After Admitting She Can Find Sex “Painful,” Brooke Shields Shared Intimate Details About How Her Sex Life Has Changed In Her 50s
“For now, I’m counting on the old ‘the more you have it, the more you’ll enjoy it’ approach.”
Hormonal changes are a massive aspect of anyone’s life, and at 59 years of age, Brooke Shields is getting more candid than ever before about how her sex life has evolved.
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In her new memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, the actor unravels her inner thoughts about aging as a woman, and in the book’s tenth chapter, she talks specifically about her attitude toward sex.
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For reference, Brooke first rose to fame as a child star in the ‘70s, becoming well-known for the controversial movie roles she played as a minor, such as a child sex worker in Pretty Baby. In more recent years, she’s talked super openly about how being exploited and heavily sexualized as a child deeply impacted her.
“I had a fervent sex drive when I was young, but I never felt like I could step into that appetite in the way that I wanted to,” she writes as she recalls having sex for the first time with her college boyfriend at 22 years old.
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“I waited that long because I had the weight of the world on me,” she goes on. “And even once we started sleeping together, I never really let loose.”
Confessing that she didn’t fully embrace sex in her 20s, Brooke says she wishes she’d “just let the lust take over” — particularly now that her desire to have sex has diminished somewhat.
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“Now here I am, more than thirty-five years later, sometimes pretending I’m asleep when I know Chris is in the mood,” she writes, referring to her husband, Chris Henchy, who she married in 2001. “And that has nothing to do with Chris — he’s hot!”
Getting brutally honest in the book about the more recent changes she’s observed in her body and how they’ve impacted her sexuality, Brooke says: “In my natural state I feel less appealing to him than I ever did before.”
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“I’m going through all the bodily shit that comes with aging as a woman even in the best of times,” she adds. “The thinning hair and the peach fuzz and the brand-new belly fat and vaginal dryness and the diminishing sex drive.”
Brooke says she was “fine with” the decline in her sex life and that it wasn’t until her doctor reminded her about the value of sex in a relationship that she decided it was time to reassess the imbalance in her hormones.
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“My doctor told me I should start taking testosterone — sure you might get a few more whiskers, but that’s what tweezers are for — but I haven’t gotten there yet,” she writes in the chapter. “For now, I’m counting on the old ‘the more you have it, the more you’ll enjoy it’ approach.”
Despite her resolve, Brooke explains that she still finds sex “painful” — primarily due to an invasive vaginal rejuvenation procedure a male doctor gave her without her consent — and now implements “lotions and potions” to make it fun and enjoyable, as sex should be.
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“On a personal level, I’m in a place where sex can be painful,” she writes. “For me to fully enjoy sex at this point, I need my lotions and potions, the right sleepwear (maybe calling it sleepwear is contributing to the problem), my special pillow, and maybe a tequila so I can relax.”