Adam Harvey, a tech designer, has made an anti-paparazzi bag. It’s a clutch designed to emit a flash when it senses a flash, to blind the cameraman, biblical-style. Only a few problems.

1.

In order to activate the bag, you need to power it on, and tilt it. To be pragmatic, the people in the income bracket that are worried about paparazzi don’t need to be tilting their bags. Baggies of cocaine can easily be jostled. And so can Chihuahuas.

2.

In a lot of situations, when starlets don’t want to be photographed, they don’t have bags. Typically, they also don’t have underwear. And holding a purse at your crotch isn’t the most comfortable position, which you can only learn from experience. So I’ve been told.

When I see starlets carrying bags, it’s for a high profile event, where they WANT to get their picture taken. And this only blocks out the face, which realistically, with the crop of up and comers we’ve been saddled with, may not be a bad thing. In honor of this invention, I’ve created a list of things that would be better if they were paparazzi proof.

3.

Babies. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve seen babies in paparazzi shots. It’s traumatic for them. If we could rig them with circuits to block nosy reporters, they
would be much better off. Also, babies are like 90% head anyway, so if the baby did it, it would not only ruin that picture, but every picture in a two-block radius.

4.

Bushes. Where do paparazzi hide? In the bushes. Make your bushes flash. Maybe attach a speaker, and relay instructions, if you really want to get biblical.

5.

Mirrors. Not only does this prevent paparazzi from taking pictures of you, it prevents you taking pictures of yourself when you’re bored and drunk. Also prevents annoying pictures winding up on facebook, or incriminating ones, where you forget to hide the drugs. What’s he doing? Using flour in nice, straight lines? Attaboy.

6.

Cars. Come on now, I’ve never once seen a clutch handbag in a paparazzi shot. What do you always see? A Mercedes GLK with tinted windows. Skip the bag. Install it in the windows. Biggie would’ve wanted it.

7.

Jackets. The number one defense of a star ambushed by cameras is hiding in a windbreaker someone inexplicably carries around with them. Take a cue from Liberace. Make your windbreaker blinding.

I don’t have the tech know-how to invent, so kudos to Adam. Keeping our starlets safe to flash paparazzi. In more ways than one. If you want one, it doesn’t come out until 2010, but until then ordinary people can buy paparazzi-repelling bags at any Wal-Mart.