Celebrity Mummas & Bubbas

This week's issue of Who magazine features exclusive images of US pop star P!NK (born Alicia Moore), her husband Carey Hart and their gorgeous new daughter Willow Sage Hart. Willow was born a little more than 3 weeks ago on 2nd June. She is a beautiful little girl and you can tell from the lovely shots just how smitten Pink and Carey are with their bundle of joy.

The same mag also includes a How They've Grown story of celebrity parents with their kids. It features all the A-list stars we've followed over the years such as Nicole Richie with Harlow and Sparrow, Courtney Cox Arquette with Coco, Jessica Alba with Honour, Neil Patrick Harris with his twins Harper and Gideon and many more. All the shots are taken while the little ones are out and about playing or generally just going about their day with their Mum or Dad. It's quite cute. Nothing bad about that at all. Or so I thought.

Pink, Carey & Willow Sage Hart - An authorised photo

Yep, it all seemed innocent enough at first glance. Pink is celebrating the birth of her baby girl and sharing it with the world...but behind the smiles it seems she didn't have much choice but to share this joyful time with us. Pink could provide a range of personal images of her new family for the world to devour or be forced to fight off paparazzi hunting the couple for the first photo of Willow and, in turn, make A LOT of cashola. You see another word for 'ka-ching' in La La land is 'celebrity baby'.

I only know this because Pink has posted a very heart felt letter on her website to ask paparazzi to respect Willow's privacy. The fascination we (voyeurs like me) have with celebrities and their off duty lives has grown so much paps will stop at nothing to get the best, most exclusive photos.

It reads:

Due to the unsettling, surprisingly aggressive and unsafe measures that the paparazzi seem to be willing to go to in order to secure that "first shot" of our daughter--stalking us, chasing us in cars and sitting outside of our home all day and all night, as new parents Carey and I decided that we would release personal photos of our Willow, and donate all of the money to charity.

Those 'personal photos' were provided to People (Who's sister publication in the US) and are now available around the world for everyone to see. 

It's not the first time a celebrity has tried to beat media at their own game in a bid to diffuse the international and very well paid hype around their newborn. Brangelina negotiated a tidy sum for the rights to photos Brad took of Angie with Knox and Viv (arguably the most expensive images of celeb babies to date) which was then donated to charity. Tomkat didn't show Suri in public until she appeared with her parents on the cover of Vanity Fair and our own Dannii Minogue tweeted a self-styled pic of her with partner Kris Smith and their several day old son Ethan to squash the media frenzy from Oz to the UK. 

Why are we so fascinated with famous babies? Does knowing Pink, Angelina, Dannii, Katie and all the rest go through nine months of pregnancy and labour just like us 'normal' people somehow make our experience easier or - god forbid - acceptable or cool? It's not uncommon for magazines to publish a 'Who's Next?' story displaying the latest tabloid shots of female celebs at varying stages of gestation. Then it's the birth, their name, what they wear, how much was spent on their birthday party and so on and so on...

Yes of course babies are beautiful and their arrival in the world is a blessing, but my confusion lies in what seems to be our insatiable apetite for these kids. Does it seem wrong to anyone else that millions of dollars is paid for images of children because their Mum or Dad happens to make a movie or play in a band?

I'll admit my new found protect-the-celeb-baby stance is contradictory. I love my trashy mags and pics of celebrities. Geesh, I've even got images of three inspirational ladies in the left hand column...but after reading Pink's letter and being a super protective Mumma myself, I've started re-evaluating my desire for these images.

While admiring Actors, Musicians, TV Personalities, Reality Stars etc.. is one thing I completely understand and support Pink and Carey's position in protecting their baby girl's innocence, identity and life from potential danger. 

It wasn't until I read Pink's letter that I even considered papped images of them as an invasion of her family's privacy. Why would I? I see pics like this everyday. One with her baby girl is just another one, surely?! I don't know her personally, why would I care? But I realised, I would be horrified, or worse still scared for our lives, if someone followed Teach and I while we were walking with E. We would do everything in our power to stop someone from setting up camp outside our home to take photos of us. Why does Pink's job as a Musician and Entertainer give anyone the right to follow her movements 24/7 for the sake of one picture of her child?


While I don't believe we will ever see an end to unauthorised videos and images of celebrities (Princess Diana's death proved that), I now think we should draw the line at celeb bubbas. Being stalked to the point of almost causing harm for a photograph is beyond moronic and should be illegal. Pink says it brilliantly:

In EVERY other country that I recall, children's faces are blurred out in magazine photos. Why is USA the only country that continues to financially incentivize intrusive paparazzi behavior to capitalize on photos of babies, infants and children? Why is this acceptable to any of us? Why is this even legal? These are questions I ask myself as a new parent. Why are celebrities/public figures having to seek restraining orders to keep strange grown men with still and video cameras from sitting perched outside of their children's pre-schools and elementary schools, preying on little innocent kids? After all, if a stranger was sitting outside of a school taking photographs of random little girls and boys, wouldn't he be arrested? Or, at least in Philadelphia, he would have to face a more primal sort of recourse. But because it's the child of a celebrity, somehow it's okay? I'm just not sure what is wrong with us as a society, that we do more than tolerate this, but our appetite for it seems insatiable. We buy these pictures. We buy these magazines that publish these paparazzi pictures. WHERE DOES IT STOP?

Unfortunately for Pink and many more celebrity Mummas (and Poppas of course) we all know it will only stop when there is no money to make from it. It's the way of the world.   

To read the 'Important Note from Pink' click here.