Post 613 - May 25, 2024

Brooke Shields was just elected president of Actors’ Equity Association. There have been an unfortunate number of people who have chosen to make that statement either a setup or a punch line to a joke.

For a few months, I stage-managed the Broadway production of Cabaret with Brooke. We got along well. If I ran into her in the street, she would know me without necessarily remembering my name. Friendly, rather than friends is how I might describe it.

Brooke has been objectified since she was a baby. Her first print ad was shot when she was only eleven months old. She has never known a time in her life when people didn’t look at her as some sort of paragon of beauty.

She’s hard not to notice. I remember having to give her some performance notes one day and while I was talking to her, I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the astonishing biological architecture of her face. Different cultures venerate different physical attributes. For Americans, Brooke was considered the epitome of perfection – at least by the White establishment. Her modeling career turned into a film acting career which, in turn, led to her doing several Broadway shows.

We are not kind to people we consider to be gorgeous when they try to do something other than just sit there and be photographed. Maybe it seems as if they’ve been given too much – physical beauty as well as an ability to excel at something else. Rather than encourage someone like Brooke, people feel as if they are allowed to tear her down. Maybe it makes them feel less inadequate.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but Brooke didn’t choose to look the way she does. It’s the hand she was dealt. Not that anybody would ever feel sorry for someone born too attractive, but she has said in interviews that she was often lonely in college because people were too intimidated to ask her out.

Brooke Shields went to Princeton University. She graduated with a BA in French literature. Being who she was may have helped her get into the school, but it probably didn’t do much to help her to get out. She had to work hard to do that.

She’s had to work harder than most to achieve every single thing she has ever done. Like all of us. Her beauty may have opened some doors for her that the rest of us might be barred from, but that advantage stops there. Once in the room, she has had to fight against preconceived notions about who she is and what she can do at a level that the rest of us cannot possibly begin to imagine.

I don’t know anything about how Brooke feels about anything. I can see how she reacts and what she does. But how she feels about things? I have no idea. She and I aren’t close friends. On top of that, I don’t know what it is like to be a woman in our society at all. All I can do is watch how women from my actual friends, the people I see in positions of power, and strangers on the street navigate through their lives. I don’t envy them though I often find myself in awe of them.

How is it that White men, who are a decided global minority, have managed to become the apex predator in our social system? It can’t just be because of brute physical strength – plenty of people in marginalized groups have just as much if not more of that than the average White man does. It seems as if, as a society, we are slowly becoming aware of how ridiculous this situation is, but we don’t seem to be moving very quickly to rectify it.

The same could be said of relative intellect. White men haven’t cornered the market on that either. They believe they have greater intellectual prowess only because they’ve managed to exclude everyone else from getting the same level of education they have. That’s also changing, but also glacially slowly as far as I can see.  It’s now coming to light that Einstein’s first wife Mileva Maric’ made major contributions to his work. Why was it ever a given that he would get all the credit?

Rashaan Asim James II was also just elected as Actors’ Equity’s vice-president. Rashaan is a handsome, gay, black, dancer. Cue the pre-conceived ideas of who he is. Pre-conceived ideas… go. Like Brooke, Rashaan knows that he knows me when he sees me without necessarily remembering my name or how we met. He was in the ensemble of Anything Goes at Northshore Music Festival in Massachusetts with Michael some unfathomable length of time ago. He is very open on social media about his relationships and who he is. I’ll leave it at that.

I don’t know what life is like for Rashaan. Again, he must face obstacles in his daily life that I can’t possibly imagine. What I know about him, though, is that, like Brooke, he always leads with kindness. I’m not sure that I need to know anything else about him.

One of the things that Brooke is being criticized for in terms of this election is that she is a star. She can’t have any idea of what it is like to work regionally or in a supporting role. How can she represent the thousands of members who aren’t stars? Well, who knows what that kind of work is better than Rashaan?

We didn’t elect one person we elected a whole slate of people. Each of them comes with different skills. Together, it seems to me, we may have hit the jackpot.

Our Union, like everything else, it seems, these days, is divided. Very little is getting done, and what is being achieved is not happening quickly enough. We’ve elected two extremely qualified people to give uniting us a shot. Let’s not discount them in the starting gate just because they’re pretty. Pretty doesn’t matter – who they are, does.

The best thing that I can say about them both, it that they are both good and kind people. Am I going to agree with everything that happens during their terms? Absolutely not. I know them both, however, just well enough to know that they will have our backs. Let’s not stick any knives into theirs.