Aging is a fact of life, involving some not so great side effects such as wrinkles, sagging skin and loss of flexibility and muscle tone. Luckily there are positive factors that come along with getting older too – wisdom, grace, confidence, attitude and joy to name a few.
For folks very much in the public eye these factors are amplified, scrutinized and criticized. In her latest book (Brooke Shields is not Allowed to Get Old), actress, model and author (On Your Own, There Was a Little Girl and Down Came the Rain) Brooke Shields calls on her personal experiences with the aging process, giving a woman’s perspective and that of someone whose whole life has been on display. With honesty and candor, Shields provides a perspective that is refreshing, revealing and surprisingly relatable.
Using examples from her own life, she shares stories of surgeries gone awry (which ended up strengthening her ability to self-advocate) her role of mom changing as she relays very real feelings seeing her daughters go off to college and shifting her focus to what she feels comfortable with rather than what she assumes will please others. It is a reality check for all of us, as she poses questions like, “Why are we forever criticizing ourselves and our bodies while seeking ridiculous perfection? Why do we never see how unique and special we are? And why, when we finally take the pressure off or count our blessings or just enjoy who we are, is it practically too late? Bravo, Ms. Shields, I totally agree!
Since I am a similar age, this book hit home hard for me, as I am experiencing children going off to college, caring for aging parents and trying to come to grips with the aging process. Looking in the mirror sometimes is not as pleasant as it used to be! But reading Shields’s story was therapeutic, making me realize I am not alone. I wanted to keep shouting, “Yes!!!” when reading her reflections on aging and making choices. One that particularly resonated was, “one of the joys of getting older, as far as I can tell, is the ability to say “no” to the things you don’t want to do.”
And I find as I age, I actually seek out reading material that aligns with my maturity more and more often. I really enjoy reading memoirs and seeing how the issues I face relate to those of others, as well as getting a different perspective, which can be inspiring and enlightening. Instead of the romance and fantasy books I favored in my youth, I prefer non-fiction these days, particularly books about science, climate and nature. I love reading and writing about culinary history. Brooke Shields is not Allowed to Get Old combines a multitude of these and other genres such as memoir, self-help, health and wellness, parenting, humor, psychology and even science, hitting many of my preferred literary hot buttons!
For more books on aging available at Rutgers Libraries, try:
- Aging Angry: Making Peace with Rage by Amanda Smith Barusch – examines the many ways that anger and rage can be transformative.
- Autobiography of a Garden by Patterson Webster (2022) – details how Webster, a neophyte gardener, moved from copying the ideas of other people, to learning from them, to striking out on her own.
- Growing Old in a Better World : Age and Ageing in the Utopian Imagination by Robert Troschitz –examines cultural representations of aging and old age in utopian writings from the Renaissance to today.
- Growing Pineapples in the Outback by Rebecca Lister and Tony Kelly – When a professional urban couple relocate to regional Australia to care for an ageing parent, they find it more confronting yet also rewarding than they could have imagined.
- Just Dandy: Living with Heartache and Wishes by Sandra Swenson – Swenson shares her pain and struggles, strength and determination, as crises continue to unravel her world in unexpected ways: her child’s addiction, a divorce, beginning a career at sixty, caring for aging parents, and facing her own old age alone.
- Laughter Before Sleep by Robert Pack (2011) – weighs the nature of endings from the perspective of old age and embraces the humor and play of memory that keep mortality at bay.
