Kate Middleton is constantly followed by paps, even when sunbathing on holiday. Tanya Gold argues it’s time to boycott this misogynistic propaganda.

When the Duchess of Cambridge was photographed topless by a paparazzo, she may, by protesting, have changed something. There she was, this primmest of women, with her husband, in a private place. A pap came, took the shots and they were beamed around the world. The publishers say this photography is joyous, life-affirming, beautiful. It is not. It is exploitative, and profitable. I am not a monarchist, but it was repellent. I hope there will be a backlash to this breaking down of women to their constituent parts, for them to be mocked, ogled, abused or ignored.

The word “paparazzo” is from a film. In La Dolce Vita (1960) the director Federico Fellini had a character called Paparazzo, who was a photographer. “Paparazzo… suggests to me a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging,” Fellini said. Since then the behaviour of this pack of paparazzi has, incrementally, got worse, as the media dumbs down into a giant gossip column and the internet hosts hundreds of competing celebrity websites, who all want the clicks and profits and will go further to get an “interesting” shot. It is a competition, played entirely for cash. Stylist, I must add, has never used an unofficial pap shot, or revelled in celebrity gossip, because it refuses to show women in a negative light. It actually likes women.

Royalty is a natural target. Princess Diana’s miseries at the hands of photographers are famous; in fact, almost anything a stranger (that is most of us) knows about her is from photography, some agreed on, most stolen. She was mobbed in the early days of her courtship, and followed from her flat to work and back. Diana, I think, had many flaws, but this is not important. Most of us cannot imagine what it is like to have no privacy. She was photographed in a gym, working out, with a hidden camera, and the Daily Mirror published the photographs. When she died, what happened before seemed almost innocent. On that night, she was chased through Paris. It is true that the driver of the car was drunk and that she had not been wearing a seatbelt. But who really believes the pack of photographers had nothing to do with it? When the car crashed, the paps, on motorbikes and in cars, stopped. They approached the smoking car, took pictures, then put them up for sale. It was an act of almost unimaginable barbarity. It was a death scene.

Sophie Rhys-Jones, now the Countess of Wessex, was papped and shamed. She was photographed topless, in the back seat of a car with Chris Tarrant, before her marriage to Prince Edward. The Sun, no friend to women unless they are semi-naked, published the shot. The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, was also, like the Duchess of Cambridge, photographed topless on holiday, having her toes sucked by a Texan businessman called John Bryan.

Giving Chase

Celebrities are also a target, particularly if they are vulnerable. Who can forget the photographs of Amy Winehouse, wandering through London barefoot, or crying, or drugged? Or Britney Spears, who used to walk around LA in a daze, surrounded by paps treating her alleged drug addiction as a picture story to be revealed to the world in lucrative stages? No kindly person would have photographed them. This is why Diana’s death, when it happened, felt so inevitable; we had seen the build-up in photographs. Her story had become impersonal, almost a film. It was simply the last shot.

It is easy to say, “But they are celebrities. Don’t they want the attention? Why should they choose when and how they get it?” Pah. There is a difference between a photograph agreed and a photograph stolen, and that goes for everyone. The famous are not a different breed; the paps may go for them, but what if they came for you? Or your children, or your elderly parents? How would you feel? It happens constantly. You may have issues with royal privilege, or celebrity wealth, and yearn for a more equal world. The paps will not give that to you; they are all malice and fury.

An interesting YouTube video shows the Twilight actor Robert Pattinson being followed around Los Angeles by the pack. He begs to be left alone. “You’ve got a million pictures,” he says, “I can’t drive with someone following me around.” They don’t. They keep shooting. The paps’ behaviour is deliberately aggressive, because they want an “interesting” reaction. They want the celebrity to get angry or upset, or better still, violent. (Or better still, dead.) Sienna Miller, who was hounded for years, told The Leveson Inquiry into media practice that photographers would spit at her; eventually she took out an injunction to stop them following her, as did Lily Allen, after a photographer smashed into the back of her car and then started shooting. This is why many celebs are seen as rude, or graceless, and why Hugh Grant threw a tin of beans at one. They have been wound up by paps.

"We need to boycott the misogynistic paparazzi"