Do NOT mess with Blake Lively when it comes to her children!
On Friday, the 33-year-old actress called out the Daily Mail Australia for publishing “deceitful” photos of a horrifying experience she had while out with her three daughters: James, Inez, and Betty. The tabloid posted the pictures on Instagram, which featured a lone shot of Blake smiling and waving placed next to one of her pushing her three kids in a stroller. The Gossip Girl alum claimed that paparazzi followed them and then edited the images to send a misleading message to readers:
“You edit together these images together to look like I’m happily waving. But that is deceitful. The real story is: My children were being stalked by a men all day. Jumping out. And then hiding. A stranger on the street got into words with them because it was so upsetting for her to see. When I tried to calmly approach the photographer you hired to take these pictures in order to speak to him, he would run away. And jump out again at the next block.”
Related: Blake Lively & Amber Tamblyn Had A Mini Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants Reunion!
She then asked if the publication even completed background checks on the photographers they hire, saying:
“Do you do background checks on the photographs you pay to stalk children? Where is your morality here? I would like to know. Or do you simply not care about the safety of children? The photographers who would speak to me, 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.”
Yeah, it is definitely not cool for grown adults to follow children around. Like, it does not matter if they’re celebrity parents’ kids, if they ask you not to snap a photo, just back the f**k off. Simple as that. Plus, it is common knowledge that the A Simple Favor star and Ryan Reynolds have kept their little ones away from the public eye.
Blake then ended the comment by slamming toxic paparazzi culture and pleading with the outlet to tell the entire truth:
“Tell the whole story @dailymailau At minimum, listen to your followers. They too understand this is dark and upsetting that you pay people to stalk children. Please stop paying grown ass men to hide and hunt children. There are plenty of pictures you could’ve published without the kids. Please delete. C’mon. Get with the times.”
The pictures have seemingly been taken down from social media. Later on, Lively also left a lengthy message on a post from the IG account Comments by Celeb, who shared a screenshot of her comment, encouraging publications to stop circulating photos like these. The momma wrote:
“One simple thing people can do is stop following and block any publications or handles who publish kid’s pictures. Feel free to report them. Or send a dm sharing why you don’t follow them. But it’s a simple way of only aligning with publications who have morality. And so many do. All are trying to service an audience. So if that audience makes it clear they don’t want something — like photos of children obtained by men frightening and stalking them — the publication or account will do what the audience wants. It’s the only way that so many have already stopped. Because the people demanded it. So thank you to everyone who’s made that difference already. And thank you again for sharing. It’s fucking scary.”
Blake joins other famous moms like Gigi Hadid, Kristen Bell, Jennifer Garner, and Halle Berry in begging for the privacy and respect of their kiddos. Despite legislation already put in place against photos of minors taken without their consent, there is certainly more that could be done in terms of distribution. FYI, we do not post paparazzi pictures of celebrity kids on our site that have been taken without their permission.
[Image via WENN/Avalon]