Put Into The Spotlight

As I was scrolling through my twitter feed the other day, I saw a tweet from a celebrity that I was following that really jumped out at me. She had tweeted about how awful it was for the paparazzi to take pictures of the children of celebrities. She had said that a site called RadarOnline had taken pictures of the kids of Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who recently died) on their way to his funeral. Many other celebrities then proceeded to respond to the tweet. I personally thought that this was just crazy. So, I dug a little deeper.

I was doing some research about it when I came across a bill that had been recently passed in the State of California that put much stricter consequences for paparazzi harassing and taking multiple pictures of children, mostly the children of celebrities. There were many celebrities that were a part of the Bill, including Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry (both movie stars). Halle Berry was quoted in saying that the paparazzi are "overly aggressive" and "cause so much trauma and emotional distress". Some of the stricter consequences violators could face because of this bill is up to a year in county jail and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

To me this is a completely fair law. I think it is totally wrong for photographers to go up to take pictures of children, children that wouldn't know who they were. Especially because of how aggressive photographers can be. America has always paid too much attention to celebrities - there are tons of magazines devoted to celebrities lives, and so many people decide to weigh in on every moment in their life. Myself included, almost everyone looks at photos of celebrities online, and I think we don't realize that these people have to deal with paparazzi harassing them to get the pictures we are looking at. I don't necessarily know the solution to this problem, but I do think that passing this bill could be a wake up call to the paparazzi that are harassing celebrities just for a picture.