Brooke Shields was giving an interview to Health Magazine, talking about how long it took her to grow comfortable with her body. She says she lost her virginity when she was 22 years old, which I don’t really think is a very big deal. Of course, Brooke was something of a sex symbol at an early age, and the assumption people probably made was that she was sexually active before her twenties, but I think it makes sense. Brooke worked a lot when she was young, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that she would have put her career and academics ahead of sex. It also shows that just because a young woman’s image is hyper-sexualized, doesn’t mean she knows the first thing about sex (cough cough Britney Spears cough Miley Cyrus cough). The Huffington Post has the excerpt from Health Magazine:

Buried in a Health magazine, Brooke Shields let slip how old she was when she lost her virginity – 22 – and her regrets over it.

Q: What’s your biggest health regret?

A: Not learning to love the way I looked earlier. And I think I would have had sex a lot earlier! [Laughs.] I think I would have lost my virginity earlier than I did at 22. I had the public and all this pressure, and I wish I had just gotten it over with in the beginning when it was sort of OK. I think I would have been much more in touch with myself. I think I wouldn’t have had issues with weight–I carried this protective 20 pounds [in college]. It was all connected. And to me, that’s a health regret.

Shields is twice married with two young daughters.

[From The Huffington Post]

CB pointed out that Brooke went to Princeton, enrolling at the age of eighteen (1983) and graduating at the age of 21 (1987). So she went through four years at Princeton with no sex. This caused some conversation between CB and I about the guys we nailed in college, and now I feel some sympathy for Brooke. Were all of the guys at Princeton total nerds? Could none of them man up and ask Brooke out? Or did they ask Brooke out and she just said no, because she was uninterested and/or uncomfortable with her body? And regarding Brooke’s “20 pounds”, I’ve seen pictures of her from that era in her life, and if she was carrying around an extra 20 pounds, she must have been much too slim before she enrolled.

Brooke Shields is shown at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on 4/25/09, credit: Tina Gill/PRPhotos