The advent of the photographic and cinematic camera in the mid to late 19th century caused new harms to individuals (particularly women), which existing laws (copyright, defamation, trespass) were inadequate to address. This book demonstrates that women forged a ‘right to privacy’ in the United States by bringing lawsuits claiming control and ownership over filmed images (still and moving) of their faces, bodies and narratives. At a time when they still lacked civil and political rights, women employed ‘a right to privacy’ to prevent themselves being reduced to nameless ‘pretty’ objects; to pr ... More

The advent of the photographic and cinematic camera in the mid to late 19th century caused new harms to individuals (particularly women), which existing laws (copyright, defamation, trespass) were inadequate to address. This book demonstrates that women forged a ‘right to privacy’ in the United States by bringing lawsuits claiming control and ownership over filmed images (still and moving) of their faces, bodies and narratives. At a time when they still lacked civil and political rights, women employed ‘a right to privacy’ to prevent themselves being reduced to nameless ‘pretty’ objects; to protest the transformation of their bodies into spectacles of ‘monstrosity’; to limit their exposure on the big screen to the mass ‘gaze’ of audiences; to control the development of their careers in paid work as models, dancers and actresses; and to reclaim their personal life stories from exploitation by film studios. Case documents also reveal the nexus between privacy claims and arguments by the subjects of images for property rights in them (eventuating in the right to publicity). This book interrogates the gender of privacy law and shows how privacy emerged as an ambiguous claim for women – it both reinforced traditional stereotypes of femininity or womanhood and progressed the feminist aspirations of the New Woman for greater self-determination and self-articulation. It shows that visual crimes against women occurring today via the Internet, such as revenge pornography or non-consensual pornography, have an important legal, social and political history.