Barbra Streisand’s highly anticipated memoir, My Name Is Barbra, has finally been released, providing readers with a firsthand account of her life as a singer, actress, and director. In this 992-page tome, which officially hit the shelves on November 7th, Streisand candidly shares her thoughts on everything from her iconic roles in Funny Girl and Yentl to her views on pup cloning and politics. But the memoir doesn’t stop there – it also takes one-and-a-half pages to set the record straight on “the Streisand effect.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, “the Streisand effect” refers to the phenomenon where attempts to suppress or censor information or a story actually result in it gaining greater publicity and attention. The term has become widely adopted in popular culture.
To understand how “the Streisand effect” became associated with Barbra Streisand, we must go back to the late 1990s. Ken and Gabrielle Adelman had created the California Coastal Records Project, an ambitious initiative to capture aerial photographs of the state’s coastline using a helicopter. The goal was to document erosion and development along the Pacific coast over time, primarily for the benefit of environmental groups, the government, and the media. They aimed to reshoot the coastline every five years.
Enter Barbra Streisand, an environmental activist herself, who had settled in Malibu, California, in 1974. In 1993, she generously donated her original 24-acre estate, now known as Ramirez Canyon Park, to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for a tax write-off. However, Streisand had her sights set on a different property, but the owners refused to sell to her. Undeterred, she purchased adjacent properties until the owners split and she finally acquired her dream home in 1995. The compound, which includes a main house, a barn, a mill house, a building known as “Grandma’s” home, and even a mini shopping mall in the basement, is where Streisand married her husband James Brolin in 1998, and they continue to reside there with their beloved pets.
In 2002, the California Coastal Records Project went live, featuring approximately 12,000 aerial images of the coast. One particular image, labeled as image 3850, inadvertently captured Streisand’s home within a larger shot of the coastline. Streisand, concerned about her privacy and security, sent two cease and desist letters the following year, claiming that the inclusion of the photo violated her privacy rights, the “anti-paparazzi” statute, and sought to profit from her name. However, Ken Adelman, an amateur photographer, argued that the photo was taken from public airspace over the ocean at an elevation of 500 feet, and Streisand’s home was not the intended focus. Unmoved by Streisand’s demands, Adelman refused to remove the photo. Streisand responded by suing for $50 million, but ultimately lost the case. She not only had to pay the defendant’s legal fees and court costs but also faced widespread media attention and public scrutiny. To this day, a copy of the $155,567.04 check that Streisand wrote to cover the legal costs remains on the California Coastal Records Project website.
Ironically, prior to the lawsuit, the image had only been viewed a total of six times on the website, including twice by Streisand’s legal team. However, after news of the lawsuit broke, over 420,000 people visited the website within a month to view the photo. The image was subsequently published by the Associated Press and numerous other newspapers and websites worldwide, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people seeing it.
It was during a different legal saga involving a website posting urinal photos that Mike Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, coined the term “the Streisand effect” in 2005. Masnick observed that attempts to repress or censor content only served to draw more attention to it and make it more widely known. The phrase quickly gained traction, now having its own Wikipedia page, and has been invoked in various instances involving celebrities. For instance, when Scientology demanded the removal of a four-year-old video of Tom Cruise promoting the organization, or when Beyoncé’s publicist tried to remove unflattering photos from BuzzFeed of her 2013 Super Bowl halftime show performance. In both cases, the efforts to suppress the content only drew more attention and resulted in widespread coverage.
Streisand herself attempts to set the record straight on the lawsuit that gave rise to “the Streisand effect” in her memoir. According to Vanity Fair, she writes, “When I first heard the term, I naively thought, Is that about the effect of my music? Little did I know.” Streisand explains that her intention was never to remove the photo of her house from the website but rather to prevent her name from being associated with it for security reasons.
Ironically, in today’s digital age, images of Streisand’s luxurious mansion are easily accessible. Platforms like Google Maps and Zillow offer users the ability to zoom in on her property, providing aerial and street views, lot sizes, and even property tax information. Streisand herself has participated in photoshoots featuring her home for various publications and has shared personalized photos of the property on Instagram. In fact, Streisand even published a book in 2010, titled “My Passion for Design,” which showcases interior and exterior photographs of her home.
Barbra Streisand’s memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” is now available for those who want an intimate glimpse into the life of this legendary artist. As readers delve into Streisand’s personal journey, they can also gain insight into the unintended consequences of her legal battle with the California Coastal Records Project and how it inadvertently led to the creation of “the Streisand effect.”
