“I did an Instagram Live and people were like, ‘I really wish you looked like you used to,'” Brooke Shields tells the Times from her hotel room in Los Angeles.

If Shields is criticized for her looks, what hope is there for the rest of us? That’s one of the dilemmas at the heart of Shields’ latest memoir about aging: “Brooke Shields Mustn’t Grow Old.”

“The previous books I’ve written, with the exception of the children’s books, were all based on an event that was really traumatic for me, so that was the impetus,” says Shields, who has previously written books about her postpartum depression and complicated relationship to her manager mother. “This one didn’t have that, so it was a bit annoying for me at the beginning.” But that “made writing even more exciting – and reading the audio book even more enjoyable.”

Shields wasn’t even sure she wanted to write this book, which was originally suggested to her by her agent as a follow-up to the conversation she started with her podcast, Now What? “With Brooke Shields” and matches her hair care line Commence, which is designed for mature hair.

The former child star recently opened up about her past in the Emmy-nominated documentary “Pretty Baby,” named after the controversial 1978 film in which Shields played a young sex worker, and headlined a song-filled one-woman show with the title “Previously Owned”. by Brooke Shields.”

“Did we really need more of me out there? The documentary was a lot. “Do you really need it, Brooke?” I always get really nervous about things like that,” she says, channeling her internal debate about starting the project.

“But as I thought about it, it’s a sign of age to feel this desire and need to look at the place in my life and look back differently, but not look back any further,” she adds, considering whether to “do it.” Make it funny, irreverent, silly but truthful and let it be positive for women rather than what we are taught to be afraid of aging, supported or negated by statistics and studies, then this would be an interesting read for me .”

As with Shields’ aforementioned other current projects, she was prepared to consider what this moment in her life meant in the broader context of society’s willingness to talk about menopause.

“This doesn’t just happen to me, but to other women too,” she emphasizes.

Shields is willing to make fun of herself — and she doesn’t take herself too seriously, as evidenced by previous comic turns on shows like “Suddenly Susan” and “Friends.” The former Calvin Klein model is called by name on the street, but the same name can also be a rallying cry for her when her confidence is shaken.

“You are FBS: F—ing Brooke Shields,” her friends will have her back in moments like this.

There is a particularly entertaining anecdote in the book about her daughter borrowing her designer clothes. Shields said they should be saved for a special occasion, to which her daughter responds with the line above — without the curse word.

At one time, Shields would have objected to such conversations about her fame or beauty. “I kept saying, ‘Oh God. Stop.’ Because to me it felt like arrogance,” she says, pointing out that her outsized reputation may have meant she was overlooked for more serious roles or that the people she wanted to work with had preconceived notions of what she was could do.

But now she realizes: It’s allowed her to make a living, and she’s reached a point in her career where she’s now the subject of retrospectives and reconsiderations — whether by “Pretty Baby” director Lana Wilson or by she turns the mirror again.

“I’m not comparing myself to Marilyn Monroe, but – and I say this in the book – when someone dies in the public eye at their most youthful and famous age, they are immortalized at that age,” she notes. “If you don’t do that,” people can be dissatisfied. “I can’t be that idol anymore because I don’t look like I did in ‘Blue Lagoon’ or whatever.”

Although there is much more to “Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old,” “WWFBSD – What Would F—ing Brooke Shields Do?” is a fitting escape.