The Dream of the 80s are Alive in Our Instincts to Self Preserve

On Brooke Shields' New Docuseries, Pretty Baby

This week on Romper, I wrote about the Brooke Shields documentary, Pretty Baby.

…I think most girls have a misconception that our beauty equals power and that the way we are perceived by the outside world is an honest translation of our worth. That we must appeal to that perception, validate it with a willingness to participate in a system that bends and breaks us without its consent. To be young and beautiful and a girl in the world is to believe that there is more power to be gained in our objectification than there is in our unwillingness to tolerate it. As we age away from youth, we realize that beauty and power have a far more paradoxical relationship and that even when we felt autonomous as teenage girls, we weren’t really. We were, in fact, guided by cultural and familial influence…

…I wanted more from this series. A certain kind of self-awareness, rebellion, or both. I wanted to see a woman sick and tired of making excuses for everyone else’s bad behavior. I wanted a woman unafraid to call the whole system out. I wanted vengeance…

Which isn’t very fair of me.

And therein lies the authenticity, the relatability and frustration of Brooke Shields’ Pretty Baby. Shields’ story is hers, of course, but it also represents the impossibility of succeeding in a world that benefits from a woman’s compliance and punishes us for speaking up. Even after everything she’s been through, an aptly named Shields is still protecting everyone she’s ever loved. Which is exactly what she was trained to do…

Hope comes in the last few minutes of Part 2 — a shift between generations as exhibited by a candid family dinner conversation. Shields’ husband, Chris Henchy, a producer and director, notably, but also respectfully, says nothing, while her outspoken teenage daughters echo everything the viewer has felt for the last two hours…

…Their reluctance to go along with the narrative that Sheilds has held against herself in order to survive feels like a redemption. They are breaking a cycle, becoming the kind of daughters Shields was never allowed to be. And in their biting commentary, there is light for her, for them, for all of us.

It made me think of all the mothers who are raising the daughters we couldn’t be into the young women we wish we were. Recognizing the traumatic deaths of our own childhoods with posthumous tenderness. Healing our own trauma by looking forward, equipped with the only rebellion that subverts our instincts to self-preserve: a no holds-barred fight-to-the-death willingness to raise free-thinking, culturally defiant daughters….

You can read my full essay, here.

And as always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Did you watch Pretty Baby? How did it make you feel? Also, if you also happened to watch the Pamela Anderson documentary (which I also wrote about) did you catch that both Anderson and Shields made Broadway comebacks as Roxie Hart in Chicago? Because I feel like we need to talk about that, too!?

In the words of my friend, Veronika, “…the cure to the world’s existential malaise… the *ONLY cure

is

BROADWAY.”

*That, and women owning their stories while raising a new generation of children hell-bent on rewriting the narrative.