by Venus Sanders
Yesterday, July 3, 2024, the stunning Halle Bailey and her longtime partner, DDG, shared the first photos of their son, Halo.
Image Credit: Halle Bailey Twitter
The images took the internet by storm, with almost every blog and news outlet resharing the adorable family photos. Halle Bailey is loved by a select group of the general population. She’s an entertainer and actress, but the real question is, is she a star?
Halle is easily one of the best soprano singers of our generation, but she has yet to debut on the Billboard Hot 200 and has not done any noteworthy performances. Meanwhile, the opposite is true for her sister, Chloe, who is a regular on the BET Awards stage. So, whatever happened to celebrities selling their baby photos to news outlets, and did no one extend an offer to Halle?
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In the early 2000s, it was about getting magazines to fly off the shelves; now it’s about garnering the most clicks and views for ad revenue. When magazines and tabloids reigned supreme, it was all about exclusivity and having the first look, with many paparazzi going crazy for the chance to capture a celebrity’s new baby, a celebrity kissing a new paramour, a wedding, or even death photos.
Now, celebs can simply post the content themselves, but only if they are a star does it truly work. You see, celebs like Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé wouldn’t really benefit from selling their baby images to publications when now they can just upload the image online and earn double what the publication would pay in as little as seven days. The clicks, reposts, engagement, etc. Those things are now far more valuable than an image on printed glossy paper.
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When Angelina Jolie announced that she was expecting twins in March 2008, people could hardly wait to see the baby images. After giving birth to Knox and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt in August of the same year, many magazines began putting in their bids. But it was both Hello! Magazine and People Magazine who teamed up to offer a whopping $14 million for the images. The money was then donated to their foundation, which means tax-free income.
Nowadays, with the slow but inevitable decline of print media, no celebrity is touching those numbers again because the return and demand just aren’t there. But for some celebs, something is better than nothing. While upcoming celebrities like Halle and Chloe may not be getting offered $14 million for baby pics, surely Halle believed her son’s photos to be worth something. The reason we speculate this is that celebrities are usually the first to share their baby photos—Beyoncé with Blue Ivy, Nicki Minaj with Papa Bear, Kylie with Stormi, and Rihanna with Rza.
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This is done as a way to beat the paparazzi from sharing the images first and getting a handsome payout from tabloids. This means no big-budget photoshoot and none of the extra bells and whistles—more revenue, fewer expenses.
But Halle seemed to have put off her images for quite some time, and these weren’t just regular images, no. It appeared as though they were taken to be sold to a magazine, and perhaps the deal fell through, so she posted them. This is no shade to the young couple—the images were stunning—but this goes back to a bigger question: what is Halle doing with her career?
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She has the potential to be one of the greatest stars on the planet, and yet, she’s dragging her feet on singles that aren’t selling and movies that are not going to land her an Oscar anytime soon. So, what’s the end goal? Does Halle want to be a star, or is she simply complacent with being a mother and perhaps one day soon a wife? If it’s the latter, then we can’t expect her to get any big payouts for images from tabloids or socials at any point in her career.