Hilary Duff wasn’t messing around when she scoped a paparazzi snapping pictures at one of her kids’ football games. Luckily for us, she posted the encounter on Instagram, and it’s the kind of thing Gossip Cop loves to see.
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The 85-second video starts with Duff walking over to a photographer standing on the sidelines of the kid’s football game snapping away on his camera. Duff is heard asking the man who is with. He responds, “I’m here with me.” Duff then asks if he knows any of the people on the team, and of course, he does not. That’s when things ramp up.
Hilary Duff asks him somewhat politely, though clearly annoyed, to please stop taking photos of the kids. The photographer’s sketchy response is, “It’s legal.” Duff explains it’s making her feel uncomfortable and the man offers to show her “I.D.” Duff responds, “I’m not asking for your I.D., I’m asking you to stop taking pictures of our 7-year-old children if you don’t know anyone that’s here.”
While Hilary Duff is concerned, she is never rude or unreasonable, still, the photographer persists. “But it’s legal,” he says, pointing towards the kids, “it’s not against the law.” Duff then tries to appeal to him as a parent, “I’m asking you human to human, as a mother, if you don’t know anyone here can you please stop taking pictures of our children playing football this morning?” The man tries to stand his ground, answering, “I’m just telling you, it’s not illegal.”
Things get even weirder from there, as the man states, “I’m taking pictures, I’m practicing photography and I’m not here to scare you or anything like that. Your paranoia is unwarranted.” Huff, remaining calm, explains to the man that it’s “an uncomfortability factor that these are 7-year-old children and you don’t have a child here.” The man, incredulously says, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Hilary Duff has finally had enough, “Well, there are children, and we would like to protect them, so if you could take pictures and practice your photography somewhere else…” The man isn’t swayed, so Duff tells the man she’ll be posting the video to her 15 million followers on Instagram and telling them how creepy it is. Finally, the man puts his hand up to Duff’s camera and the video ends.
After staying calm and reasonable in her exchange with this man, Duff captioned the post with some harsh words. She wrote: “Paparazzi shooting KIDS. Go ‘practice’ your photography on ADULTS! Creep! Laws need to change! This is stalking minors! Disgusting!” The post has racked up over 2 million views in the days since and well over 200,000 likes. We here at Gossip Cop applaud Hilary Duff for her stance.
Hilary Duff has good reason to be suspicious, as she’s been the target of the gossip media before. In October, Gossip Cop busted Woman’s Day for alleging Duff and her then-fiance Matthew Koma got married secretly. The tabloid quoted a so-called “insider” as saying, “They’re insanely happy… All they would have needed for their perfect wedding day was each other and their kids.” The story was 100% false, as Gossip Cop reported, and indeed, the couple is now married, but the wedding happened two months after this unreliable tabloid claimed it had. The insider wasn’t inside anything.