Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are expanding their beautiful family!
The actress, director, philanthropist and founder of non-alcoholic drinks line Betty Buzz has confirmed she’s pregnant with their fourth child, sharing a series of personal photos of her growing baby bump on Instagram:
And while this is the most wonderful news (because hell yes to more versions of Blake and Ryan on planet Earth!), the key word here is personal.
In the post, Blake reveals that she’s sharing the pics “so the 11 guys waiting outside my home for a sighting will leave me alone.”
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Reclaiming her power from the paparazzi? Awesome. But the fact that she even has to do this in the first place because these paps and certain publications have no boundaries? Incredibly disappointing.
“You freak me and my kids out,” Blake continues – and she’s not the only one who feels this way.
Game of Thrones actress and mum Sophie Turner shared a blunt message to the paparazzi in 2021 to stop photographing her daughter: “It’s f***ing creepy that grown, old men are taking pictures of a baby without permission,” she posted in her Insta stories at the time.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid shared an open letter last year, asking publications to, at the very least, blur out photos of her daughter: “I can imagine that close or dramatic paparazzi frenzies must be overwhelming and disorienting…it still is as an adult that understands and deals with it often.”
There are countless others including Mindy Kaling, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling, Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden who actively choose to protect the identity of their kids and make this crystal clear by not sharing photos of their children’s faces on social media.
So when publications – who know this very fact – still choose to post pics of their kids? It’s not right.
In Blake’s post, she highlights how important it is to follow respectful celebrity news publications: “Thanks to everyone else for all the love and respect and for continuing to unfollow accounts and publications who share photos of children. You have all the power against them. And thank you to the media who have a ‘No Kids Policy’. You make all the difference.”
The #NoKidsPolicy Blake refers to came about after two distinct events: the first being when Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry championed a bill that was signed into law in California, imposing tougher penalties on photographers who “seriously alarm, annoy, torment or terrorise” children of public figures.
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“We’re moms here who are just trying to protect our children. These are little innocent children who didn’t ask to be celebrities. They didn’t ask to be thrown into this game and they don’t have the wherewithal to process what’s happening. We don’t have a law in place to protect them from this,” Halle said in her testimony at the time.
And while the law was a step in the right direction, it didn’t solve the problem entirely.
Enter the second notable event: an essay by Hollywood star and dad Dax Shepard who wrote a piece for Huffpost, shifting the conversation from the publications and the paparazzi to the consumer.
He began an online movement encouraging the consumer to refuse to buy publications that show photos of famous people’s kids without their consent, because “the consumer is the only one who can put an end to this. They are the only ones with real power.”
Some of the publications who’ve adopted the #NoKidsPolicy include Just Jared, People, Entertainment Weekly, Entertainment Tonight and, of course, CelebrityKind.
(Feature Image Credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images)
