Blake Lively Calls Out Paparazzi With Pregnancy Photos

Blake Lively has a message for the paparazzi waiting outside her house: you can go home now. On Sept. 15, the actor informally announced she and husband Ryan Reynolds are expecting their fourth child when she made an appearance at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit, where she revealed her baby bump. It seems since then, Lively has been dealing with unwanted attention from photographers who have been scaring her and her kids. This led the “Gossip Girl” alum to take matters into her own hands and post her candid pregnancy photos on her own terms.

In the photos, Lively can be seen hanging out with Taylor Swift, snuggling with Reynolds, and getting a hug from her big sister, Robyn Lively. The snaps are sweet on their own, but combined with her caption, they send a powerful message about the importance of respecting the privacy of celebrities — especially when it comes to their children.

“Here are photos of me pregnant in real life so the 11 guys waiting outside my home for a 🦄 sighting will leave me alone,” Lively wrote. “You freak me and my kids out. Thanks to everyone else for all the love and respect and for continuing to unfollow accounts and publications who share photos of children. You have all the power against them. And thank you to the media who have a ‘No Kids Policy’. You all make all the difference 🙏♥️. Much love! Xxb.”

This isn’t the first time Lively has spoken out about the paparazzi going to great lengths to take pictures of her children. Both she and Reynolds have decided not to share photos of their daughters — James (7), Inez (5), and Betty (3) — with the public in hopes of giving them as normal of a childhood as possible. In 2021, the “Age of Adaline” actor called out the paparazzi for jumping out and scaring her children in their attempts to take unauthorized photos of her family.

“You edit together these images together to look like I’m happily waving. But that is deceitful,” Lively wrote in an Instagram comment at the time, per People. “The real story is: My children were being stalked by a men [sic] all day. Jumping out. And then hiding. A stranger on the street got into words with them because it was so upsetting for her to see. Where is your morality here? I would like to know. Or do you simply not care about the safety of children?”

She concluded with a message that’s still as relevant now as it was in 2021: “Please stop paying grown ass men to hide and hunt children. C’mon. Get with the times.”