GETTING THE PICTURE
Photographing children is an ongoing battle between paparazzi and celebrity parents
Ever since supermodel Gigi Hadid gave birth last fall — a daughter named Khai, whose father is pop star Zayn Malik — she frequently shares Instagram photos with her 68.3 million followers showcasing life as a new mom. But recently, she posted a long block of text that took on an unusually serious tone, in an open letter addressed to paparazzi, the press and online fan accounts.
“We have never intentionally shared our daughter's face on social media,” Hadid wrote in the nearly 450-word missive posted to her Instagram story. “It would mean the world to us, as we take our daughter to see and explore NYC and the world, if you would PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE blur her face out of the images, if and when she is caught on camera.”
Hadid's viral post is the latest in the aforementioned never-ending conversation about celebrities, their kids and privacy. The issue has only grown more complicated over the years as stars feel compelled to share endless content on social media to keep people interested — and then fans feel increasingly entitled to know details about their personal lives. Throw in the paparazzi, whose profits have been shrinking in the wake of digital media and the pandemic, and it's a recipe for angry parents and chaos.
In May, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, whose daughter with musician Joe Jonas just turned a year old, slammed paparazzi, or “grown old men taking pictures of a baby without their permission”
“I'm sickened, I'm disgusted and I'm respectfully asking everyone to stop following us around,” she said in a now-deleted Instagram story.
Actress Blake Lively, who has three daughters with actor Ryan Reynolds, criticized Daily Mail Australia for stitching together a photo that looked like she was cheerfully waving to the camera while she was out walking with her kids in New York City.
“I was able to agree to smile and wave and let them take my picture away from my children if they would leave my kids alone. Because it was frightening,” she wrote in an Instagram comment on the Daily Mail's account. “Please stop paying grown men to hide and hunt children ... Please delete. C'mon. Get with the times.”
Eight years ago, Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner testified before California's state lawmakers in support of an “anti-paparazzi” bill that would impose harsh penalties on photographers who harassed the children of celebrities.
“My daughter doesn't want to go to school because she knows `the men' are watching for her,” said Berry. “If it passes, the quality of my life and my children's lives will be dramatically changed.”
The bill was ultimately signed into law in California in September 2013, and penalties ranged from a year in jail to tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
Garner, who has three children with Ben Affleck and is one of the most outspoken stars on the subject, recently told SiriusXM host Jess Cagle the bill being passed was “life-changing,” because instead of 20 photographers following her family, now they only have one or two.
Cagle, who took over as editor of People magazine in 2014, stepped into the job just as celebrities were aiming their frustration with photographers at another target: The media. Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard led the charge, putting pressure on print, online and TV outlets to enact a “no kids” photo policy, and urged their fellow celebrity pals to skip the publications on red carpets or turn down interviews if editors didn't agree. People instituted the policy when Cagle started.
“It was the humane thing to do — these kids didn't ask to be famous,” Cagle said in a phone interview. “We didn't want to support an industry where kids are being terrorized or chased.”
Multiple celebrity-focused outlets at the time agreed to the ban, including Entertainment Tonight, The Insider and gossip site Just Jared. There were caveats, of course: If a kid was at an event, then it was fair game, and same if mom or dad posted a photo on social media. Plus, as Cagle noted in his letter to readers at the time, outlets face a tricky balancing act “when dealing with stars who exploit their children one day, and complain about loss of privacy the next.”
“What we wanted to avoid was buying paparazzi photos that might look innocent enough, and it may even look like people and their kids are happy to photographed — but really they're not,” Cagle said.
Dale Cohen, the director of the Documentary Film Legal Clinic at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law, didn't live in California when the law was passed but recalled there was a great deal of debate about its constitutionality. Critics argued about “the proper balance of the rights of privacy and families versus the First Amendment” and the right to seek photos of people when they're in public places, he said.
Ever since, Cohen said, there has been very little — if any — litigation or criminal charges in such cases.
He suspects that no matter how technology and perception of the paparazzi evolves, this will always be a contentious topic, one that dates back to the 1970s, when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis fought a legal battle against famed photographer Ron Galella, who relentlessly pursued her and her children, John and Caroline.