Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry Testify for the Kids

The paparazzi are the thorn in the sides of famous people, no doubt. I think they assume their lives are their own? They figure, we’re just in this for the work, not the fame. Jennifer Lawrence recently said in Vogue how much she is “not okay” with it:

“It’s as simple as that,” she said. “I am just a normal girl and a human being, and I haven’t been in this long enough to feel like this is my new normal. I’m not going to find peace with it.”

Well, welcome to the big bad world, honey. You don’t go pursuing fame as an actress at the age of 15 and not know what you’re in for. Old school celebrities, who remember when it wasn’t this bad have an excuse, but Ms. Lawrence knew perfectly well the world she was about to enter. There isn’t a single teenager I come across who doesn’t hear this lecture from me. And if I were Jennifer Lawrence’s mother I would have told her exactly what to expect. You are sacrificing your life for stardom. Your fans want to see everything and know everything about you – what you eat, when you sleep, whom you are fucking, what you are thinking, reading, doing 24/7. This is the new normal for famous people. The paparazzi are not the problem – they are the ones selling the drug to the fans. You can get rid of this drug dealer on the corner but another one will sprout up in his/her place. The people are hungry for it and the photographers make their living servicing that need.

So, I have very little sympathy for an actress who starts her career with Winter’s Bone and then does Hunger Games, X-Men and wins an Oscar. Um, you were expecting, what, obscurity? Rilly? Kristen Stewart, by contrast, is constantly toyed with in a way Lawrence isn’t. They seem to want to upset her and it is non-stop as the press tries to paint a picture of someone unstable. It’s all made up nonsense. At least with Lawrence, though there is constant attention, it is the kind of attention you only get once in a lifetime. It means people love you.

My sympathy does lie, however, with the kids of celebrities who never set out to be famous. It isn’t their fault their parents are narcissists. Every time I see a photo of a child of a celebrity I feel guilty and weird because I imagine what’s on the other side of that photo, what kind of madness do these kids have to endure? It’s one thing to be gracious enough to not complain about photographers – it’s wholly another to not be expected to have children. What must the children of the Affleck/Garner brood have to endure day in and day out? The websites I read have a continual flow of photos of their kids. I know what each of them looked like as babies, where they go to the Farmer’s Market, what kinds of activities their kids do during the day. They’re cute kids, to be sure, and that beautiful family is partly what helped Ben Affleck win the hearts of voters last year. But.

I don’t really need to see pictures of celebrity children. Sure, they’re cute. They’re beautiful. Any pictures of kids are. But I think it’s morally wrong to deny these particular children their rights because their parents are famous. There should be conditions – wouldn’t you agree? Either way, Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry went to bat for their kids recently in an effort to change the laws to spare the kids.