The pretty baby brooke shields documentary totally broke my brain

It was 11:43 PM on a random Tuesday, and I was sitting on the couch in my husband Mike's college sweatpants—the ones with the highly questionable bleach stain on the knee—eating slightly stale goldfish crackers directly off Maya's Elsa plate. I had just microwaved my coffee for the fourth time that day. It was still lukewarm. I was mindlessly scrolling through Hulu trying to find something that didn't involve animated dogs saving the world, and I hit play on a documentary I assumed was just going to be pure 90s nostalgia pop culture fluff.

Before I clicked play, my whole parenting philosophy was basically just trying to keep everyone alive until bedtime while making sure they ate a vegetable sometimes and didn't touch hot stoves. I thought keeping my kids safe meant putting safety locks on the cabinets and making sure their car seat straps were tight enough. I thought my own anxiety was just me failing at being a mom.

Then I watched the two-part Brooke Shields documentary, and oh god, it completely destroyed me.

Like, I legitimately sat there in the dark while Mike snored in the other room, staring at the screen, realizing that pretty much everything I thought I knew about child safety, consent, and my own postpartum journey was just completely inadequate. I went into it expecting a superficial look back at a child star, and I came out of it with a frantic, scribbled-on-a-napkin survival guide for raising human beings in a world that desperately wants to commodify them. Anyway, the point is, it broke my brain in the best, most terrifying way possible.

That time the internet scared the crap out of me

So there's this part where they talk about how she was cast as a child prostitute at literally 11 years old, and then did those hyper-sexualized Calvin Klein ads at 15. The adults in the room just systematically prioritized profit over a kid's psychological safety, which is horrifying, but then her teenage daughters in the film sit there and compare their mom's experiences to modern teens posting swimsuit selfies on social media. And that's when my lukewarm coffee almost went up my nose.

I always thought of my kids' digital footprint as like, maybe don't post pictures of them in the bath on Facebook, but her daughters point out the major difference is agency. Like, who's actually in control of the image? It made me realize that the same kind of objectification Brooke faced from traditional media is just easily replicated on TikTok and Instagram right now in our living rooms. My pediatrician, Dr. Aris—who's basically just a walking, talking version of the AAP guidelines—always tells me that I need to actively guide my kids' media consumption, but I always kind of brushed it off because Leo is 4 and mostly just wants to watch videos of people opening surprise eggs. But it starts now, you know? You can't just take away the iPad and hope for the best while hiding in the bathroom, you've to actually have conversations with them about who owns their face and how they decide what's appropriate to share with the entire universe.

I was sitting there thinking about my own childhood, when my biggest concern was keeping the tag on my Ty baby beanies pristine so they'd be worth millions someday (spoiler: they aren't), while this documentary is showing how easily a child's image can be taken from them. I started spiraling. I literally paused the TV and went into Leo's room just to look at my sleeping little pretty baby and promised him I'd be better about putting my phone away.

Which, side note, is probably why I've been so aggressively pushing physical toys on them lately. The next morning after my midnight documentary crisis, Leo was having a meltdown over wanting my phone, so I threw our Gentle Baby Building Block Set at him. Not literally threw, obviously. But I dumped them on the rug. I actually love these things. They're this super soft, squishy rubber that's totally BPA and formaldehyde-free, which makes me feel marginally better about the world, and they come in these really pretty macaron colors so my living room doesn't look like a primary-color explosion. He sat there for like an hour squishing them and stacking the little animal symbols, and it was just this beautiful, screen-free moment where he was completely in control of his own tiny, safe world.

The whole bodily autonomy conversation

Okay, so this is the part that literally made my stomach turn over. There's a scene where she talks about a director physically twisting her toe to simulate sexual ecstasy on film, and she explains how she learned to just "dissociate mind and body" to survive these incredibly invasive interviews and inappropriate on-set demands. It's sickening. And it made me think about all the times we accidentally teach our kids to ignore their own physical boundaries.

I used to be that mom who would whisper-yell at Maya to "go hug Aunt Susan, don't be rude!" when we were leaving family parties. I thought I was teaching her manners. But Dr. Aris gently reminded me at a well-visit last year that kids who aren't taught total ownership over their bodies are way more vulnerable to boundary violations later. We're supposed to be enforcing bodily autonomy from the toddler years, which means no forced hugs, and teaching them the actual, correct anatomical names for their body parts, which I guess is what child abuse prevention organizations are always screaming about and I was just too tired to listen to. Watching Brooke describe separating from her own body just cemented it for me. Maya can high-five Aunt Susan, or she can wave from the car, but her body is hers.

Why Tom Cruise was wrong

I don't know if you remember this, but years ago Tom Cruise went on TV and said a bunch of incredibly ignorant things about postpartum depression medication, and Brooke Shields wrote this fiery New York Times op-ed refuting him. The documentary dives into her severe struggles with IVF, a life-threatening emergency C-section, and totally debilitating Postpartum Depression.

When I had Leo, I had this overwhelming, suffocating anxiety. I thought PPD was just crying all the time, but for me, it was this extreme anxiety and these horrible intrusive thoughts and just feeling totally emotionally numb. I remember reading somewhere that the WHO says something like 10 to 15 percent of women in industrialized countries experience PPD, which honestly feels low based on every mom I've ever talked to at the park. But watching Brooke use her massive platform to fight the stigma and genuinely help advocate for The Mothers Act—which promotes PPD research and education—made me realize that my PPD was a medical condition, not a moral failing. Before I saw this, I held onto so much guilt about those early months with Leo. I just thought I was bad at it. Now I know that you've to have a postpartum mental health plan, and your partner needs to know what the warning signs look like, because Mike definitely just thought I was tired.

Speaking of things that I bought during that hazy, numb postpartum period just hoping they would fix my life: the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. Look, it's fine. It's organic cotton and it's stretchy because of the elastane, and it covers the kid's butt. I bought it at 3 AM because the internet told me organic was better, and sure, it's nice and soft, but it's just a onesie. It didn't cure my depression, obviously, but it does survive the washing machine, so there's that.

But on the flip side of survival mode, you know what honestly did save my sanity when my brain was completely fried? Our Baby Pacifier Holder Portable Silicone Case. I can't tell you how many times I dropped Maya's pacifier in the Target parking lot while crying because I couldn't handle the sensory overload of a screaming baby. This little scalloped silicone case just loops onto the diaper bag, and it keeps the pacifiers from getting covered in that weird lint at the bottom of my purse. It's one of those tiny, seemingly insignificant things that just gives you a tiny fraction of control back when you feel like you've none.

When the kids are in charge

The documentary also gets into her dynamic with her mother, Teri, who was an alcoholic and basically relied on her young daughter to be the primary breadwinner, forcing Brooke to develop this intense Type A personality just to maintain some semblance of control. Obviously, I'm not managing a teenage superstar's career, but it really drove home that the parent-child role should never, ever be reversed because forcing a kid to take on adult roles just causes massive psychological distress forever. Just prioritize your own mental health and don't make your kid your therapist, it's really that simple.

If you need a breather from the heavy stuff and just want to look at things that make babies happy, you can check out Kianao's wooden toys here.

Where we go from here

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I started this documentary thinking it was going to be a fun little trip back to my youth, and I ended it reevaluating how I govern my children's bodies, how I view my own mental health history, and how terrifying the internet is. I used to think being a good mom just meant checking boxes—fed, clothed, bathed. Now I know it's about constantly negotiating their agency, helping them understand they own themselves, and giving myself grace for the times my brain chemicals completely betrayed me after birth.

It's messy, and it's exhausting, and I'm probably going to have to microwave my coffee again right now just thinking about it.

If you're looking for ways to keep your kids engaged in the physical world and off the screens while you figure all this out, grab some of our favorite safe, sensory toys to keep their hands busy.

FAQs about surviving all of this

What age is this documentary honestly appropriate for?
Common Sense Media rates it 14+, but honestly, it heavily depends on your specific kid. I wouldn't watch it with Maya yet, but if I had a young teenager who was begging for an Instagram account, I'd probably sit down and watch it with them. You have to use it as a conversation starter, like asking them how they decide what's appropriate to post and what it really means to control your own image, instead of just using it to scare them.

How do I start teaching bodily autonomy to a toddler without sounding like a weird textbook?
You just weave it into the totally mundane, everyday stuff! When Leo doesn't want to be tickled anymore, I stop immediately. I don't force them to hug relatives they barely know. And I use the real anatomical terms for their body parts during bath time. It feels weird at first if you didn't grow up that way, but it normalizes that their body is theirs and nobody gets to touch it without their okay.

Are intrusive thoughts normal with Postpartum Depression?
Yes, and I wish someone had screamed this at me when I brought my first baby home. I thought PPD was just crying at diaper commercials, but extreme anxiety, emotional numbness, and terrifying intrusive thoughts are massive warning signs. It's a real medical condition, it's incredibly common, and getting on medication or talking to a doctor doesn't mean you're a bad mom—it means you're seriously taking care of yourself.

How do I fix my kid's digital footprint if I already overshared?
Deep breaths, because I think our entire generation did this before we realized what was happening. You can't change the past, but you can start right now by going back and auditing your accounts, deleting old public photos, and making everything private. More importantly, start asking for their consent now. Even at 7, I ask Maya, "Hey, can I send this picture of you eating spaghetti to Grandma?" It models the behavior we want them to have.