Since Brangelina's twins arrived, there's been a lot of passionate debate about the ethics of celebrities auctioning off baby pics to the highest bidder.
Me, I thought that, since Brad and Angelina have promised to donate the $11 million they've allegedly scored from People Magazine to charity, everyone wins. Until I read a very rational article on this practice, which pointed out that celebs like the Jolie-Pitts have so much money they could easily afford to donate $11 mil to charity WITHOUT sacrificing their children's privacy. As Bruce Weinstein, who writes on ethics for a syndicated column, points out, "If your own parents are literally selling you out, where can one feel safe?"
Not all celebrities are raking in the big bucks for their baby pictures, however. Which ones are taking the moral highground?
According to Gawker, a few big names were never approached to sell their babes' photos because they made it clear beforehand they weren't interested. In this group are actresses Nicole Kidman (who recently welcomed, with husband Keith Urban, daughter Sunday Rose), Halle Berry (who celebrated the arrival of Nahla Ariela with Gabriel Aubry) and Cate Blanchett (who, with husband Andrew Upton, brought home third son Ignatius Martin in April).
Then there are those celebs who turned down big time offers for pictures of their offspring, such as Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck (parents of Violet Anne, now 2), Courtney Cox and David Arquette (parents of Coco Riley, now 4), Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick (parents of James Wilkie, now 5) and Salma Hayek (who last year delivered Valentina Paloma, fathered by Hayek's fiance, Francois-Henri Pinault). Several of these tots have been snapped while out and about with their parents, or had their pictures distributed for free, but in any case, these folks obviously didn't want their children to become the focus of increasingly aggressive stalking by the paparazzi.
One could argue that no matter how Brad and Angelina resolved the photo distribution question, their no-doubt gorgeous twins would still become the focus of increasingly aggressive stalking by the paparazzi. And one would probably be right - after all, we're talking about Brangelina here! But at least if they had held their ground, their kids would have known, when they were old enough to appreciate it, that their parents never looked at them with dollar signs in their eyes.
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