4.2.12 WC: 191694 Brooke Shields and her mother Teri When Brooke Shields was 10 years old, her ambitious mother Teri signed a contract with an equally ambitious photographer to photograph Brooke naked, taking a bath. Brooke was paid $450 for the photo sessions by Playboy Press, and her mother signed a release giving the photographer the unlimited right to publish the photographs anywhere and at any time. Seven years later, as Brooke was about the enter Princeton as a freshman, the photographer decided to exploit her fame by producing a calendar featuring naked pictures of the 10 year old. Brooke was upset that any such calendar would circulate among her fellow students at Princeton and would cause her great embarrassment. She hired a former student of mine to try to negotiate with the photographer to buy back the rights, and if that failed, to try to prevent publication of the photographs. My former student sought my advice on the matter. I told him it would be an uphill fight to try to enjoin the publication of the pictures, because they were not obscene and because prior restraint is always disfavored by the law. This was another example, this time of a celebrity mother, making a short term judgment to allow her young daughter to pose naked, without considering the longer term implications on her welfare. The only theory on which I thought she could possibly succeed was that Brooke’s mother had no right to surrender her daughter’s privacy and that Brooke, now approaching adulthood, should have control over her own image. Ultimately the court ruled, in a bizarre opinion, that Brooke had essentially waived her right to privacy by allowing the photographs to be published earlier, and by pursuing a career in which she has relied on her sexuality for her success. The court put it this way: “Much of plaintiff's recent commercial activity upon which her fame is based has been far more sexually suggestive than the photographs which have been shown to the court. These phot