Brooke Shields is revealing many private and sometimes painful moments in her new memoir, including that a doctor once performed a vaginal rejuvenation procedure without her consent.
The native New Yorker, 59, details the enraging experience in Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old: Thoughts On Aging As A Woman, out Jan 14.
Shields says that while she was in her 40s, her “wonderful” gynecologist recommended a reduction to adjust the length of her labia, which had caused bleeding and chafing since she was a teen.
She decided to go through with the procedure, but at her post-op checkup, the male plastic surgeon who performed her operation informed her that “he threw in a little bonus” in the form of an “irreversible” rejuvenation, the 1990s supermodel told Us Weekly.
“It felt like such an invasion — such a bizarre, like, rape of some kind,” she recalled.
Vaginal rejuvenation can refer to multiple corrective procedures, but in this case, Shields was subjected to vaginal tightening that she didn’t want or need.
“Nothing pointed toward this need to be tighter or smaller or firmer or younger, especially there,” Shields said.
It wasn’t just the doctor’s gall that left her “dumbfounded,” but the fact that he “proudly explained to me that he, you know, threw in a little twofer.”
Despite the experience leaving her outraged, Shields revealed that she opted not to pursue legal action against the doctor or his practice, saying she didn’t want “anybody else telling me what I have to do.”
Though “embarrassed” to go public with “this very intimate information,” as she writes in the book, Shields says she’s doing so to further the discourse around women’s health.
“If we are to change the way we we approach and talk about women’s health, then we need to bring up the uncomfortable but very real issues,” she writes. “Shame is no longer an option.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
