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Refinery29
Why do celebrities put emojis on their children’s faces? It is complicated
If, like me, you are obsessed with celebrity culture and therefore follow a lot of famous people on Instagram, your feed for any given day might include: Mindy Kaling dancing with a can of Campbell’s soup, Blake Lively wearing heels that look like them. were drawn to using Microsoft Paint, and Reese Witherspoon desperately trying to create a meme challenge (with herself!). Among all of this weird online behaviors, however, there is one phenomenon that I find extremely strange, and it comes courtesy of famous parents: covering a child’s face with an emoji. You know you’ve seen it: Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik used a Hulk emoji to block their baby’s face on Halloween; Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard put rainbows on their daughters’ faces when posting vacation photos; Ashley Graham placed a heart on her baby’s face in a video collage retracing her first 12 months of life; Jenny Mollen, bestselling author and wife of actor Jason Biggs, loves “lighted up” emoji for photos of her kids walking around the house. Danielle Fishel does it, Michelle Buteau does it and Elsa Pataky does it. So are Orlando Bloom, Jenna Dewan and Chris Pratt. (The list is long, but I’ll stop there.) What makes this phenomenon so interesting is that a lot of celebrities who use emojis to, it seem, put up a privacy barrier around of their children, are also those who seemingly share every other aspect of their life with their fans and followers. Bell, for example, has built her entire personal brand on relatability – and that includes how she presents her life as a parent. She regularly takes part in talk shows and podcasts to discuss her children’s funny antics, and she posts extensive accounts of her marriage efforts. But showing the faces of her children is a line she will not cross. When she posts a photo of her kids on social media, she always covers their faces with an emoji. When someone is already sharing a large part of their life and their children’s lives with the world, why exactly does their child’s face choose to set a limit? See this post on Instagram A post shared by Kristen Bell (@kristenanniebell) According to Leah Plunkett, digital privacy expert and author of Sharenthood: Why we should think before we talk about our children online, hiding your child’s face social media posts offer specific privacy benefits. She explains that when it comes to who will learn information from a photo you share, there are two main categories. “The first is what other people – like humans and not algorithms or robots – can learn from the image,” she says. “The second is what data can be extracted, used and reused by various forms of machine learning or artificial intelligence, et cetera.” Obscuring a face in an image may limit the information that real people can glean from that image, but it is still unclear how well it protects against institutions, such as social media companies and third parties who receive information. data from these social media companies, obtaining information from the image. “It would certainly warn of the kind of scenario the New York Times wrote about in the fall of 2019, where it turned out that pictures of children parents posted online in the early 2000s had been taken and used to form what the times have called “cutting edge surveillance technology,” “Plunkett explains. “Obviously if you don’t have a face the image cannot be used for that, but would it still be possible to learn things from the photo like the location or type of clothes worn or based on photo, race or ethnicity or gender? Yeah, it probably would be again. Because of all of that, this tactic is not a foolproof solution for containing information, but for parents – and can – especially being famous parents – a cover is better than nothing, especially if they just can’t help but post pictures online. Although Plunkett confirms that it’s safer not to share them at all. photos of your kids on social media, she understands that the impulse to do so might negate some safety concerns. “I think the motivation is to try and engage in a level of ‘sharing’ that is happening. focus on sharing your life, which children are a lot for most parents, certainly for me, without giving information about your kids that in a sense is not yours to give, ”Plunkett explains. “It’s like, here’s what’s going on in my life that my kids are a big part of, but literally and metaphorically I’m not going to give you a window into their lives.” So, for celebrities who are used to – and love – sharing their lives on social media, it’s not really an option not to post pictures of their kids. Instead, it’s about controlling how they do it. In the age of social media, celebrities have and do not have authority over their images. On the one hand, they have a direct line with their fans through platforms like Instagram, where they can mold and manipulate their personas – provided they at least give the plating of authenticity. On the other hand, they have yet to fend off the paparazzi, who are more zealous than ever in their quest for candid celebrity photos, which then proliferate on the internet. Many stars have even found themselves in lawsuits for posting paparazzi photos of themselves without giving proper credit or payment to those who took them. But while famous people don’t have control over the paparazzi images of themselves or their children, they do control their own photos and can use them to cultivate their own brands. As with everything we post online, posting pictures of our children, whether their faces are visible or not, is a way for parents – famous or not – to send a certain message about themselves and their lives. It’s also a great way to generate engagement. Plunkett remembers when she ran for state election over the summer and posted a photo of herself filling out forms to register to vote. In the photo, her daughter can be seen, although her face is not visible. “I thought about whether or not to share this photo because, on the one hand, I’m really a very minimalist or non-existent ‘sharer’. On the other hand, I introduced myself in part because I think there should be a mother of young children working in this position, ”Plunkett explains. “It was a moment that was private as it happened in my house, but it’s also public because, in a non-COVID world, I should have gone to the State House in New Hampshire. and fill it out in front of anyone else that was there. Also, I wanted to convey to the people who were getting to know me and the countryside this is what it feels like to do this with a little child hanging from you. “In the end, Plunkett decided to post the photo because his daughter was indistinguishable from any other short brown haired person – the image was particularly well received by members of the community. a celebrity, influencer or just a normal parent, sharing photos of your kids almost guarantees more likes. Images that give a unique glimpse into your life – or at least the illusion of a glimpse into your life – work best on social media. Anyone who’s ever reluctantly posted a selfie to receive infinitely more attention for it than any sunset or sandwich photo you’ve ever posted knows it’s true. people who use their platforms professionally and constantly think about engagement so that they can get sponsorship partnerships or just strengthen their personal brands, it makes sense that they want They’ll share undeniably cute photos, even if they don’t reveal their kids. ‘faces. See this post on Instagram A post shared by ASHLEYGRAHAM (@ashleygraham) But perhaps the strangest aspect of the emoji face cover is that, well, they feel really disruptive when used on accounts where aesthetics are a priority – I, for one, find it so aesthetically unpleasant that I know I can’t be alone. Maybe if you’re an ordinary person, the presence of stray emoji in the middle of a family portrait might not stand out among all the other dimly lit photos of your week’s meal preparation or the many snaps of your. cat that make up your grid. But on the profile of a celebrity, where every image is so deliberately planned, and often curated by assistants or even agencies dedicated to conveying a certain personality to the celebrity via photos, reels, and memes (yes, we’re talking about by Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling), well, those emojis hit differently. The messages are well planned and the gates are organized, and yet there is a heart or a touch of pumpkin at the center of it all, a total distraction. Some celebrities get around this cartoonish intrusion by only posting photos where their children are facing the camera. Still others double down by blurring their children’s faces as if they were in an episode of Cops. Even considering and understanding the perspective of privacy, it’s still difficult, after seeing the photo of Zayn and Gigi holding their little Hulk bundle, not to go straight into an existential spiral, and ask yourself: is there in a face? Couldn’t one argue that the essence of a person is in their face? So without that, what exactly am I looking at? (And, just in case you think I sound like a freshman philosophy major challenging what it even means to be a person, trust me, I know – and I don’t like these posts giving me that feeling, Is). Really though, the most important question I always ask myself after seeing another photo of a kid donning a random emoji, like some sort of macabre digital mask (an aesthetic nightmare that isn’t even so sure of a digital privacy perspective) is this: why publish the photo? The answer, I guess, is that celebrities and influencers are still ordinary people, who just like us have the same silly impulses to share. In fact, their impulses might even be stronger than ours, as they are literally performers on and off social media. But, they also know the power of the information illusion and how nothing works better, in terms of maintaining an audience, than pretending to give more than what you actually give. So they’re stoking their fan base by seemingly offering a glimpse into their lives, while also stepping back and asserting control over their own narratives. This is all good, but, you know, do they have to do it with such ugly emojis? Like what you see? How about a little more R29 goodness, here? Dakota Johnson Loves Limes. Or, is she? What’s Up With Kylie Jenner’s Water PressureHead Empty Just Vibes: How Bimbos Got Over TikTok
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