Brooke Shields, Actress, NYT Bestselling Author, and Founder, Commence
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

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Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

Thank you, lie. And thank all of you for being here in Brooke, especially. Thank you for being here and getting miked in the bathroom. I, I live downtown and I, you always forget how long it takes. Yeah. Iii I was born in the city and you'd think I'd learn always the, I guess you so thrilled you're here. You have had quite the year. Um So in 2021 you founded an online community called Beginning is now, um Now that's morphed into commence and you launched a hair care line this year. So tell me about it. Why was launching this line so important to you? So it, it's, we've, you know, like any start up, you sort of have to learn how to pivot and it, when we went through a few different machinations because it started off with it just being a community because I wanted the dialogue to start with women. Um I was really dismayed that at 5455 I'm 59 now, but I was, I started to really come into my own just as a woman and my kids were pretty cooked and they were leaving and, and you know, I sort of come to this sort of revelation that I liked myself and that I had a lot more to do and I felt stronger and prettier and I, I wasn't, I didn't compare myself to other people. There was this sort of just buoyancy that I had. I always said I felt like the Macy's Day parade. Thanksgiving when you're just being, like, blown up and you feel like you're, yeah, that was the way I used to be now. I'm just a good flying, uh, you know, whatever balloon. Um, but there was this feeling of, wow, I'm ready to start my life now because so much of my biological journey had been put in front of me and, and you had deadlines that all of a sudden and I was so dismayed that the marketing, marketing beauty, uh, what I was getting the message I was getting back was you've had a good run, you know, you're, you're good, you're good. And, and so why don't you just take, you know, go, I listen, I wanna learn to play mahjong. I really do. But that was the message I was getting, which was like, why don't you just go, go start a reading club or something? And, and it was this dismissive sort of once your ovaries didn't work, you somehow lost value. And it made me very upset. So I thought, ok, I can't be the only one feeling this way. Why am I not allowed to feel beautiful and sexy and, you know, these are wrinkles but they, they come from smiling, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna do peels and do whatever I can to sort of feel my best. But I'm also gonna work out and eat well, like all those things. And I, so I started this company called, this, uh, community called Beginning is now during COVID and we amassed an audience so quickly of like minded women who, who said they were in this place of confidence in their life, but they weren't being, it wasn't being supported by the beauty industry or by just the way we talk about everything is anti aging. And then we started talking about menopause and everybody thought, oh, that's revelatory. And then we came, we went to, we're just menopause. And so it was, I said, why are we either the hot girl at the bar or we're in pens like, yeah, it's like that are dentures. It's like, I was like, wait a minute, there's a bracket in here that's sexy and beautiful and strong and accomplished and, and, and financially hopefully at least secure um and independent. And we've done, we've worked at companies, we've left jobs, started jobs, raised families and we did, it just grew and very quickly I realized that they did want to buy something. And I kept saying, I don't wanna monetize you or this feeling, right? I want us to stay a community but I wanna understand really what your challenges are. And it started, the conversation started around um hair changes, scalp changes, beauty changes. Um I don't like the word dry and that's the word we keep getting associated with after a certain age. And so I, there were all these little, little things that I said, you know, maybe we do need to go into beauty and I didn't, I resisted it. And then I realized if I was very specific, if the whole company was geared towards keeping the conversation with the community open, we would do these zooms with 50 women all over the the world. And when you saw such a swath of, of women and, and socioeconomically and just the way their lives looked. But the through line was this sentiment about feeling powerful and confident and wanting, but wanting solutions to problems that they were facing without them being anti aging. You know, that makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that I find so interesting about you is that you've been the face of products you forever without much input into what's actually no, this is, I hold it fine. I don't know. How does it feel to, to take back that power and how much do you have power over this? I have all the power um which is an amazing thing to say. Um And when you are a smaller company and we work directly with the chemists where you're not bound to the rules that when you're with a huge, huge company, if you're backed by a PNG or something like that, they have minimums that you can use with regards to active um active in their products. So, you know, and too much of a good thing isn't always good. I mean, we saw that with recent companies, especially with hair and so I work very closely with the formulator and for instance, with the instant shampoo and I said also, I don't want to all of a sudden proliferate this, this thought with a million skews like I don't want it to be more complicated. I want it to be streamlined and I use a lot of different things. I, I, you know, I have a one eye cream for this and one eye that and I don't have uh it's a me, it's a mess in my cabinet, but I'm always searching. So I wanted this to be clear and solution based. And so we made sure that all of our actives are, you know, at a three or a four or five perhaps. Whereas a company that very, very big can say, oh put a 0.00000% of Hyaluronic Acid in that product. And we can just put it on the label and it, nobody knows the percentage. So I wanted to start with an instant shampoo because if I get like a good blow out like I just like this. Yeah. Um I wanted to last, I plan not to wash my hair for at least four days. Um And yet I wanna be able to clean my scalp without drying my scalp. So we formulated um an instant shampoo which is a rice powder. All of our products are formula of plant based, but I said you have to have a moisturizing component. Hyaluronic acid is a molecule in and of itself that is too large for your pores on your scalp to absorb your skin can. But so we needed to find and it's impeded by a pair, you know, with the follicle. So we found a way to quadron it and, um, bring it down to its smallest form one that is acceptable to a, to your scalp and we encapsulated it. So I always think of it like little M and MS, but they're like little army. They're doing like an army crawl and they, if they call it, it's so funny in the lab, they call it a smart product because what it does is the rice powder absorbs the extra sem and, and sweat and everything. And then the, um, Hyaluronic acid actually delivers moisture to where your scalp is dry. So that was the first product that we came up with. And I just wanted to do one product. I wanted to do a Hero product and that was it. And that proved a bit difficult with minimum. And and with the lab. So we ended up, started starting with just three products and you clearly researched it a lot. I'm obsessed with this stuff and you go to the lab and all you have to do is be, like, be interested and they love talking to you. Our lab is in New Jersey. We're all entirely in the US. The only thing full disclosure is the packaging is from China. We can't afford to do it here yet. Um And it's all recyclable except for the spring on the pump. There's full disclosure, there's everything you have to be like we we we, you know, they ask you all these are you green? We are as much as possible doing it all the right way. So disclosure later, but also, you know, what's hard is I don't wanna now just be a hair, a hair care company, right? So it's, it's a balance. You can abandon the community. The community is why we're here. The community informs us. Um you know, skin care, I think there's a glut to it. I I think there's so much of it, it terrifies me. I don't know if I'll ever go into it. Um You know, color cosmetics is its own world. I don't, that's not my, where my motivation is, my motivation is eyebrows. Um You know, I've been talked about my eyebrows for my entire life and that is and this hair like so there are certain organic offshoots that we can, the goal is not in my mind when I hear lifestyle II I, it, it has gotten a, it has become a very often used term and I get, I think it's confusing and I don't wanna fall into that trying to be everything to everybody. So it's a, it's a delicate balance. It's much harder, you know, it's easier to be one and then sort of have the other but to start as a community and morph into or not morph into, but grow into um selling anything product, anything you have to be really, really, really careful. So we just brought a new uh board member who was the president um of Victoria's Secret. So he is now left there and he's um on our board. And so I'm bringing in top beauty people, but also top people in, in community building and strategy and marketing. And Brooke, speaking of community, I know there's a lot of powerful women in this room. I know I've chatted with a lot of people who have watched your, your documentary last year. The subject of a two part uh Hulu documentary titled Pretty Baby. Um Looking at how you were treated and, and sexualized as a child in the toxic culture that perpetuates misogyny. Now, a week after the, how are you thinking about misogyny? And how about, I'm sorry, did you? OK. How are you thinking about the role misogyny has played in this political cycle? And what's on your mind now, going into a second Trump term here as women. I mean, listen, you know, I'm also a part of the problem. I perpetuated it, you know, that's how I made a living. I, I was the one in the jeans, I was the one in the, it paid the bills. My mom had, we could pay our rent. It's so I'm in a, it's a slightly precarious place with it And now I'm a mother of two daughters and my whole career gave me a life, you know, and so tho those are the things that I grapple with, you know, in therapy and, and, and all of that. And the only so my personal approach to it is to write books about things like postpartum depression, to stand up for what I, what I believe and I want for my Children. I am really truly slightly terrified and it almost doesn't have, it's, it's almost, it's almost not about politics. It's, you know, it's um I was charming. Um, excuse me. Um It's almost not about, it's, it's, it's this belief, this internal fear that I have for my daughters that they are losing, they are losing their agency. You know, the part of the whole film was about finding your agency about and sex cells, right? OK. It's always going to, how do we, how do we reconcile that? How do we stick up for what we need while still we all want to feel beautiful. We wanna be gazed upon and thought of as attractive. So it's, we're in a difficult position, you know. And I think if we can find a way to do it without anger, it, it's gonna be important, but there's a lot of fear and I fear for my, for my daughters, although they have a stronger voice than I ever did at their age. So, Gen Z is, is really good at that. They are, I think they have to be careful too. I think you can swing so far in one direction that you alienate and you lose sight of how to make actual strong moves and, and that helps, help the, the community and help, help women and help, you know, I mean, it's interesting, I, we have a very, very close um friend of my husband's uh person he works with who is now a trans um woman and the person was a male and six is 78 something. And, and, and she is now getting hate from the trans community because she's not a pretty woman and she's not putting in what other women or other trans are feeling is the right amount of money and time and effort into her appearance. And it's a fascinating conversation that I've had to have with her because I've said, you know, now you kind of understand what, what we've been dealing with and how are you gonna handle it? And so I think we just need to keep the conversation really open and, and empathetic and, and just try to keep all of the, the, the vitriol and the anger out of it because that's not who we are either. It has to come from a place of confidence and pride and resolution that we and faith in, in, in who we are. That makes a lot of sense. And I know we only have a few minutes left. But you have a new book coming. I didn't even answer this one. No, no. And I, and I wanna, I wanna come back to it. So you, you have a new book coming out, Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old. Um As that's been coming, which is a great title, by the way. Um So any advice have for, we have a ton of incredibly powerful women in this room. We have one minute left. Any quick advice you could give to them on how to survive this, this next four years than anything you've learned from your book. Well, the book came from a guy that f he was flirting with me and then he found out my age because I said it as if it's not easy to Google, but he, and he went, oh, you shouldn't have told me that. And I was, and I was like my eyes turned into like w wheels and it, what, what I realized was it ruined a fantasy that he had of something of me in the past and I realized that that's what women are also dealing with. Um, I'm never one to give advice because I'm not an expert in anything. Um, but what I, what I will say is that rooms like this conversations like this real shared information and, and, and coming together and growing like this is gonna be, I believe where our power is because we're formidable alone and we're really formidable together. That's fabulous advice. Well, thank you so much for being here and thank all of you for listening and I appreciate you. Thank you.