Brooke Shields recounted the time a doctor proudly disclosed he'd performed "a little bonus" surgery on her while she was undergoing a different medical procedure.
The 59-year-old Suddenly Susan star, who emerged as a child actor and unwittingly became a young sex symbol, disclosed intimate details she warned may be "too graphic or simply TMI" to read in her new memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman.
In the memoir, to be released on Tuesday, Shields opened up about the distressing medical trauma she experienced when she went in for a labia reduction surgery when she was in her 40s.
The actor said the length of her labia had caused her much discomfort, from bleeding and chafing, since high school and was informed by her gynecologist about labia reduction surgery.
She agreed to go through with the procedure.
Shields prefaced her recollection with:
“I’d be lying if I said I’m not embarrassed to share this very intimate information."
"But, if we are to change the way we approach and talk about women’s health, then we need to bring up the uncomfortable but very real issues."
"Shame is no longer an option.”
The actor was mortified to learn the doctor who performed the reduction surgery she consented to also performed "rejuvenation"—a vaginal tightening—while she was under the knife.
She recalled what her Beverly Hills plastic surgeon told her during a post-op checkup.
"He informed me that he threw in a little bonus,” Shields said, adding:
“It felt like such an invasion — such a bizarre, like, rape of some kind.”
Shields remembered the doctor performing the surgery "legitimately proudly explained to me that he, you know, threw in a little twofer.”
She said she was “dumbfounded” by the revelation.
"Nothing pointed toward this need to be tighter or smaller or firmer or younger, especially there," Shields added.
You can watch a video of a news report here.
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Users in the pop culture subReddit were infuriated by what Shields experienced, especially after she had been subject to child exploitation as a young model and actor.
When she was 11, Shields was sexualized as a child star when she appeared naked in French director Louis Malle's controversial film Pretty Baby in 1978.
She also appeared in a series of nude photos for the publication Sugar 'n' Spice in 1975 that her mother signed off on when Shields was ten.
The rights to the erotic photographs were the subject of litigation in New York City courts in the early 1980s.
People were in shock after learning Shields was still experiencing body violation in a different form.
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People remained baffled at the doctor's decision to perform vaginal rejuvenation without his patient's consent.
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Shields told Us Weekly that she never agreed to or wanted the “irreversible” procedure and felt "shame" and "anger" as a result. She also didn't tell her husband, producer Chris Henchy, about the horrific incident “for the longest time.”
She has decided not to seek legal action for the trauma, telling the media publication:
“I thought, I don’t want anybody else telling me what I have to do."
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