I never know what CNN’s going to post on their website as news, but when I read the headlines yesterday that said “Brooke Shields Regrets Not Losing Virginity Sooner” I was intrigued.

            I must admit, in my 53 years of life, this is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody say they wished they had lost their virginity earlier; usually I find just the opposite, and quite often it’s filled with regrets.

            In dissecting the article I think that Brooke is more confused today at 44 than maybe at anytime in her life, and the article revealed why. “I think I would have had sex a lot earlier,” Brooke told Health Magazine. “I think I would have been much more in touch with myself.” Brooke went on to say “losing her virginity sooner could have helped her with body image as a young adult.”

            I sure got in touch with myself when I became sexually active at 16. I knew what sexual ecstasy was for the first time.

            Somehow Brooke speculates and equates having sex earlier in life with emotional wellbeing—she would have felt better about herself and how she looked. She indicated that she carried an extra 20 pounds in college kind of as an emotional protection. I think what she was trying to say was “if I pork up nobody will want to have sex with me.”

            Actually, I think most guys wouldn’t have given a rip about the extra 20 pounds Brooke was carrying around; they would have gladly used her for sex.

            “I think I would have lost my virginity earlier than I did at 22” was Brooke’s sad analysis.

            This now comes from the mouth of a 44-year-old woman, but it seems to me it’s rather shallow at best, and highly damning as a potential role model for young women and girls.

            What Brooke in essence is saying is “I can’t have a guy appreciate me for who I am and qualities like intellect, personality and character; I have to spread my legs for them to appreciate me.” What Brooke is describing is having some guy affirm or validate her only through sex, and because of that she then cared what she looked like physically.

            I find it rather egregious that at 44 years old Brooke Shields is advocating girls and women embrace the behavior that freed her from thinking less of herself, by actually acting in a way that perpetuates a wrong self-image; she received her identity from her ability to be sexually active.

             She simply exchanged one lie for another.