Brooke Shields at the New York City Ballet in October 2024. Her new book, Brooke Shields can’t get old will be released on January 14, 2025.

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Actress Brooke Shields’ new memoir, Brooke Shields can’t get old The book, which hits shelves Tuesday, is a reflection on aging and female agency — particularly focused on people like Shields, who grew up in the public eye.

Shields, 59, began modeling in the entertainment industry when she was just a few months old. When she was 11 years old, she starred in films like Alice, sweet Alice and soon after Pretty babyin which she posed naked. In her memoirs, she writes that valuing herself at 59 was her “most provocative decision.”

In the book — and in an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel airing Monday — Shields discusses the importance of self-advocacy for women, particularly in the medical field. As she reflects on her own experience, she also talks about labia reduction surgery – and upon waking, learns that the male doctor also performed what is known as “vaginal rejuvenation surgery” (the medical term for this tightening process is generally). vaginal tightening) without her consent.

“I was horrified but also perplexed,” Shields writes in the memoir. “I didn’t want to sue this man – or maybe I did want but I didn’t feel like I could – because I didn’t want my female roles to be talked about again on the front page of every newspaper.

On the advice of her gynecologist, Shields had opted for a labiaplasty, a procedure designed to reduce the size of her labia to relieve chafing that she had suffered since high school.

But when she woke up, as Shields writes, she had been “given a younger vagina” – something she neither wanted nor consented to. She wrote that she didn’t tell her husband about it for months.

“My shock and disappointment was so great, but it felt so familiar. “It just felt like, oh, here we go again… I don’t know why you think it’s going to be different, Brooke,” Shields told NPR.

In the interview, Shields also shared that to date she has not sued the doctor or taken any action against him.

“I think I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t feel confident enough in my career to discuss my anatomy again. …I finally felt like I wasn’t letting my virginity define me anymore, you know?” she told NPR. “I think if it had happened during that time it would have been received much better.”

In Shields’ 1985 book On your own, She shared that she was a virgin, which quickly became a topic of public discussion.

In 2022 Follow her podcast, What now? With Brooke Shields, She said she regretted revealing her virginity status so publicly. Although Shields said the attention to her virginity led to “scary” interviews, she also shared that it prepared her for her career as a woman in the media industry.

“Being in the firing line like that at such a young age gave me a certain resilience and it enabled me to be prepared for anything in this industry, which can be difficult,” she said on the podcast.