| Subject: Another point of view... |
Author:
LBF
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Date Posted: 00:01:45 08/01/08 Fri
In reply to:
Gina
's message, "Re: Gina, i know you're not this niave..." on 02:19:05 07/30/08 Wed
Pimp Your Tot
Why celebrity baby picture sales aren't a big deal
By Martha Brockenbrough
Special to MSN Entertainment
Halle Berry has vowed never to sell photos of her baby and is threatening to sue the photographer who allegedly trespassed to take pictures. Ethan Hawke held his newborn up to paparazzi so any forthcoming snaps would be worthless. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, meanwhile, are expected to get more than $10 million for photographs of the Twins of Destiny.
So who's doing the right thing?
It's easy to side with Berry, who said her daughter never asked to be a public figure and would be protected until she did. Passing up millions to protect her child -- that makes her the best mother in all the land, right?
Not so fast. It's not the only reasonable choice, as Ethan Hawke has shown. It might not even be the best one. If I were a celebrity, I'd pimp my baby pictures, and the sooner after birth, the better.
Ethan Hawke held his newborn up to paparazzi so any forthcoming snaps would be worthless.
Yes, I get that parents are supposed to be protecting their children. But where, exactly, is the harm to the baby in photography? No matter what you might have heard on the Interwebs, cameras do not steal souls. Nor do babies care about the 10 pounds cameras allegedly add. Nor are they likely to be recognized when they're at the gym or grocery shopping, because babies don't do these things -- and, in just a few weeks, they'll look different, anyway. That's how fast they grow and change.
When it comes to child safety, the posed studio portrait is way better than the alternative, which is to have the paparazzi dog new parents for a candid.
That's just dangerous, and no doubt is part of what inspired Michael Jackson to dangle his baby over a balcony to entertain his "fans."
Just last week, paparazzi in camouflage trying to sneak onto the Jolie-Pitt chateau got beaten bloody by security guards. It's appalling. This sort of lunacy never happens in those paid shots, which tend to show nicely-made-up parents holding their adorable babies in perfectly conventional -- you might even say loving -- fashion.
The best part? The parents get the money to use as they see fit, whether that's a charity, a trust fund, or a fleet of ridiculously over-the-top strollers. If anyone is to profit from our interest in celebrity spawn, it should be the family.
Not everyone sees it this way. Bruce Weinstein, "the ethics guy" for Newsweek, wrote an entry on Anderson Cooper's blog recently, calling paid baby pictures unethical and even evil because they represent a failure to protect a child's interests.
What interests? Babies eat, sleep and poop. These are their daily interests. In the long term, millions of dollars will generate interest of another, entirely positive sort.
But in the abstract, if it's harmful for babies to have people think they're cute, then we live in an evil world, indeed.
Mr. Weinstein should be more concerned about parents who dress their children in lamentable hats and punny bibs. Ditto the ones who take naked tub shots. Those are guaranteed to haunt during the junior high school years.
The only people who get to be mad about paid celebrity baby pictures are the ones who've never taken or displayed a single portrait of their own children. And them I seriously worry about for other reasons.
Here's the thing: These posed portraits are just like the ones that many new parents do for free. And that is the reality of it. Every parent in the world has taken baby pictures and shown them to anyone and everyone who'd take a minute to look. This includes famous parents.
We all pimp out our children. The difference is, the only people interested in most of our offspring are our relatives and co-workers. And they're probably just faking. Especially the relatives.
Even if we'd never call it that, all those photos, holiday letters, blog entries and "honor student" bumper stickers are a variation on the theme of parental pride. We don't get paid for it, which is a bummer. Having kids is a bank-breaker.
Still, it's nutty to complain about celebrities getting paid for their baby pictures unless you're laboring under the delusion that money is evil, especially when it comes in large stacks.
It's wildly unfair that celebrities make so much money for posing with their babies. But they also get paid incomprehensible sums to act, sing and look pretty (or, if they're aiming for an Academy Award, to look ugly). They get designer clothes for free, and they can cut in line at Disneyland, which is arguably unethical -- and the kids are old enough to learn a wicked sense of entitlement from it.
This, by the way, is where celebrities might consider drawing the line on their kids' exposure to the public. When they're old enough to want cuts in the teacup line, they're old enough to learn that's a crummy thing to do.
Celebrity parents should also protect their offspring from public scrutiny during the awkward preteen years. No one would ever suspect Angelina Jolie had a nose job if those old photos weren't lying around.
And they should really avoid smoking, drunken driving and illegal drug use with their kids -- all seemingly common celebrity foibles that deserve our actual outrage.
Still, if you have enough outrage left over and you still don't think people should be paid for their baby photos, there is something you can do about the whole thing.
Stop looking at these adorable little babies. Stop buying the magazines that contain their darling chubby faces. Give stern looks to your friends who do. Then there will be no money left to pay big heaps of money for celebrity baby photos.
Which, ultimately, will just hurt the wee celebrity babies when they grow up -- especially the ones saddled with stupid celebrity-baby names. The therapy bills from all that teasing? That'll cost millions.
http://movies.msn.com/movies/celebrityfeature/pimp-your-baby-photos/?GT1=BUZZ2
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