“I am amazed that I survived sexualization when I was a child”

57 year old actress Brooke Shields said she was “astonished” to have “survived” sexualisation at just 11 years old.

Shields who teared up remembering being “catapulted into the world of adult sexuality” in the trailer for her two-part documentary titled “Pretty Baby”, recounted how she was called “the most photographed woman in the world”, being labeled as an “iconic American beauty”, an “object of desire”, and a “sexualized child model”.

The documentary which explores her decades-long career in the spotlight, named after one of her first films where she plays a child prostitute, looks back to when she thought she was just a “pretty face”.

In one instance, a male reporter dubbed her “an exquisite-looking young woman” and a “pretty girl” when she was just a pre-teen.

Then, at just 16 in 1981, she was chosen for the cover of Time Magazine as the face of the ’80s era. Shocked, she asked, “Who decides that?” Shields also recalled, “I was struggling to find my own voice, I wasn’t told it was important to have agency.”

However, once she regained her confidence, she realized she could have her “own opinion” and her “own voice”. “Now it’s like I have the right to be a human being,” she concluded at the end of the trailer.

In the same documentary, the “Hannah Montana” alum revealed that she was raped shortly after graduating from college in 1987.

The actress, who shares daughters Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16, with husband Chris Henchy, took a break from Hollywood to attend Princeton University in the ’80s. Upon her return to the industry, she had dinner with a man to discuss possible acting projects. Then he, convinced her to return to her hotel.

Shields recalled this, noting that he told her he was calling a cab, but returned to the bedroom naked. She says;

“I go up to the hotel room and he disappears for a moment. I didn’t fight much. I did not do it. I just completely froze. I thought “No” should have sufficed, and I just thought, “Stay alive and get out,” and I just closed the door.

“God knows that I knew how to dissociate myself from my body. I had practiced that.

The ‘Suddenly Susan’ actress admitted she didn’t process the assault for several years and even blamed herself for a while.

Shields added;

“He said to me, ‘I can trust you, and I can’t trust people.’ It’s so cliché, it’s almost pathetic.

“I kind of believed that I had spread a message, and that’s how the message was received. I drank wine at dinner. I went up to the bedroom. I was so confident.