Brooke Shields reflects on the controversial advertising campaign in which she was s-xualized at the age of 15
When she was just a teenager, Shields starred in an advertising spot for a jeans brand that raised a tremendous stir due to the suggestiveness of the images.
More than 40 years after the launch of a controversial campaign in which Brooke Shields was the protagonist, the model and actress has reflected on the stir she generated.
It was a photo shoot for the Calvin Klein jeans brand, some images that were published in Vogue magazine in 1980. In them, she Brooke posed suggestively with one of the firm's garments when she was only 15 years old.
The two-time Golden Globe nominee has reflected in her latest interview on the controversial photographs of her. "I was outside when it all came out, and then I started hearing, 'Oh, the ads have been banned and they don't play them in Canada.' And the paparazzi and people were yelling at me and yelling at my mom, 'How could you? ' Then, it all seemed so ridiculous to me," Shields recalls.
The campaign consisted of a series of images and a commercial in which the teenager posed in a wide variety of positions as she recited a series of suggestive phrases. One of them, the one that dynamited such a scandal, prayed: "Do you want to know what stands between me and my Calvins? Nothing."
"They took that as a rhetorical question. I was naive, I didn't care. I didn't think it had anything to do with underwear, I didn't think it was s-xual in nature," she explained. "I said it about my sister: 'No one can come between me and my sister.'"
Shiels has confessed that she is still shocked today that the public reprimanded her then, because she, being so young and innocent, was not able to understand what the true meaning of her message was. "I think the assumption is that I was a lot smarter than I really was," she explained.
She added: "If they had another intention or a double meaning, they did not explain it to me. Would they have wanted me to say it in another way? It did not torment me, it did not enter my psyche as if it was something openly s-xual, I did not feel s-xualized in any way way".
The Calvin Klein campaign was an overwhelming success despite criticism and a fervent reaction from the public, something that, according to Shields, may be related precisely to the fact that it became so controversial. "I feel like the controversy backfired. The campaign was very successful. And then I think underwear overtook jeans. There was an undeniable appeal, and they took advantage of it. They knew exactly what they were doing, and I think it set a clear tone during decades".
Although she has revealed that this particular case did not faze her, Shields has confessed on other occasions that being s-xualized from a young age has had an impact on her and the way she raises her daughters. "Everything you say is heard, so you really have to be careful how you say whatever you're saying to girls in particular," Ella Shields said. "I really have to think, 'What would this sound like if it was said to me at 13?
