At 59, Brooke Shields reinvents herself as a union leader and beauty brand CEO

Some stories are so perfect and moving that even if we suspect they aren’t true, we simply don’t want to know.

There’s a white peacock perched inside Brooke Shields’ New York City home. She calls him Steve. He is frozen on an acrylic pedestal, with his feathers lying on the floor. Shields was told he was rescued from other peacocks, which can become aggressive towards their elders, pecking them to death.

“I’m probably being fooled,” said Shields, whose use of puns can be contagious. But the story made sense to her. She sighed at the taxidermy. “The really pretty ones are all males. Isn’t that typical?”

There is no universal experience of aging. But certainly some American women can relate to the feeling of being pecked, poked and left aside as they reach middle age.

At least that was a sentiment shared with Shields in 2021, when she founded an online community called Beginning Is Now. More than 100,000 people followed the group’s Instagram account, which posted inspirational content for women over 40.

It was very similar to a women’s magazine — with interviews, lists, sweepstakes and recurring columns (like Dear Brooke and Brooke Don’t Cook) —, although without as many ads. Beginning Is Now mostly sold merchandise: workout sets and bright yellow hoodies.

Occasionally, Shields would host group Zoom calls with her followers. They asked questions like, “Do you feel like you’re being ignored?” Shields responded, “As a woman, yes, I feel like somehow once we reach a certain age, it’s assumed that we’re not sexy anymore.” Another woman added, “‘It’s like the lights went out,'” Shields said.

“It wasn’t anger,” she said of the tone of the conversations. “I was worried that there was this subtext of anger. There was more of a subtext of bewilderment.”

It was during these Zoom calls that Beginning Is Now began to transform. Certain “tense” age-related issues kept coming up, Shields said. Like hair — thinning, roughness, gray hair. “Soon people started saying, ‘Well, what can we buy?'” she said.

The skin of his fledgling media brand began to change. Infographics and products were no longer enough for Shields, who assembled a small team of executives and explored the community for ideas. In June, a new company will emerge called Commence. She will sell three hair care products on her website.

In the modern beauty industry, there is precedent for the transition from content to commerce: Glossier, valued at US$1.8 billion (almost R$9.5 billion) in 2021, was born from the blog Into the Gloss. Her first skin care products were developed based on feedback from the site’s commenters.

But for those familiar with Shields’ career, Commence also tells one of those perfect, moving stories. Since she started to crawl, Shields has been the face of household products: modeling for Ivory soap at 11 months, Band-Aids at 5, Colgate toothpaste at 10, Calvin Klein jeans at 15, Coppertone sunscreen at 43, furniture La-Z-Boy at 45, and that’s just a summary.

In the 1980s, his name was put on hair dryers, curling irons and hair curlers. “By the way, I hate the color purple, and all the products were purple,” she said. “I didn’t know I had anything to say about it.”

Now, at age 59, Shields is a CEO overseeing how her products are made and how her name is used to sell them. It is capitalist empowerment. “I’ve sold to other people my whole life,” Shields said.

‘ONE ACCESSIBILITY’

I didn’t expect to find Teri Shields, famous for being an overprotective mother, at her daughter’s house in Manhattan’s West Village. But there she was, mingling at a marble-topped bar in the living room. Among liquor bottles and bar utensils was Teri’s urn. Shields lifted the lid to show me.

“The closest thing to the things she liked most,” said Shields, whose mother died in 2012 at age 79. “Booze and me.”

Their relationship formed the emotional spine of “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” a documentary released on Hulu last year that re-examined her early life. The title mirrored that of a 1978 film in which Shields played a 12-year-old prostitute in early 20th century New Orleans — the first time she, and her mother’s parenting choices, made international headlines. She became a sex symbol before becoming a teenager.

Shields also reveals in the documentary that when she was in her 20s, after graduating from Princeton University, she was raped by a Hollywood executive. She didn’t say his name, and to her relief and surprise, viewers quickly moved past the reveal.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is something new — so that’s not all I am,'” Shields said. “When I was younger, my sexuality was all I was — that and beauty.”

Shields did not produce the film or control the final edit, which set it apart from many other celebrity documentaries. However, it was produced by people she trusted, including her friends Ali Wentworth and ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.

“I used to always tell her, ‘Based on your childhood, you should be either in rehab or dead,'” Wentworth said. “She can be at a dinner party and tell a story, and you’re laughing — it’s really fun — but then you realize, ‘Wow, this is actually a really tragic story.’ She can dissociate herself in a way that protected him all his life.”

Shields is funny and outspoken. But her singular gift is her ability to relate to people, even if they can never relate to her. Even among her famous friends — like her neighbor Bradley Cooper, who might be casually taking a call in Shields’s yard on a Tuesday afternoon, unbeknownst to the New York Times reporter sitting on the couch inside — their childhoods were very Shields’ unusual style makes her stand out. It isolates her. No one else on this planet was named by Time magazine as the “look” of the 1980s.

And yet there’s “an approachability with Brooke that people love,” Wentworth said. “People feel like they know her and that somehow whatever she says to wear or drink or wear is real. A friend is telling you to do it.”

Shields is well aware of her public perception, with all its benefits (like the instant media when she launches a beauty brand) and drawbacks (the need to convince investors and consumers that this isn’t just another celebrity beauty brand in a market saturated with celebrity beauty brands).

There’s always a moment — and Shields always notices — when people get used to your company for the first time. They relax into the idea that it’s Brooke Shields and begin to adjust to her reality.

“Sometimes it’s a twinkle in the eye, sometimes it’s a sigh,” she said. Sometimes it’s the moment when her eyes stop darting between Steve the peacock and Shields’s rhinestone Prada loafers and the Keith Haring and Will Cotton artwork on her walls. “And then we can just do our jobs.”

Privately, this was one of her motivations for seeking the presidency of the Actors’ Equity Association, a union that represents performers and stage managers (Shields’ Broadway credits include Rizzo in “Grease,” Roxie in “Chicago” and Morticia in ” The Addams Family”). She saw an opportunity to support the people who make theater possible and to use her name to draw attention to union issues. But she also liked that this work wouldn’t be explicitly about her.

“It appeals to me,” said Shields, who won the May 24 election. “It’s a lot of me all the time. And it’s been that way since I was a baby.”

‘A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE’

The summer box office may be off to a disastrous start, but as of May 23, the most-watched original film on any streaming platform was a romantic comedy starring Brooke Shields. “Mother of the Bride” has remained in Netflix’s top 10 films, reaching number one, since its release on May 9.

Of all the moving parts in Shields’ life, acting is still the one that makes her feel like a “complete person,” she said. “I go to sleep thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it.”

Up until that point, Shields had generally been composed and analytical in conversation — she once stopped mid-sentence to deconstruct the definition of “catharsis.” But when talking about her acting career, there was a new urgency in her voice: “I must continue to pursue it tirelessly,” she said, sitting in a makeup chair in a hotel bathroom, preparing for a photo shoot. . There was so much pent up desire that she seemed to struggle to express the size of it.

“If I could be in ‘Hacks,'” she said, nearly exploding, “that’s what I want for my life. That level of humor.” She remembered watching a scene from the Max series in which an iPhone is not unlocked by facial recognition — the owner is recovering from eye surgery — but by the face of his wax figure in the museum. “Now I know that there really is a God.”

It’s not that Shields doesn’t talk about Commence with the same enthusiasm. It’s just a different enthusiasm. It raised around US$3.5 million (R$18.4 million) from investors. She can cite relevant statistics (by 2025 there will be 80 million women over 40 in the United States) and has learned the non-lyrical language of business: cap tables, convertible notes, equity round, total addressable market.

But she doesn’t see herself in this position forever. “I will always be the founder,” she said. “But at a certain point, we’re going to grow so exponentially that it’s going to take an incredible CEO to take us to that next level.”

Last year, Shields named the company president, Denise Landman, who was the founder and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret Pink. This brand was made for young women, 18 or 19 years old, who were “half woman, half child,” Landman said. “You haven’t been humiliated much by the world at large yet.”

On the other hand, Landman identifies Commence’s client as “a woman of substance,” someone who has accumulated knowledge and experience and pride over decades, “just as layers of soil accumulate and become more nutritious over time,” she said. “That substance is earned.”

For Landman, who said he’s over 60, problems like an irritated scalp or brittle hair aren’t worth worrying about. “The place to focus is: God gave me a full head of hair,” she said. “Let me make that head full of hair the most beautiful it can be.”

As for Shields, she can relate to more midlife anxieties than one might think, she said.

Yes, she somehow survived the ’80s and ’90s without internalizing toxic beauty standards — spared, she explained, by her mother’s mentality that her beauty was the path to their financial security (modeling was just a job unrelated to her eigenvalue). And, yes, she totally doesn’t mind the experience of gaining 5 or 10 pounds (“I immediately look younger,” she said, “it’s like natural filler”). And yes, these eyebrows are natural and regal.

But Shields still knows what it’s like when she pees a little when she sneezes. She even fills in the wrinkle between her eyebrows to make it disappear before making a film. And she still has a bit of an identity crisis with her daughters, now 18 and 21, leaving home. “If I’m not a mother 24 hours a day, who am I?” she said.

“I actually identify with a lot more than people have given me credit for,” Shields said. “Let me remind you that I am still a woman and I am still human.”