Brooke Shields

On Madison Avenue it’s been gospel for years. Sex sells. And sells. But nobody has proved it better, or younger, than nubile 15-year-old Brooke Shields. Stepping out of her image as the girl in the Blue Lagoon loincloth, she squeezed into a pair of undersized Calvin Klein jeans (“Comfortably, I wear size seven—these were five”), aimed herself at Richard Ave-don’s camera and inquired huskily, “You know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Nothing, that is, until a growing number of outraged viewers persuaded TV stations to ban the 30-second spot. Brooke, for one, is bewildered. “She doesn’t pick up double meanings and she has no idea what’s causing all the uproar,” says Lila Wisdom, her godmother and vice-president of Brooke Shields and Co. In fact, Brooke knew nothing of the controversy until clued in by classmates at her New Jersey private school. “I didn’t think anything was wrong,” she says. “If people complain, it makes me wonder what’s in their minds.”

Presumably the same thing that was in the mind of designer Klein, whose sales jumped after the Shields campaign debuted last summer. “Brooke is the most beautiful girl in the world,” he says. “She can portray many characters, from a teenager to a very sophisticated woman.” But in real life Brooke remains a typical kid, with a 10 o’clock curfew. Director Franco Zeffirelli stopped work for a week on her eighth and latest film, Endless Love, so that she could take exams. No movie challenge has seemed more momentous to her than her tryout for the high school cheerleading squad (she made it). Her idea of a swinging time includes a mocha chocolate chip ice cream binge and a giggly overnight with her girlfriends. In her heart of hearts, boys still run second to horses.

“Brooke will be a very happy adult,” predicts Lila Wisdom. “She wants to go to college, get married and have children.” Meanwhile her manager mother, Teri Shields, keeps angling to make her little (5’10½”) girl richer. She has signed Brooke on as the first teen model for Wella Balsam. Teri is also reviewing three “very promising” screenplays for the actress who just leaped ahead of Tatum O’Neal and made the top 10 box office list of actresses. “If I ever get an award, it will be for the kid who has been in show business longest,” sighs Brooke, an Ivory Snow baby at 11 months. “But I don’t feel exploited. I love my life.”