4
OPINION
Rage 4
Tuesday, October 4, 1983
The Michigan Daily
-.*LL..
Brooke:
Roughing it
at Princeton
4
By Barbara Misle
Poor, poor Brookie. Stuck at Princeton and
mom says she's acting like she's at Auschwitz.
It's tough being a commodity at an Ivy
League school. People treat you like you're
something more than human. But not Brooke
Shields. She just wants to be an average
fr shwoman. And it's a struggle.
Between organic modern dance, incon-
venient walks to the bathroom down the hall,
and groping to find her classes, Brooke is
determined to dispel nasty rumours that she's
just an empty-headed glamour goddess.
Brooke shared her woes in an interview with
the Detroit Free Press last week, claiming
that she's not at Princeton for the publicity,
but it's something she really wants to do.
"1 THINK THAT people - the press more
than the public, I guess - have this idea, that,
I don't know, that maybe..I think it only hurts
when they think that I'm not serious about
something that I do," she told the Free Press.
"If they think that I don't really want to go
to school or to act, or think that I'm just doing
it for the publicity - that I don't do anything
genuinely.
"I think that's not fair, because everything I
do, I want to do. The press has always said,
ever since I was a little girl that I was pushed
into all of these situations - and that even
though I didn't want to do them I knew it was
good for my career."
SO, BROOKIE'S getting a raw deal from the
media. It is really outrageous to conclude that
her mother/agent/banker/confidant is
making all her decisions.
Whose choice was it when Brooke gurgled
into modeling when she was 11 months old?
While most toddlers were fantasizing about
being showered by ping pong balls on Captain
Kangaroo, Brooke's naked bottom was on the
,diaper commercials they were watching. Be-
fore age 12 she was playing "pre-teen
for the cheerleading squad made her a
qualified Princeton candidate. Although her
composit SAT score was a little below the
school average of 1350 - Brooke peaked at
1220 - she was above the national average of
893.
The scores and her public testimonies of
rigorous studying are part of a slick publicity
plan to land Brooke at Princeton. In the
modeling empire she rules, images sell. And
what better image is there than the studious
Brooke trotting to classes in a Shetland
sweater and topsiders - just like a normal
kid?
BUT BROOKE ISN'T a normal kid. She is so
dependent on mother's "support" she goes
home every weekend and calls her on the
phone every night. A normal kid wouldn't
have appeared in the August issue of Glamour
magazine in an article entitled "Brooke goes
to Princeton." In the article, she admitted she
only brought one of her 60 stuffed animals to
school. Her lusty image is just that - an
image. She's never had a steady boyfriend. On
top of that, during the filming of Endless Love
a stand-in did the nude scenes and the director
had to twist Brooke's big toe until her face
displayed the proper amount of ecstasy.
Now her mother is twisting Brooke's arm so
she displays the proper demeanor of a college
girl. But like her false pleasure in the movies,
her attempt at being "just a normal kid" are
just as empty.
UNDER THE "Princeton Plan," mother
Terri is asking Brooke to make use of one body
part she has continually been admonished to
ignore - her brain. Brooke is supposed to
nourish her intellect to fit the Princeton
college-girl image. But since Brooke was an
infant star in diapers, Terri Shields has
discounted her daughter's right to her own
life, vicariously living out her dreams through
Brooke.
Brooke says she knows exactly why she's at
college: "Why am I here, why? But education
is so fulfilling. The next four years that I will go
through I can never get back again. I didn't
want to miss these years of my life."
Pretty convincing stuff. I'm sure you could
mosey through any dorm on campus and find4
at least one average student who says
education is "fulfilling." College, at least in
part, is the means to an end - and so too for
Brooke, only she's denying it.
Claiming to want four years of intellectual
stimulation doesn't hold water and looking
gorgeous won't pull Brooke through on this
one. Brooke lacks credibility which shatters
her defense that she isn't being manipulated
once abain by her mother's fiscal claws.
Compared to at least one peer star in
college, Jodie Foster at Yale, Brooke's goals
don't seem genuine. Like Brooke, Foster has
been acting since she was a toddler - even
playing a pre-teen prostitute - but when
Foster went to Yale, after completing high
school in France, she didn't have to fight to be
taken seriously.
Sincerity is a quality Brooke can't purport to
have.
Meanwhile Brooke bops to class, sans
sunglasses, hoping people call her "Brooke"
not "Brooke Shields" (her mother says the
full name sounds like a product). She's living a
farce.
Brooke has every right to imbibe an Ivy
League education,bbut sheshouldbstop
spouting this lie about wanting to be an
average kid. Brooke Shields is not average
and for 18 years she and her mother have in-
vested a lot of effort and cash to be the op-
posite.
The average college freshwoman, Brooke Shields, kicked off the school year with her face on the
cover of National Lampoon and Glamour magazine.
prostitute," and later posed nude for pictures
- both situations in which she was guided by
her mother's keen business sense.
Mother Terri says Brooke doesn't do
anything she doesn't want to, adding that
"Brooke doesn't know how much money she
has. She only knows how to treat people the
way she wants to be treated herself."
WHAT AN accomplishment. Not only has
Brooke's now jean-clad bottom made millions
of men stop smoking, but she has mastered
the Golden Rule. Maybe that's what im-
pressed the admissions officers at Princeton.
But Brooke says she earned her way into the
Ivy League university just like any other,
student. Diligent studying in high school
wedged into a tight schedule
of acting, modeling, and workouts
Misle is a Daily staff writer.
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
CORTE MADERA, Calif. -
Because she was well into
adulthood when her parents
ni
Vol. XCIV - No. 23
Editorials represent a majority o
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
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Dilly-dally divestment
VE MONTHS ago the University * Officials have further restricted the
regents took a moral stand list of stocks they will sell by excluding
st South Africa's apartheid private gifts from the divestment
nment by ordering the sale of resolution;
t all University stocks in com- " Officials have abandoned a 1978
s which operate there. As of resolution requiring them to monitor
however, none of the stocks the employment practices of com-
een sold. panies in the portfolio which operate in
time for the University to stop South Africa and divest from those
ing its feet and sell these firms which continue racist practices.
gs. Officials have been diluting The University has a history of
delaying the resolution's im- diluting its stated South African policy.
ntation for too long.. Officials bent a theoretically sound
1978 resolution into an ineffective
ent developments show that the administrative hassle. They may be on
tion was watered down substan- their way to doing the same with last
over the summer: spring's resolution.
That officials need some time to
only companies excluded from rearrange the portfolio is understan-
esolution were firms that are dable. But movement in the last five
gan based or companies that hire months has been in reverse if it has oc-
abstantial" number of state curred at all. The University has not
rs. Yet officials have identified sold one share of stock, yet the
ve firms for divestment, out of 33 resolution has been diluted by ex-
anies operating in South Africa. cluding gifts and by throwing out the
ast majority of the companies 1978 resolution. Officials have given the
n in question in the University's companies they keep free reign to
lio; adopt any employment practices, no
matter how racist.
cials still have not defined what Divesting was intended to be a clear
tutes "a substantial" number of stand against South Africa's apartheid
yees, and are beginning to back policies, but as the months drag by, the
ring estimates that they would statement is becoming more and more
bout 90 percent of University muddied.
gs in the affected firms;
divorced after years of a
tumultuous marriage, Sara T.
was unprepared for the severity
of her own reaction.-
"It should have been a relief,"
she said. "They were an unhappy
pair of mismatched people."
Instead, she was torn by grief,
textbook reactionus of 'tuch
younger children of divorce.
"Nobody prepares you for how to g ro
feel about a divorce when you're
30. All the literature is for 10- and
12-year-olds," she continued. "I
don't need my parents anymore.
There's no bed for me in their York, the son of a
house. Yet I feel abandoned." confronted by his
SARA is one of a growing num- ce after they ha
ber of adults today who are faced for 35 years. "Kid
with such an unexpected to a certain age
emotional crisis, brought on by a their parents do
divorce rate among older done," he said. S
Americans which has risen came as a shocl
dramatically in recent years. In nice, basic parent
1968 four of every 1,000 married don't do that sort
men between 55 and 64 divorced; incredibly sad."
by 1979 the figure had risen to 5.7, For some time
according to the National Center his father had be
for Health Statistics. And as the to his work, wh
U.S. population continues to age, wanting some
ever more adults are likely to ex- became more de(
perience the break-up of their community cau
parents' marriages. uneasy. She was
The result, even for "children" loose on the de
in their 30s and 40s, can be "a real remembered. "Ii
rocking of the stability of the they broke up, sh
world," observed Judith Waller- her activism."
stein, executive director of the later learned, ha
Center for the Family in Tran- volved with anoth
sition, a counseling service in PARENTS WH
Corte Madera, Calif., just north delaying divor
of San Francisco. children are out o
"Nothing makes an adult more only be delaying
vulnerable than the death of his creasing - th
parents," she added, and at its sequences, say d
worst, "divorce increases According to
vulnerability in a similar way." academic counse
In addition to having their per- many students ha
sonal world drastically altered, hard time with pa
adult children frequently are that occur shortly
recruited as unwilling confidants entered college. F
- sometimes by both parties - removed from th
in bitter arguments over proper- children experi
ty and other divorce-related
issues. "The rewards for getting
involved are that, nobody loves BLOOM
you," pointed out Dr. Waller-
stein. "It's a no-win situation, PAPv o
even though the the problem for r(SAYS T-AT IN A
the adult child is that a divorced 0 FUNPAMENT
parent often really needs sup- RUSSNS AS IH
port. So you walk a thin line."
"IT TOOK ME by surprise, the
force of the emotion," recalled C7
Sara, "and it made my own
marriage weird." A professional,
married to an attorney, and the
mother of a toddler, she found
herself wondering: "Will this
happen to us in 30 years?"
Sara became convinced, she H I 1NA
an attorney, was
parents' divor-
d been married
s sort of assume
that whatever
is the way it's
So the break-up
k: "They were
ts. The kind who
t of thing. I felt
e, he explained,
en burrowing in-
hile fiis mother,
ething more,
eply involved in
ses. "He felt
like a cannon
eck," Marshall
ronically, when
e withdrew from
His father, he
d long been in-
er woman.
[O believe that
rce until the
f the home may
- and even in-
e painful con-
divorce experts.
Wallerstein,
lors report that
ve an especially
arental divorces
yafter they have
Far from feeling
e process, these
ence guilt: "I
COUNTY
went away and see what hap-
pened...."
For 33-year-old Steve B. of Palo
Alto, Calif., "what really hurts
was that after the separation
there ensued a real battle over
common property. This changed
my perception of my parents;
seeing them fight like children
over something either of them
could have done without. There
was some need to 'get even' that
shocked my sisters and me." For
a time, Steve said, his father, an
artist who worked at home, ac-
tually paid rent to his mother.
Only when the house issue was
settled did both parents begin to
reconstruct their lives.
One of the most regretted effec-
ts of these divorces, for children
and for grandchildren, is the loss
of an anchor for family
gatherings. Special occasions,
holidays, and birthdays are thus
transformed from dependable
rituals into logistical problems.
Marshall celebrates Hannukah
with one parent, Christmas with
another. "Both seem pretty
mature about that," he says. But
Tom C., who lives in a small
vorce no
7sier for
wn children
By Rasa Gustaitis
Louisiana town, finds the dif-
ficulties remain great five years
after his parents ended 41 years.
of marriage.
"There's a festival here where
they pick a 'Golden Age' king and
queen," he related. "My father
was picked king, and he invited
us to the celebration, but we
didn't want my mother to know.
"We used to have 100 peoplefor
Chriktmas,'" Tom said. "Jaw
,maybe he's with my broth'brand
we'd be with my mother. Or he
might spend it ' with his lady
friend. He's 75 and he's gone
through two girlfriends already.
When we invite him we don't ask'
her."
In fact, all of those interviewed
admitted to problems relating to
their parents' new mates -
especially when the mate was
closer to their own ages. "Having
to confront my father as a sexual
person, a person with those needs
at age 60, was rough," said Mar-
shall.
His father's new friend was 154
years younger than him, and
Marshall felt like "one of your
equals is somehow being glued
to the family, kind of poaching on
your turf."
For most children, however,
these and other traumatic effepts
of divorce gradually yield to ac-
ceptance. "Maybe part of Qur
problem is that when people split
up, we tend to perceive it as a
'failed' marriage, and a kid can't4
help but feel part of that failure,"
said Sara. "But finally, I have to
remin.dmyself that we did have
those wonderful times."
Gustaitis wrote this article
for the Pacific News Service.
Letters and columns represent the opinions of
the individual author(s) and do not necessarily
reflect the attitudes or beliefs of the Daily.
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