Rebroadcast: Social Media & Girls w/ Brooke Shields

So here's Brooke prefractured femur, please enjoy. One day in March, I got COVID nineteen and my whole life came screeching to a halt. And as I lay in bed, taking Thailand all and finishing Netflix, I thought to myself, how am I going to raise a teenager in a pandemic? How is any of us going to do that? My two daughters, their whole life was upside down. They weren't seeing their friends, they weren't going to school. And so on, Go ask Alli, I'm going to go ask some other

people how to grow a teenager in a pandemic. So on today's episode, I'm talking about the sexualization of girls in social media. Social media has amplified age old pressures for teenage girls to conform to certain sexualized narratives, and those hyper sexualized models of what it means to be feminine can affect the mental, emotional, and physical health of our girls. I'm asking how do we help them, how do we monitor them, how do we keep them from ending up on the dark web? And who better to

talk to than one of my friends, Brookshield. She is an American model and actress. She has so many credits that we don't have enough time to listen all. But what I will say is that at age twelve, she was starring in a movie by Louis Mall called Pretty Baby, where she played a child prostitute. She is somebody who was sexualized as a young girl and who now has two teenage daughters who are just TikTok being their way

through the pandemic. Hello Brookshields, Hello Ali went Worth. So I'm, as you know, fascinated by what is happening to our teenage girls on social media, and we share a lot of things. You and I not only are exterior beauty, but also the fact that we have teenage girls, and we are constantly scratching our heads about how to deal

with this issue. The reason that you are so I find particularly fascinating to talk to you about this was as a young girl, you lived in a very public sexualized way, particularly you know, because of the modeling, but also because of the Louie Mall movie. And my first question is to you is can you imagine if you were on social media when you were one through fifteen? I could not imagine it, and my wildest dreams, even my mom kept all of the press away from me,

so anything that was written, I never saw anything. So I didn't even see the negativity. And I think she did that on purpose, because they tried to eviscerate all of us after that movie. Well, you know, it's interesting because in our world, the sexualization of females is rewarded, whether it's magazines, television, the media, and so here, our teenage girls have a platform and a place where they

can self sexualize themselves as much as they can. You know, you, when you were young, your mother controlled sort of your brand, but now they kind of they get to create it themselves. I'm just curious, what are your kind of parental guidelines when it comes to that, Do you have set rules like you're not allowed to do bikini shots or nudies? Are only their mother is allowed to do? Yes? No, I mean we do. We have access to all of their social media. We have the power to turn it

off for any reason. I can't follow her. I have to follow her through another account just for security reasons. Um. Them one of them is public and one isn't. Why why is one of them allowed to be public? I'm just curious. Well, because one of them is sixteen and the others fourteen, and at sixteen, we said, all right, as long as we can still have control of it, and as long as you don't post anything inappropriate, we

will let you. Because and the public aspect of hers is now that she's in high school, her friend group has really opened up, so they're from all these different schools and and everything like that. But we haven't monitored all the time. I trust her view, I trust her fear. Um, we have put the fear of got into them. With regards to whatever you post doesn't go away. The words you choose have to be chosen very carefully. Colleges, look

at your Instagram. Colleges review all of that, and so they I think they're starting to get it a little bit. So most parents should be monitoring their children social media. They don't, but you know, we all try to as best we can. We all hope that they don't go behind our backs and create other accounts. There are two things that I've noticed, particularly with my children, which is likes have become so so important. To get a like is complete validation of who you are as a person.

And there's been so much research globally that show that, of course, young girls need physical validation because they all they see themselves is ugly or fat, and there's a very specific narrative about what we're all supposed to look like that they abide by. But the like seem to initiate the desire to be accepted. And what happens is they start almost like an addiction to the machines at Vegas. They need the likes to kind of fill that hole.

And I found that when they are private, they know that the likes can only go so far because it is within their friend group or people. They know when you open up to the public, it becomes kind of a mad rush to get as many legs as you lot, because that sort of informs how exciting, sexy important you are. The likes and the validation. It is such an addiction. And what's weird about the contradiction or the being a hypocrite in my world is that I have to have

the most followers that I can. Now followers and likes. I don't look at the likes as much as I do the followers. But now this whole world has turned into if they want you to advertise X product, they look at how many followers you have. So if I happen to be a person that just wants to not really live, you know, that way, and take pictures of what I eat and and everything, well then they're not gonna want me because I don't have a million or more followers. And try telling that to your kids. And

I have to say, this is for my business. This is I'm having somebody else help me monitor it so I'm not subjected to the comments. I don't read the comments. And Rowan actually said to me she posted something with me, and I asked her how it was being received, and she said, don't read the comments, mom, And I thought that was really interesting because they were clearly not nice. And she was kind of trying to protect me. So it does tell me that somewhere in there there's a barometer.

What's weird for me is I know that I'm beautiful and sexy, that I'm perfect, so come on, you know, um no, but there are there are always going to be people that just want to rip me apart. And then I started seeing some of the comments and they were, you know, not nice, and and I thought, my god, this is just a slight taste of what these kids are are doing and what they're feeling. But it's two seven, and it's not only girls criticizing each other, but it's boys.

And so they're giving these boys all the power to kind of tell them if they have any work wrong with them. Yeah, and they do. They pointed out girls being in this platform and in this position, we're pushing misogyny and sexism at a much earlier age. You know. I feel like, are we doing the right things as mothers to shield them from this till they're older, till they're you know, frontal lobe has developed and they can

understand this the way we do. I mean, I had a very strange, strange relationship with sexuality as a child because this is only a half hour podcast, Brook, but it's hard for me to tell my kids talk to my kids about this. Well, this is why you're an interesting guest because you were so sexualized as a young girl, and now you have teenage girls. How do you set the rules without them saying you were you played a child prostituted? I mean, how do they not push it

back in your face? I mean it's like Toddlins and Tierra's saying, I don't want to see you in a pageant. I mean no, I'm dealing with this right now. With one of my daughters. There is an agency that wants her to start modeling, and I kept saying, I need to understand the why you know you need It's a very different industry than it is now. And this man said to me, said, look, she's too young. She's fourteen, and we wait till sixteen signing them and taking care

of them. And the odd thing for me was I was doing I was nine, I was eight seven, you know, I was doing these pictures since forever, and yet I do pretty baby. Then all of a sudden I become the most famous virgin in the world. So I grew up with absolutely the most conflicting, paradoxical way of living, and I just shut down. But wasn't wasn't the fact that your virginity was publicized as a way to counteract

the part that made you so sexualized. And probably your mother probably gotten a lot of trouble for when you were young because of pretty Baby. I mean, she got in trouble for everything, and rightfully so. She was sort of a train wreck that I was always more interested in keeping her happy and keeping her alive. I don't know if she did that intentionally. The truth was I was very sequestered. I was very much in a bubble. I didn't leave my mother's site for forever, you know.

And but most of these girls, most of these girls, you know, they don't leave their room. To my other point, this being a pandemic, I think teenagers are so bored they want to be provocative, and that to me, takes you to a very dark and scary place, which is what I always live in terror of. And I make sure that I talked to them about that dark and scary place, because even if they look like they're not

listening or they roll their eyes, they hear me. And as long as I can keep a little fear in them. And I mean that like I I want them to be afraid. I read them the news. I make them watch certain documentary is about you know, abductions and about relationships that seemed like they were really with a nice guy and their tragic and their response because they feel like they're invincible, especially at this age, is it's not going to happen to me, mom. And that's such an

ignorant way of looking at things. And I just keep reiterating it. I said it could. This does not discriminate. It doesn't matter where you live, what you look like, what you are. There's nothing that makes you more prey than anybody else, and so you are not exempt from it. And and the predators can find you. It's very easy to find you on social media, find them on but you can also there's so many ways that you can

find people. You just track them. I mean, you know, that's why I can't personally follow my kids, because you can then track them to me easily. I think that we're talking about a lot of things. I think I've seen many kids post pictures that are inappropriate. And they're fourteen there, fourteen years old, thirteen years old, and my kind of question note that is, it's not my kid. What is our obligation to each other to sort of say, hey, this came to my attention. Well, I can tell you.

I can tell you right now. I had an experience with this. I have a friend and her daughter, starting at age twelve, was posting, in my opinion, inappropriate pictures. They were incredibly sexual. You know, there were tiny bikini shots and pouty face and finger in the mouth and you know, the come hither look and the whole thing. And I got sort of nervous because my girls followed her and my girls looked up to her, and I thought, this is a potential role model for my children. And

I got to stop this. And I talked to the parents a few times, and I said, you cannot have your child using this as her only currency. And she has a public account, which is very dangerous. I mean, it's like a predators smartest board. You gotta shut it down. And they weren't interested. They didn't agree with me because they were and are very proud of what their daughter

looks like. And they liked that she was out there, and they liked that she got a lot of likes because the connection led directly to them, and I finally had to kind of pull back from the friendship and have my kids on follow that girl because I was so terrified of the ramifications. And I started educating my children in a way where I would sit them in

front of Instagram and say, look at this picture. This is a girl to me that has a hole to fill and she's choosing to fill it by sexualizing herself and having unknown boys and men out in the world tell her she's okay, you are okay. You don't need

to do that, you know. So we had a million conversations about that, to the point where I mean, my daughters won't even put like a funny bathing suit shot going down a water slide because I've because I've terrified them, and they'll be spinsters living in a castle when they're eighty. I agree with you. But another thing which is really interesting to me is I was so ashamed of everything growing up. I was ashamed of the way I looked.

I didn't have big boobs. I I always felt my butt was big, and so there was all these different little weird messages that I was getting that were so contradictory that I just I wanted to hide, you know, and even if I were to play a role, it wasn't liberating to me. So there's a part of me that looks at the girls. They're proud of their bodies, and I don't want them to lose that. Like, I don't want them to get shame, have shame on their bodies.

And I don't want them to be so puritanical. But I want there to be enough fear and and I I was trying to say to them, if they're so worried about likes and they're so worried out being regarded and how they come across to people, then wouldn't they want to know that they miss the image that they're putting out there is not respectful. Yeah, we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Welcome

back with more. Go ask Gali. The problem is with this social media what's happening is mental health is becoming a huge problem. You know, there's body image stuff, there's eating disorders, depression, anxiety, suicide. You know, there is a story I heard recently which was about a young girl and she was, you know, not very popular, and she wanted to get popular, and the popular girls were sexy and sexual, and her social media had only been like,

you know, puppies and cupcakes. And so she went to a party and decided to perform oral sex on a low crosse player because he was popular, and she thought, this is my way in and one of the teammates filmed it, put it on social media, and she was slat shamed and she killed herself. Now this is a particularly vulnerable girl. But you know, we're all dancing in this kind of mine field of mental health and of

how our daughters are conducting themselves and viewing themselves. So for me, I think it's a great thing to educate your girls. And also it's not just them, Like you brought up a really good point, someone else filmed it. You could put something on and it can be screenshotted and it can be disseminated. So it's not like, oh, you're in control of it. You're not really in control

of anything. And you know, you go to the beach and they're not having fun at the beach, they're just taking pictures, selfies or pictures of each other or and I'm thinking, when where's your childhood? You know, when when do you swim on and play in the sand if I don't even make sand castles like you did when you were three, but just the joy of being outside

or that's the addiction in general. And so when you look at social media when they're young, and now they're getting younger and younger and younger, you know, they're given these platforms. You know, it is sort of an out of focus duckling. And then as soon as they're sort of preteens, it's suddenly the camera's turn and it's on them.

You know, it's funny faces and stuff. And then they get more kind of aware and the faces pull back and suddenly it's their bodies and they become more sexual and it's less about goofy faces, and now it's about presenting yourself to the male population. It's like you could do like one of those flip books of seeing you know, the ages and how they deal with social media. It's also a very curated platform. So even if you're a girl and you maybe had issues with your body or

your face, you can now face tune them. You can make your breath spigger, you can make your acne go away. You can sort of morph into your idealistic version of yourself. So that's another thing that's being presented out there, which to me feeds the anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, because you know that you're putting something out there that's false, and every time you look in the mirror you are

reminded that you don't look like that image. You are perpetuating the lowest self esteem that you could possibly have.

I mean, it's just it's so devastating. And then you have teenage girls who want to look like the image that face tune has created, so they go get preemptive botox and fillers at fourteen fifteen years old, again, before the frontal lobe has developed, before you're capable of making good decisions, you already cutting and pasting an image of yourself that hasn't even formed yet, before I even really

know who they are. They're painting a picture that's not based on them, their own self, and they're all it's homogenizing. It's like everybody is starting to look alike. It's sort of creating this avatar, this world, and you're putting yourself in a position to inevitably have to fail because you can't look like this Barbie doll or this this image.

But it's younger and younger. You know, my seventeen year old daughter shouldn't be worried about how thin her waist is, but they see this kind of sexy hourglass figure, you know, And of course the physicality is always changing. Now big butts are really in, you know, so I need now, I need a big butt constant. And the reason I keep hammering social media is when we grow up. You know, we saw them in monthly magazines, but our kids are

barraged by them all day long. These images, hundreds of them, be this B this, B this, B this B two B this. They're the guinea pi eggs. You know. They're the first generation to grow up with social media. And I just worry. I worry about the long term effects. You know. I've I've sat with my daughter and she'll take a picture and she'll show me what can be done to it. And well, I'd lie if I told you that the one that they docked or up doesn't look better than the real one. But what's the point

of that, especially if everybody knows their doctor. It's like when a woman walks into and she's had a horrible facelift. You think, you know, you're not fooling us. We know that you've had a facelift. What are we proving? What are we saying exactly? What's the message? I mean, it's an unhealthy one, you know. It's let's create this fake version of ourselves because in that one instance, we get

to live the fantasy of looking like that. But then what does that do when the phone goes off and when you wake up and you are just in your own beautiful, different, unique, fabulous body. But the way we describe each other versus the way we describe ourselves is amazing.

And the trainer that I work with said, he sees hundreds, well he used to see hundreds of people, and a guy can be overweight and whatever, but he'll go to the mirror and he'll just yeah, just he'll find that'll be like yeah, And the girls could be fit and gorgeous and rocking and like just amazing, and they'll find one thing and now show it and look at it and punish themselves for it. And he said, it's so sad what he sees, because you know, women don't even

give themselves a break. I've never used face tune or any of those filters, but my daughters haven't either. But I know that my eldest daughter will take a picture of me and do stuff to it before she says, oh, you can post it, or she does. She does, she's like, Mom, don't you can't put that? No, Mom, you gotta, and she'll do something. It's usually a wrinkling thing. I don't suddenly have enormous breast or anything. Yeah. No, Robin will say,

let me take another angle, let me take a different picture. Yeah, I think that. I I think I rebel against that a little bit because I'm so conscious of it. You know, I rebel against my daughters wanted to do that by saying, oh this, I don't care. So I am. I know mom, but you have you know, your roots are showing. I don't care to pandemic. I don't care. This is who I am, and this is what I I sort of dig my heels in about it, which you know, probably's

probably a terrible idea. And I don't think they started retouching stuff until I mean, who knows, weren't you weren't you an ivory snow baby? Yeah I think they retouched that. Yeah, yeah, they made me your little chunky well, yeah, they made me a little more rippled, and you know, they got rid of the crow's feet. Now, a quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go ask Ali. Let's get back to the discussion. But I wanted to go back

a little bit about as a parent. You know, with teenagers, you're doing a lot of like don't drink, don't do drugs, don't drive under the influence, don't let this person do that. But to me, the social media component has become a whole education in itself that I didn't have and you didn't have as a kid. So it's not like our parents gave us any kind of handbook to be able to deal with this. And I feel like social media takes up much more of my time in terms of

educating my children than any other aspect of teenagehood. And you know, the reason that I'm talking to you and I'm going to talk to some other doctors about the sexualization of girls and social media in the pandemic is because my concern is right now with with kids not going to school, not going to camp, and not sort of venturing out and having normal experiences, having you know, first kiss with the boy or whatever that is, because

they're insulated and because they're alone in their rooms or their homes. I don't want them to experiment in a way that will cause severe damage. Like you said down the line, with college admissions, with with being slug shamed, with predators, with eating disorders, all that kind of stuff. I worry that during a pandemic, these things all get amplified.

But so the only thing that I can keep doing is instead of just being that broken record and shaking my head when bad lyrics come on, or or telling them don't use your butt like that, I just then wait two moments that have nothing to do with this, and just say, you have to listen to this conversation. This is not the image of you that should be out there. It's dangerous, it's not fair to you, and

I would say you are. You have to present yourself as the best possible version of yourself, and that means being respectful, because everything that's being done now is setting the precedent for the rest of their lives. I do a similar thing with my daughters. I say, when it comes to social media, what is the story that you're telling? What is your story? Is your story that you're playing lacrosse and that you care about social justice? And you

know you care about this, you care about that? Or is your story that you're sexy and you can bend your legs like that? I mean, so that helps them with the big picture. You know, what's the story that you're going to tell? What, as you said, sort of what what's gonna propel you into the life you want? Um? Which I think are probably better ways than I'm following you. I know what you're putting on your social because they're teenagers and they'll find ways around it, you know. That's

to me, that's the only thing I can do. I can sort of show them the much bigger picture than if Scooter likes or not likes her bikini picture, but sort of what it means for women in a much bigger and global sense, and that there is a world outside of them, you know that. I think what's happened to is it's so insular, you know that, even though it's in one little screen, but it's everywhere. One of them is just leaving right now, um with a case

of beer. No, but her skirts doesn't even look like skirt. There you go, there's a God forbid. Somebody drops something and she has to pick it up. That's not a skirt that's a belt anyway. I just don't want her to believe that her whole currency is her beauty. Hey, listen, Brookshields played a child prostitute at twelve, then was famous for being a virgin way after most people had lost

their virginity. Modeled actress went to Princeton. I mean you are You are a hard lady to pinpoint when it comes to this, but a great role model for girls. So thank you for talking to me. Thank you for talking about the hyper sexualization of girls in social media. This is one of my best these Brookshields. Thank you, Brooke, Thank you Alie. Hey, really quickly, speaking of I'm sending you an email about for a facelift, Ye for a facelift and a book jo sign me up. Hey everyone,

it's Sally Wentworth. Next week, go Ask Ali will return with all new content on how we can grow relationships of all kinds. I'm talking with Dr Tiffany L. Davis Henry about having your best sex at every age. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe, rate and leave a review, and follow me in my undoctored posts on social media. I'm on Twitter at Ali E. Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Go Ask Gali is a production of Shondaland Audio and partnership with

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