Brook Shields around 10 years old. Is this the photo you're looking for?
I’m writing this post because we’re getting an awful lot of search engines pulling up our site when people search for the words “Brooke Shields 10 year old.”
This means one of two things.
1. For those of you who clicked on this because you are appalled by the photos of Brooke Shields that were taken of her naked as a 10-year-old and curious about what kind of 10-year-old would be asked to pose in a sexual position and maybe wanted to see information about these photos, then you’ve come to the right blog. I recently wrote about another 10-year-old, Thylane Blondeau who has been widely photographed in over-sexualized outfits. You can read about that here. In the post, I wrote about the eerie resemblance between the young Brooke Shield and Thylane.
2. For those of you who are getting your rocks off by looking up old KIDDIE PORN photos that Brooke’s mother commissioned and allowed to be taken of her, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not showing you photos of a fully naked 10 year old girl. Call it what you want. But naked pictures of a 10-year-old kid in a bathtub with makeup on isn’t art. It’s kiddie porn. Her mother–who allowed these pornographic photos to be taken of her–now has dementia.
How Brooke Shields turned out to be a fairly normal person is a big credit to Brooke Shields.
Okay, but let’s get back to topic. Why am I writing about this if this is a dirty topic? Because we need to understand what we are seeing when it comes to educating our girls. Or when we’re educating ourselves. We’ve become so accustomed to looking at provocative photos at young girls in adult poses and adult clothing that we’ve become desensitized to what girls are supposed to look like. As a culture, we all have. It’s part of the evolution of sexual society. But it’s more. It’s pushed upon us in subtle ways. It’s as if girls–and us, as their mothers–are being marketed do directly. There are underlying messages. It’s okay to look like this. There are no consequences to looking like this.
For instance, this photo shoot of Elle Fanning (Dakota’s 13-year-old sister, in photo above) seems pretty innocent upon first look. That jacket is cute. Color adorable and flirty. She’s a beautiful girl. But click on the link here and take a look at the rest of the photos. Is she playing dress up or are we being sold an image? She is meant to look older–much older. Those heels. Those short shorts. Something is too concocted here. And then I go back to this cute one above of her in the pink fuzzy jacket… and she all of a sudden doesn’t look like she’s at the early end of the teenage years. I don’t know ya’ll. These are pretty adult photos.
On her blog, Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture writes about this shoot:
Elle Fanning has nothing on Brooke Shields circa 1978, but that at least raised a ruckus. This is so common as to be mundane. I look at this and I forget that she is 13–I see an adult-looking woman (though no adult woman could look like that) in iconic Marilyn/Twiggy etc poses with clothing I’d love to have and then, yeah, I go…HOLD UP! THIS IS A CHILD THIS IS A CHILD THIS IS A CHILD!
Look, I don’t have a 13 year old daughter. I have a 2 year old daughter and I can keep her looking like a little girl because she’s a TODDLER. Yet, still. I don’t have a problem with teenagers wearing short skirts. Wearing short shorts. Part of this is style. Part of this is girls experimenting with fashion. With their bodies. But there is a line crossed when a young girl is designed to look like a woman. When she is heralded for looking like a grown up. This is when the problem occurs. This is when the over-sexualization occurs.
And unless we say to ourselves, “Hey a 13 year old shouldn’t be wearing 4-inch heels because it’s just inappropriate” or “Hey, a 10-year-old shouldn’t be made to look like a grown woman because it’s unnecessary,” then we’re never going to be honest with ourselves and our daughters about what is really happening. You are being marketed to. You are being told what is acceptable. And so are your daughters.
Did I ever tell you how much I hate it when people tell me what to do?
femamom 
Miriam Novogrodsky
August 29, 2011
okay. so, i just sat in a sea of teenagers at the mall. they were clutching bags full of back to school necessities. not pencils. make up and bras. how do we parent our children so they are aware of the insidious and not so insidious, see pic’s above, marketing to sexy? thanks for keeping the conversation going ms h — any other thoughts? how do we educate our children to deflect or decode the messages in order to become themselves making choices not the clothing industry or make up gurus or former-model talk show hosts?
Andrea Chisholm
September 2, 2011
Hmmm- start with ourselves perhaps. If we are hypocritical our girls will know it. It is a fine line we walk what with our ?joking about Botox and all….The extreme or “insidious” pictures are easy to deal with. It’s the “not so insidious” that pose the challenge.
heather
September 11, 2011
Could it not be much ado about nothing?
Hayley Krischer
September 11, 2011
We think not.
gweipo
September 22, 2011
Luckily here in Asia this is much less of an issue. Partly due to the general modesty of society and largely I think due to the fact that kids wear school uniforms 80% of their waking lives so there is much less pressure to conform to a way of dressing.
In fact my 9 year old was in a shopping mall with me the other day and commented on another young girl wearing extremely short shorts and an exposed belly and said “that doesn’t really look good does it? I wonder why she thinks she should wear it.”
Hayley Krischer
September 22, 2011
It sounds like you’re raising a very confident child. Love her response.
Real Fit Mom
September 26, 2011
I recently took my 17 yr old daughter shopping for her homecoming dress and shoes. I was disgusted by the shoes many moms were choosing for their teen daughters- they looked like stripper shoes! Why does a teenage girl need 3 inch heels for a high school dance? What did my daughter choose? Sandals. Why? Well, partly because she’s 5′ 10 1/2″ and her boyfriend is only 5′ 8″ but mostly because she’s going to be dancing in them and wants to be comfortable. Even when her date last year was 6′ 4″ she wore flats. She doesn’t want to look or feel sexy like many of the other girls. She also did an awesome job picking her dress which is sophisticated looking and she can wear it to functions in college next year.
My 14 yr old is even easier, she’ll pick something out of our “dress closet” LOL. Raising teenagers is an extremely hard job but the older mine get the more I realize my husband and I have done an awesome job. By the time the other 2 are teens we’re going to be experts!
Hayley Krischer
September 27, 2011
I was recently at a bar mitzvah and the girls were wearing such short skirts and high heels! I know parents don’t want to ostracize their kids by making them wear “uncool” clothes, and I know girls even at 13 want to feel sexy/cute in what they’re wearing, but a line has to be drawn. I hope my daughter goes the route of your daughter and just opts for sandals! Three inch heels are out of the question, though. Can’t these parents compromise on some kind of smaller heels with their daughters? I don’t get it.