Brooke Shields Says It Was a ‘Mistake’ to Reveal Her Virginity Status at a Young Age
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."
Brooke Shields said in a new episode of her iHeart podcast Now What? With Brooke Shields she regrets ever telling the public she was a virgin.
Shields revealed her virginity status in a chapter of her 1985 book On Your Own, where she encouraged readers to own their choices.
Shields said she “became the most famous virgin in the world,” which led to “creepy interviews” with older men about her sex life.
Actress Brooke Shields has been in the spotlight for over 45 years and recently revealed she has some regrets about being so open about her sex life in the public eye. In an episode of her iHeart podcast, Now What? With Brooke Shields, the 57-year-old chatted with her friend Ali Wentworth about the “poor choices” they made in their youth, where she admitted she regrets ever sharing her virginity status with the world.
“I mean, I think it was, in hindsight, a bit of a mistake for me to be so open about my virginity because it never left me alone,” Shields revealed.
The Blue Lagoon star explained her 1985 book On Your Own aimed to offer advice to college-aged women and she addressed her sex life. She revealed she had initially written what she felt was a smart first chapter, where she opened up about her choice to abstain from sex.
“In it, there was one part of a chapter, where I discuss, not abstinence per se, but owning your choice,” she explained. “I would get a lot of fan mail from kids saying, ‘Oh, my boyfriend’s pressuring me, and I don’t what to have sex. What do I do?’ My narrative was, ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’”
But the editors were looking for something different. “They wanted a simple, stupid book. Like, ‘I want leg warmers,’” she said. Shields clarified that the book itself ended up being written by a ghostwriter instead.
The final book still included a small section that revealed her virginity status, and media outlets picked up on it quickly, the model explained. Then, the real difficulty came when she had to go speak about her virginity on talk shows with older me, which Shields described as, “really creepy.”
“I became the most famous virgin in the world,” she said. “To be in the line of fire at such a young age in that way, I gained a resilience and it set me up to be ready for anything in this industry which can be difficult.”
Ultimately, Shields revealed in the podcast she regretted waiting until eventually losing her virginity to her Princeton boyfriend Dean Cain at the age of 22.
“I have regrets around [waiting] because there was a sense of joy and freedom that I should have been able to feel within a relationship that was so lovely and so beautiful and so sweet,” she said.
This isn’t the first time Shields has opened up about her sex life in the public eye. The model recently asked to not have her photos retouched during a denim campaign so she could truly own her body as it is.
“There’s something about owning your sexuality at this age that is on point for where we are today. It’s not angry empowerment,” she said in a recent interview with People.
You Might Also Like
