Brooke Shields' Calvins Return to Sexualize Teen?

In Vogue's YouTube channel video, "Brooke Shields Tells the Story Behind Her 80's Calvin Klein Jeans Campaign" (Oct 28, 2021), Brooke Shields shared that she was naive about the sexual nature of the "Nothing Comes Between Me & My Calvins" advertisement:

"I was naive. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think it was - [it] had to do with underwear. I didn't think it was sexual in nature [...] I was a kid. And where I was - I was naive. I was a very protected, sequestered kind of young woman [...]"

Although, Shields claims that she was naive at 15, is it safe to assume that Shields' mother was in on the sexual innuendo? #rhetoricalquestion 

However, now at middle-age, Shields appears to condone the Calvin advertisements by admitting that (teen) sex sells:

"Yeah, at 56, I can go back and look at the camera, and say, "Oh well it's zooming in. And yeah, it's sort of on my crotch area. And then it comes to my face." Like, okay, but sex has sold since the dawn of time." 

Shields even admitted that, due to the allure appeal of nymphets, her Calvin campaign was "extremely successful", she admitted that Richard Avedon, the photographer, and Klein "knew exactly what they were doing", and she shared that her Calvin campaign was life changing for her and Klein. #intherightplaceattherightime

"The campaign was extremely successful."

"There's an appeal to it that is so undeniable. And they tapped right into it. You know, they knew exactly what they were doing."

"[...] he [Calvin Klein] said it changed his entire career and life. And it put Calvin on the map [...] which was what I think they had hoped for it."

"He said, 'You know, you changed the course of my life and my career.' And I said, 'Well, you did mine too.' We were in the right place at the right time." 

Survival of the Fittest (2022)
Source: Louis K Meisel 

Thus, it's no surprise that Shields shared with Katie White in the artnet news interview "[...] Brooke Shields on Why She [...] Volunteered to Model for Her Latest Work" (Wed Apr 27 2022) that not only does Shields still have the, what White referred as "iconic", Calvins from the infamous (sexualized teen) advertisement but Shields gave the Calvins to Grier - her 15-year-old daughter (to volunteer) to pose in two Tara Lewis paintings.

Grier modeling for Tara Lewis

Shields: I even went into the archives and pulled out my very original Calvins. 

White: Oh, wow, the Calvins you wore in the famous ad?

Shields: Yes! I don’t fit in them anymore, but my 15-year-old does so she’s wearing them in one [sic] [two] of Tara’s paintings, recreating a pose from that shoot. 

 Family Jean (2022)
Source: Louis K. Meisel

In the Balthus like paintings, we can only imagine how Nicholas Fox Weber would describe Lewis' paintings of Shields' 15-year-old with the nymphet's peek of (bare) midriff and proposing posterior. 

Unsurprisingly, Survival of the Fittest 2021 has sold. But surprisingly, Family Jeans 2022 is available, which will be on view at the aptly named “Role Modeling” exhibit at Louis K. Meisel Gallery in SoHo starting May 4, 2022.

Rowan modeling for Hell Yes (2022)

And Rowan, another teen daughter of Shields, modeled for Tara Lewis. In Hell Yes (2022), Rowan stares seductively at you with the words Hell Yes exclaiming from her bosom between her pigtails that drape her fountains. 

Shields has come to condone her Calvin advertisements so much so that the exhibit even includes a, sort of, shrine of Shields' (sexualized) teen magazine covers with a Calvin centerfold spread - front and center.

Richard Prince's Spiritual America (1983)

White wrote that Shields: "[...] has famously played muse for photographers, from Richard Avedon to Bruce Weber, and artists, including the painter Eric Fischl." But White failed to mention Richard Prince’s Spiritual America exhibit at the Guggenheim where a photograph of a nude 10-year-old Shields was on display. Interestingly,  Shields' mothers reportedly sold the photograph to Playboy Press for a whopping $450.

Nor did White mention Shields' 13-year-old "womanly" bikini pose in Life magazine that was written about in the Vanity Fair piece "The Photo That Changed My Life". 

Pretty Baby (1978)

But maybe it wasn't relevant for White to mention Shields' role as a pre-teen prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978), where her virginity was sold for a whopping $400.

Brooke Shields & Calvins: Naive or Complicit Sexualized Teen

Vogue posted on its YouTube channel "Brooke Shields Tells the Story Behind Her 80's Calvin Klein Jeans Campaign" (Oct 28, 2021). In the video, Shields shared that, unsurprisingly, no extras were allowed on the set and that Richard Avedon, the photographer, was nervous:

"The shoot itself, nobody was allowed on the set [...] I think he [Avedon] was a bit nervous." 

Unbelievably, Shields said that she was naive about the sexual nature of the "Nothing Comes Between Me & My Calvins" video, and she mentioned her body double in Blue Lagoon to justify her naiveté:

"I was naive. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think it was - [it] had to do with underwear. I didn't think it was sexual in nature [...] I was a kid. And where I was - I was naive. I was a very protected, sequestered kind of young woman [...] in Blue Lagoon I had a body double [for the completely nude scenes]."

Interestingly, Shields thanked Harpers Bazaar for naming her 14-year-old topless Blue Lagoon swimsuit scene iconic. Body double? 

Brooke Shields | Pretty Baby (1978)

And are we to assume that Shields didn't realize that her role as a pre-teen prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978), where her virginity was sold for a whopping $400, was not of a sexual nature. 

Although, Shields claims that she was naive at 15, at 56 she appears to condone the Calvin advertisements by admitting that (teen) sex sells:

"Yeah, at 56, I can go back and look at the camera, and say, "Oh well it's zooming in. And yeah, it's sort of on my crotch area. And then it comes to my face." Like, okay, but sex has sold since the dawn of time." 

As for her second contradiction, Shields reminded the viewers that there was something in her eyes on her magazine covers, but then she states that at 15, she was sans sexuality. 

"Every single cover I've been on, I don't care it I was 15 or whatever, there's something in the eyes."

"And there is an assimilation of sexuality now, which I certainly didn't have when I was 15."

Wait, what about Shield's 13-year-old "womanly" bikini pose in Life magazine that was written about in the Vanity Fair piece "The Photo That Changed My Life". 

Richard Prince's Spiritual America (1983)

And I won't mention Richard Prince’s Spiritual America exhibit at the Guggenheim where a photograph of a nude 10-year-old Shields was on display. (Interestingly,  Shields' mothers sold the photograph to Playboy Press for a whopping $450.)

Lastly, Shields admitted that, due to the allure appeal of nymphets, her Calvin campaign was "extremely successful", she admitted that Avedon and Klein "knew exactly what they were doing", and she shared that her Calvin campaign was life changing for her and Klein. #rightplacerighttime:

"The campaign was extremely successful."

"There's an appeal to it that is so undeniable. And they tapped right into it. You know, they knew exactly what they were doing."

"[...] he [Calvin Klein] said it changed his entire career and life. And it put Calvin on the map [...] which was what I think they had hoped for it."

"He said, 'You know, you changed the course of my life and my career.' And I said, 'Well, you did mine too.' We were in the right place at the right time."

NEW YORK & PEOPLE: Brooke Shields | Nude Pre-Teen Stirs Porn Furor

Brooke Shields' New York and People Covers

PRETTY BABY (1978): A Virgin Sold for $400

In Pretty Baby (1978), Brooke Shields played Hattie - a 12-year-old prostitute. In addition to having her virginity put up for auction, 12-year-old Shields appeared completely nude in the movie. Although the movie was released in 1978 when the age of consent in Louisiana was eighteen, it was set in 1917 when the age of consent in Louisiana was 12 and (teen) prostitution was legal.

In one scene, a john said referring to Hattie before he caressed her slim arms through her white cotton dress and pampered her with kisses on her young neck and face,“Ah well, what have we here? You’re selling little girls now Madame Nell?”

In another scene, Hattie was paraded on a litter like an idol or royalty in front of a room full of middle-aged and silver-haired johns. The bearers carefully carried Hattie around the table while Madame Nell, the auctioneer, slowly described Hattie in a noble and illustrious tone as, “A virgin – bona fide. The finest delicacy New Orleans has to offer. And it’s her wish that one of you gentlemen be The First.”

A senator bid $50 before Madame Nell strangely mentioned that the twelve-year-old Hattie was, “Fresh as a baby’s lips.” And after much haggling among the bidders, Hattie’s virginity was sold for $400 in cash, which would be almost $8,000 in 2017.

“Hope you gone be real gentle on me. Being my first time.” Hattie said as she backed away from the rich john with a look of horror on her face. The scene ended with Hattie’s screams of pain.

Shortly after having her virginity sold and taken, Hattie understandably took a bath. With her pre-teen flat chest completely showing, she scrubbed between her toes, and hummed a tune, before Madame Nell, without knocking, boldly entered the bathroom with another john.

Hattie jumped up, quickly covered her bare chest with a clean white towel, and exposed her white buttocks to the camera. Madame Nell snatched the towel away and inconsiderately and greedily said to the shocked john, even though Hattie had her virginity sold and taken only moments earlier, “Now how about it. Pure as the driven snow.”

Subsequently, Hattie was rescued from the brothel and marry a middle-aged photographer, whom the nymphet told, "I want you to be my lover." "I love you once. I love you twice [...]" "I'm gonna make you so happy. You're just my kind of man."

Brooke Shields & LIFE: Elevated and\or Sexualized Teen ?

Lisanne Falk and Brooke Shields, 1978 

(Vanity Fair, December 2016)

Brooke Shields wrote in the December 2016 issue of Vanity Fair the as a teen model she controversially projected womanly poses: 

“My friend Lisanne Falk and I—both 13 years old and Ford models at the time—were close friends with Betsy Cameron, another model, who happened to be an aspiring photographer and who was like a big sister to us. One day, Betsy asked us to visit her home in Southport, Connecticut, and take a series of fun photos for a possible book about friendship. We got to play dress-up in vintage costumes and crimp our hair and wear makeup, and we were thrilled to create fantasy worlds for Betsy to photograph. This particular picture was the last of the day. We wore red lipstick and felt so grown up. The book never came to pass, but this photo was chosen to run in the first issue of Life magazine when it was revived as a monthly, in 1978. I couldn’t believe I was in Life! This image elevated us into a different category: we were no longer just catalogue models but had transitioned into a more credible and artistic realm. It was also controversial at the time for girls to project womanly poses, but that’s what girls did when dressing up. And, looking back, this is the photo that sort of put us on the map.”

Brooke's piece is a bit misleading. For example, she had already been "elevated" from being considered "just [a] catalogue" model when she appeared nude at the age of 12 and had her virginity sold for $400 in her role as a nymphet prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978). 

And when Brooke was 10, she posed nude for Gary Gross. Playboy Press paid Brook’s mother $450 for the photograph that appeared in 1983 at Richard Prince's “semi-anonymous gallery” on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and in his 2007 Spiritual America exhibit at the prestigious Guggenheim Museum. 

Clearly, this isn't "the photo that changed" her life or put Brooke "on the map"; however, the people at Life knew exactly what they were doing when they put two nymphets posing seductively in bikinis in the 1978 re-launch issue of the magazine.

Marianne Sinclair's HOLLYWOOD LOLITAs | Leading Men & Teen Starlet Sex

Marianne Sinclair's Hollywood Lolita

I used anecdotes from Marianne Sinclair's Hollywood Lolita to enlighten the second edition of The Allure of Nymphets. Here's a sampling:

1. I related in The Allure of Nymphets and in a previous post that Sarracino and Scott wrote in The Porning of America that 44-year-old Frank Sinatra had an affair with 14-year-old Tuesday Weld. Tuesday ironically became famous for turning down the role of Lolita in Kubrick’s adaptation of the novel. But Marianne Sinclair shared in Hollywood Lolita that Tuesday declared, “I didn't have to play Lolita, I was Lolita.” 

Tuesday Weld

In addition to her affair with Sinatra, “Tuesday, by her own admission, was having her first 'real affair' at eleven [...]” Tuesday's other famous lovers included Albert Finney, John Barrymore, Terence Stamp, George Hamilton and Gary Lockwood. As for her film career, Tuesday eventually accepted a role in the movie Pretty Poison (1968) as Sue Ann, a high school cheerleader who had an affair with a middle-aged ex-convict. 

2. In 1977, Academy Award nominated film director Roman Polanski admittedly drugged, raped and sodomized 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. Judge Laurence J. Rittenband sentenced Polanski to a 90-day evaluation but forty-two days later Polanski’s psychiatric report recommended that he be released with time served.

Sinclair shared that after Polanski returned to Europe, not only did he film Tess (1979), which won three Oscars, but that the 49-year-old filmmaker began a relationship with Nastassja Kinski, the 15-year-old star of the film. Kinski defended Polanski's rape of Geimer by stating that Polanski was the victim and that he was “unfairly condemned because he was famous.” 

Nastassja Kinski

But maybe none of this should be surprising after reading Polanski's confession. Polanski confessed to cameramen at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, “I've never hidden the fact that I love young girls. Once and for all, I love very young girls.” And he confided in his autobiography “Many women seem irresistibly attracted by notoriety, and many – especially since the Los Angeles affair – are eager to meet me.”

Sinclair wrote “Predictably, Pretty Baby did for Brooke what Taxi Driver had done for Jodie. At twelve-years-old, Brooke became 'The World's Youngest Sex Symbol'”. Sinclair shared an anecdote from Terri, Shields' mother, about the first time her daughter posed in the nude.

“When Brooke was eight, she was asked to pose nude, and it was no problem. She just took her clothes off, put her foot on a chair. [And asked,] “This is the sort of thing you want?”

Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor

Sinclaire related that Elizabeth Taylor “had a large bust at an age when many girls are still as flat as boys,” “Her very first date, arranged by MGM, was with a thirty-five-year-old studio escort, when she was only fourteen,” and by the age of 16 she was considered “a full-blown sex-goddess' when she played the spouse of 37-seven-year-old Robert Taylor in the spy film Conspirator (1949). On the set of the film Taylor complained to her tutor, “How can I concentrate on my education when Robert Taylor keeps sticking his tongue down my throat?”

Beverly Aadland & Errol Flynn

Lastly, Beverly Aadland’s mother wrote in her book The Beautiful Pervert: “My Beverly was only fifteen and still a virgin when she met [48-year-old] Errol Flynn. A few hours later, she was still fifteen…but she wasn’t a virgin anymore.” Beverly went on to co-star with Flynn in Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). 

FLAG Art's DISTURBING INNOCENCE: Art or [Pre]Teen Bestiality?

I viewed the Disturbing Innocence exhibition at the The FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. The group exhibition was curated by artist Eric Fischl. Here's the description of the exhibit from the foundation's website:

Disturbing Innocence features over 50 historical and contemporary artists whose use of dolls, toys, mannequins, robots, and other surrogates forms a deep and powerfully expressive genre. The exhibition poses profound questions surrounding social constructs of youth, beauty, transformation, violence, sexuality, gender, identity, and loneliness. Inspired by Fischl’s own childhood in suburban Long Island, NY, and his early career as an artist working in New York City in the 1980’s, Disturbing Innocence presents a subversive and escapist world at odds with the values and pretensions of polite society.

At least three of the pieces in the exhibition are most relevant to this blog: Richard Prince's Spiritual America (1983), John Wesley's Caryn and Robin (1968), and Steve Gianakos' The Farm Had Been Rescinded Just A Month Earlier (2011). 

Richard Prince's Spiritual America (1983)

I wrote about Prince's nude photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields in The Allure of Nymphets. Prince's photograph of the nude pre-teen Shields was previously on display in Prince’s Spiritual America exhibit at the prestigious Guggenheim Museum. Interestingly,  Brooke’s mothers sold the photograph to Playboy Press for a whopping $450.

John Wesley's Caryn and Robin (1968)

John Wesley is a 86-year-old pop artist, and his piece shows two prepubescent girls in a lipstick lesbian erotic pose. 

Steve Gianakos' 
The Farm Had Been Rescinded Just A Month Earlier (2011)

And Gianakos is a 74-year-old artist who has other very provocative pieces of nymphets. Chris Bors of Art Voices wrote that this piece: 

"[...] depicts a girl with Kewpie doll style eyes reverse straddling a line of pigs that are eating out of a trough, while getting stimulated by one of their tails as a bird, cat and rooster look on." 

Clearly and possibly unfairly, the authorities have sided with art in the "Is it art or (child) pornography?" debate as it pertains to these pieces. 

Disturbing Innocence is on view on FLAG’s 9th and 10th floors until January 31, 2015.

12-Year Old Thylane Blondeau: The New [Nude Teen] Kate Moss/Brooke Shields

Thylane Blondeau for Jalouse

12-year-old French model Thylane Blondeau is on the cover of the April 2014 issue of Jalouse - a French fashion and culture magazine. Her photograph is conservative by secular standards; however, the hashtag #BORN 2001 and the words LA NOUVELLE KATE MOSS on the cover are controversial. The hashtag confirms the fact that Blondeau is a pre-teen model and that she's following in the footsteps of supermodel Kate Moss.

I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets about how 18-year-old Kate Moss appeared nude in a Calvin Klein Obsession for Men magazine advertisement and how she related in a Vanity Fair interview that when she was 16-years-old she was told by a representative of Face magazine that if she didn't get nude, "[...] we’re not going to book you again." Thus, the fact that Jalouse is using Blondeau's pre-teen age as a selling point and that she is expected to follow in the footsteps of Kate Moss is revealing. 

18-year-old Kate Moss

Furthermore, Blondeau's behind the scenes Twitter picture is additionally revealing. Blondeau's pose in the picture is exactly like the pose 15-year-old Brooke Shields held in a 1981 Calvin Klein commercial. This is what I wrote about the commercial in The Allure of Nymphets:

In one commercial, the camera panned up her maroon cowboy boots, then up the right leg of her Calvin Klein skinny jeans, then slowly across her crotch before finally stopping at her young face. With her crotch still within view, due to her legs being spread completely open, Brooke looked seductively into the camera and said, “You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Thereby, letting the viewers know that her fifteen-year-old crotch, which I would imagine the viewers could not take their eyes off of, was sans panties.

Thylane Blondeau's Twitter Picture

Lastly, Thylane Blondeau's recent pictures in Jalouse are considered by some to be tame in comparison to her pictures that were published in a 2011 issue of Vogue. The photographs caused a major stir, because despite the fact that Blondeau was only 10-years-old, she had on make-up, adult clothes, jewelry, and stilettos.

Interestingly, when one is reminded that childhood is a relatively recent invention, Blondeau's pictures may not seem as controversial. And clearly, Jalouse, Face, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs,  Marie Claire and Vogue realize how powerful the allure of nymphets is and has chosen to capitalize on the allure of nymphets. 

Long Island Middle School Girls Gone Wild

EDITORIAL OBSERVER

Middle School Girls Gone Wild

Lawrence Downes' editorial was published in The New York Times (Dec. 29, 2006) after he witnessed Long Island middle school girls at a talent show "[...] in teams of three or four [...] in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes."

Downes wrote that it was hard for him "to erase the images" of middle school girls (i.e., sixth, seventh and eighth grades.) writhing, strutting, shaking their bottoms, splaying their legs, and thrusting their chests on the stage of a Long Island middle school while Janet Jackson sang, “Don’t stop don’t stop. Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” In addition, Downes was surprised that the parents of the pre-teens cheered and applauded the "eroticized" performances.

Unlike Downes, I wasn't surprised by what I read of his experience at the talent show. I shared in The Allure of Nymphets that Tom Wolfe related in Hooking Up that in middle schools, from the plush suburbs of Washington to the underprivileged schools of the South Bronx, thirteen and fourteen-year-old girls, among other "eroticized" acts, were performing fellatio on boys between classes.

I wrote about the "eroticized" nude photograph of 10-year-old Brook Shields that was on display in Richard Prince’s Spiritual America exhibit at Guggenheim and how on the 2011 season premiere of Saturday Night Live, Alec Baldwin said while impersonating Texas Governor Rick Perry,  "I believe all 10-year-old girls should be vaccinated for HPV, so they can enter into meaningful sexual relationships.

But all of this may not be so shocking when you recall that tweens were considered young adults before the turn of the 20th century and that up until 1897 the age of consent in California and in most states was 10.

Pre-Teen Nymphet Brooke Shields: Semi-Nude @ the MoMA

The above picture is of a work of art that was displayed at the Talk to Me exhibit at the MoMA. The artwork contains a photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields - semi-nude and posing seductively.

The piece is bewildering for (at least) two reasons:

One, Brooke Shields was 10-years-old, semi-nude, and posing seductively.

Two, the piece appeared to have nothing to do with the theme of the exhibit, which was about how: "[...] openly and actively or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us."

Teen Brooke Shields Sans Panties

Subsequent to Brooke Shields' (pre-teen) nude appearance in Pretty Baby (1978, she appeared at the age of 15 in some seductive advertisements for Calvin Klein.

In one Calvin Klein commercial, the camera seductively pans her cowboy boots, then up the right leg of her skinny jeans, and slowly across the nymphet's crotch before finally stopping at her captivating face. 

With her crotch still within view, due to her legs being spread completely open, Brooke looks enticingly into the camera and says, “You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Thereby letting the viewers know that her 15-year-old crotch was sans panties. 

Thus, the marketing team at Calvin Klein knew that they could use the allure of nymphets to sell overpriced jeans.