Princess Diana killed in a car accident. Jennifer Aniston sues. Lindsey Lohan crashes a Mercedes. Niall Horan knocked to the floor. 

What do of all these instances all have in common? The paparazzi. Whether that’s running away from them, invasion of privacy, or physical altercations, the paparazzi time after time have crossed the line between doing their job by capturing an image for the public and fully violating celebrities’ personal spaces.

In an attempt to uncover scandalous behavior through excessive stalking, the paparazzi have become involved in court cases, confrontations, and sometimes even death. While there may be a demand for these pictures in the tabloids and by the public, their actions get to a point where doing their job leads to serious and sometimes dangerous consequences. 

There is a fine distinction between photographers lining the red carpet at the Grammys and award shoes and live television evidence on “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and other reality television shows of the family dealing with paparazzi loitering outside their property while filming. Paparazzi, by definition, are not formally invited to events. But instead, they get up close and personal with the subjects that they’re trying to photograph all without their subjects permission. 

The mantra in the paparazzi world is “don’t take no for an answer,” and as I’m sure everyone knows, they take that to heart- literally. Even if that means breaking into guest homes or following them in cars, they will go to the extreme of getting whatever information they want for the public. 

Besides the paparazzi, there’s just a general lack of respect towards celebrities in public. Understandably, I think if I saw Taylor Swift in public I would probably take a picture of her and try to talk to her as she passes me. But the line gets drawn when people follow them once they get into their cars or into their penthouses, and it  essentially leads to full on stalking.

Celebrities just having to worry about themselves is enough, but when they are responsible for their children in public in addition to the paparazzi is when things can become overwhelming, like how things did for Blake Lively in 2021. While walking with her three daughters, photos were snapped of the family, and although the photo portrayed the four of them happily walking, Lively took a strong stand against pictures being published of celebrities’ children. She explains that while there is a demand for photos, it gets to a point where there’s a level of misrepresentation of reality. These photos falsely represented Lively and her children waving to the camera, when in real life they were really trying to tell the paparazzi to stop taking pictures of her and her family. 

Just because these celebrities got famous, doesn’t necessarily mean that they signed up for the excessive stalking, relentless paparazzi, and nonstop buzz about them in the media. Celebrities should have privacy like the rest of us. Imagine you’re cooking breakfast one day, and you look up outside your kitchen window and you see there are paparazzi and people lined up across your block trying to look into your house and are yelling for your attention. That’s how celebrities feel about things daily, except on a much broader scale. 

Overall, just because a certain person has risen to fame, doesn’t mean that they lose out on certain privacy privileges.