Halle Berry Says Tabloids & Paparazzi ‘Exploit’ Famous Kids – And She’s Right

Halle BerryHalle Berry has always been a strong and impressive Hollywood mama. So it should come as no surprise that she’s being straight-forward and proactive when it comes to addressing a serious issue facing her daughter Nahla, and plenty of other little kids like her. No, Berry isn’t jumping to talk about how long she breastfed or her personal parenting philosophies. She’s trying to protect all celeb kids from a very real and scary threat: the paparazzi.

I can still remember a picture taken of Berry while she picked up her daughter from school. The four-year-old was visibly upset by the presence of cameramen following her and her mother around. She pointed, scowled and stuck out her tongue. At the time, I commented on how terrifying it must be for these little kids to feel like someone was always watching and following them.

Well I’m not saying that the wonderful Ms. Berry read my post and realized that everyday mothers out there support her and her daughter’s right to privacy, and therefore chose to speak out about the issue. But that would be super awesome if it actually happened, right? I mean, we can all agree on that.

Anyways, it looks like Nahla wasn’t the only one upset about the paps presence. Berry issued some harsh statements regarding the media practice of photographing and publishing pictures of celeb kids.

“When I open up all these magazines and I see all these children in them. Nahla was just in a magazine and they said, what does she – and I think Gwen Stefani’s kid – have in common? They were both nose pickers and I thought, ‘You know we are stooping to a new low when we prop up our children and exploit them like this.’ And people can’t wait to open up a magazine and see what 4-year-olds are wearing. There is something wrong, fundamentally wrong, with that,”

“Our children should be off limits. They are innocent little babies that should not be exploited all over these magazine. I’m fair game, I get that, but my kids [and] kids at my children’s school should not be harassed like that,” Halle stressed. “It’s just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.”

Adding, “When you have these creepy guys with cameras lurking around it’s really hard for parents, myself and other parents, teachers, principals, to discern who’s supposed to be there… it’s just a chaos and a confusion that doesn’t need to surround where little kids play and where they live and what their world is. It’s just not right.”

And I have to agree, it’s not right. Those safety concerns that Berry mentions must be an absolutely nightmare for schools and daycare centers. It could truly put these kids, who are already very widely known and recognized, at risk, if schools aren’t able to determine who should be hanging around and who shouldn’t.

There is a problem with our culture critiquing and analyzing every choice that a young child makes. These kids do not choose to be in the spotlight. They didn’t choose to be born to famous parents. They are the collateral damage of our celeb-obsessed society. Hollywood’s parents have every right to stand up and say that enough is enough and that their children deserve consideration and privacy.

(Photo: CBS Local)

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