Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman

by Brooke Shields

Who are these strangers taking up your time and your life and who have somehow replaced me? And why don’t they, too, love me unconditionally? (There must be whole chapters written on this type of reaction in a book I imagine is called The Narcissist’s Almanac.)

“One college leader described how some search committees chose not to hire women in their late forties because of ‘too much family responsibility and impending menopause.’ Other search committees declined to hire women in their fifties because they have ‘menopause-related issues and could be challenging to manage.’ … Yet the jobs were given to similarly aged men.” IMPENDING MENOPAUSE!? This makes me crazy! It sounds like the End Times! How about impending penile dysfunction or the inevitable low ball sack?

“As they do grow older and more mature in their careers, [women] lose some fear of speaking their mind. And certain men don’t like that,” Amy Diehl, one of the study’s coauthors, told HuffPost.3 Sound the distress alarm! “Men will allow women into the workplace … and will be supportive of women in the workplace to the extent that women are compliant, supportive of the men, and they don’t push back.”