carradine.

At 15, he starred in The Blue Lagoon, an Adam and Eve story about shipwrecked teenagers who discover sex on a deserted island.

Brooke Shields photographed naked at the age of 10 by the American photographer Richard Prince.

Randal Kleiser, the director of

tried to further sensationalize the film by falsely implying that the young Shields had lost her own virginity during production.

"They wanted to sell my true erotic awakening," Shields says ruefully in the documentary.

At the age of 16, Shields began appearing in the infamous

ads , writhing on the floor in skinny jeans and reciting suggestive lines that he now admits he barely understood.

In one such ad, Shields gazes seductively into the camera and declares, "I've put the childish aside and I'm ready for Calvins."

Then, strangely, she sticks her thumb in her mouth, looks down, and twists her face to cry.

.

Movies and ads that wouldn't be made today

Brooke Shields, in a jeans campaign, which breaks with prejudices.

Photo: Instagram

As Brooke Shields and other characters in the documentary point out repeatedly, ads and movies like these would never be permissible today.

But how far have we really come?

As the film makes clear, Shields was really just living through a disturbingly heightened and more public version of the contradictions that have always been at the heart of beauty and commercial culture: the sexuality of beautiful young women is used to sell products (including the movies);

women are confused with the products;

he imagines that women have to be ever newer, younger and brighter, just like the products.

As a result,

, as erotic merchandise.

(To demonstrate this, the film shows an old TV ad for toys made in Shields's likeness, with the tagline "Brooke Shields: She's a real living doll.")

Brooke Shields, in a production that emulates the one she did as a child, for Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince.

Photo Collection Astrud Fearnley"

The film offers

from his childhood to his youth.

She was raised by a loving but troubled (and alcoholic) single mother, Teri Shields, who was also her manager, and Brooke Shields soon realized that her career was her family's only income.

excessive demands

In her professional life as well, Shields was forced to cope - largely on her own - with the inordinate and inappropriately adult demands of the film, television and modeling industries.

"

, so I had to make myself strong," she says.

Most disturbing, however, is how well Brooke Shields coped with it all as a young woman, even after her Lolita roles began to spark outrage in the media.

Repeatedly, the documentary shows the young Shields in television interviews, answering salacious and judgmental questions with astonishing poise, grace and maturity.

"Do you understand, Brooke, how parents feel about the kind of care you're getting?" Phil Donahue asks her about the Louis Malle film.

"I did it just as a job, I didn't take it seriously, like I was going to grow up to be a prostitute or something," Shields replies.

Pressed by another interviewer to comment on whether Teri Shields' face "bears the mark of the heavy drinker," Brooke Shields calmly denies this, suggesting that her mother instead suffers from "allergies."

Brooke Shields and Michael Jackson, in a 1984 image. AP Photo/ Doug Pizac

Shields' eerily adult persona remains as flawless and composed as her looks.

Yet there is an ecstatic quality to her in these videos, a coldness that suggests the practice of deflecting disturbing emotions,

.

Shields says she was often cut off from reality, especially in acting, when she was asked to portray a mature sexuality she had no experience with.

Recalling director Franco Zeffirelli's attempts to coax a scene of erotic "ecstasy" from her as a 16-year-old virgin in the film

, Shields recalls, "I just disassociated."

Off-camera, in an attempt to simulate passion, Zeffirelli repeatedly twisted Shields' toe, causing her to scream and contort her face in pain.

In those moments, she says, "you walk away, you see a situation, but you're not connected to it. You instantly become a vapor of yourself."

Study, a salvation

Over time, Shields

.

Encouraged by her Princeton teachers to express her own opinions, Ella Shields says that she "learned that I could think for myself", which "became a huge rebellion".

She set boundaries with her controlling mother

, discovered her untapped talents for comedy and dancing (with which she could break free of those beautiful blank slate papers), and, for the first time, found a boyfriend.

Brooke Shields, in the movie "The Blue Lagoon."

These early liberties paved the way for Shields to later overcome other challenges (she is candid about her divorce from her first husband,

, her struggles with infertility and postpartum depression) and achieve both professional success (starring in plays on Broadway and on television), as personal (a happy second marriage and two teenage daughters).

Deep down, however,

.

How young women -especially those born fitting our ideal of beauty- can be relentlessly exploited, monetized, objectified and crushed.

How female sexuality so easily becomes a commodity.

As triumphant and moving as Shields' story,

is also a cautionary tale, a clear demonstration of how magnetically alluring beauty always is.

When Shields's image appears on the screen, it's almost impossible to look away from it.

It is that magnetism that everyone wants to bottle and sell.

It's what launched her career.

It is what makes this documentary possible.

Some of the last scenes show Shields at home with his daughters, who speak with admirable self-awareness and knowledge about their mother's early exploitation and the wrongness of it all.

"Everything is different now," declares one of the girls with touching confidence.

Source: The New York Times and Clarín

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