Her efforts to suppress what she believed was an embarrassing photograph only made matters worse
It has been quite the fortnight for the Streisand effect, the cultural phenomenon of attracting far more attention to a photograph by trying to suppress it than if it had been left to exist without comment. Named after the singer, who sued a photographer for $10m in 2003 for posting pictures of her house online, which few knew was Streisand’s house until she sued him, it has really come into its own in the age of social media, particularly if you are part of one of the most curated, carefully lit families in the celebrity world.
There was a recent precedent for the current drama. On a podcast, former The OC star Rachel Bilson discussed the time she posted a picture to Instagram of her with an old classmate, the actor Rami Malek, during their school days. She admitted that it was “dorky”. He messaged her and unceremoniously asked her to take it down as he is “a private person”; Bilson said that she was “a little bummed at how it was handled”. A picture that might have gone unnoticed has now done the rounds, particularly since Bilson shared the anecdote. Maybe that is a Streisand-by-proxy.
