TWENTY-four words and a blurred picture showing a naked female body from behind. Thus did Sia, the high-profile but markedly private Australian singer, cause a stir last week and create a tsunami of headlines. It was an astute riposte to the kind of paparazzi intrusion that has infuriated and alarmed countless celebrities, many of them female.

In her tweet to her 3.46 million followers Sia wrote: “Someone is apparently trying to sell naked photos of me to my fans. Save your money, here it is for free. Everyday is Christmas!” The photograph itself bore a photo agency watermark reading ‘Client preview’, with a message reading: “If you make the purchase it will be unblurred and you will receive and [sic] additional 14 images.”

By Friday afternoon Sia's deed had been retweeted 190,000 times and liked 620,000 times. The final three words of the tweet, incidentally, are the title of her forthcoming album.

It was hardly surprising that Sia took such steps to protect her privacy - this is a woman who usually wears wigs or masks to hide her face in public.

The Australian news site news.com.au said Sia "handled a potentially embarrassing nude photo leak in the best possible way. Informed that a paparazzo was shopping naked photos to the highest bidder, she took matters into her own hands. While the publicity-shy singer usually avoids revealing her face in public, it seems she had few qualms about showing off her butt today. And the overwhelming response to her tweet from fans: THAT’S how you respond to the paparazzi’s attempts to profit from a creepy privacy invasion”.

Many of her Twitter fans responded enthusiastically, their comments ranging from “You are amazing – way to go, girl” to “We LYSM [love you so much]. You are so brave, strong and inspiring and know very well how to face and deal with such shitty situations. RESPECT.”

In a perceptive article in the Sydney Morning Herald, columnist Clementine Ford wrote: “As everyone knows, when you come of age as a woman in the world, you sign away all rights to personal autonomy, respect, and the choice of who does and doesn't get to see you in your birthday suit. Or that's what people seem to think at least. Don't like having your nudes stolen and shared? Too bad, sweetheart, you don't make the rules! A cursory glance at [Sia’s] Twitter replies indicates a good proportion of those cheering her on are women, probably because so many of us can intimately appreciate what it feels like to be shamed for having bodies and daring to use them in any kind of way that resembles ‘being alive’. It's a pretty ballsy move to undercut the person attempting to make money out of humiliating you by turning that humiliation into a triumph, and it seems it worked in Sia's favour. Sia's response was gutsy, admirable and almost certainly the fastest and most effective way for her to outplay the person attempting to literally strip her naked in front of an audience of millions.”

Ford praised Sia for her response to something "so despicable and underhanded", adding: "But the better outcome would be to have uniform laws in place everywhere that explicitly outline this exploitation as a criminal activity. Consent isn't freely given when it's issued as a result of coercion.”

Sia - full name Sia Kate Isobelle Furler - turns 42 the week before Christmas. The singer was born in Adelaide. She has said that she was born singing. In a 2008 radio interview she said she learned to sing by singing along to songs by artists such as Sting, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. Early in her career, she sang with an Adelaide band called Crisp, however, she suffered personal tragedy in 1997, when, en route to London to meet her boyfriend, Dan Pontifex, “my first love back in Adelaide”, she learned that he had died in a road accident on Kensington High Street. She elected to move to London, but Dan’s death set her on the path to a prolonged spell of alcohol abuse.

One biographer noted: “The therapy sessions she attended afterwards helped her realise how strange her life had been. Her father, Phil, a blues guitarist, was a schizophrenic with an abusive alter ego he called Stan; her mother played in a lesbian version of Men at Work; and her half- brother had been arrested for trying to fake his own murder.”

Sia was a guest vocalist with the group Zero 7 when she released the first of her solo albums. Her career suffered ups and downs but her 2008 album, Some People Have Real Problems, charted on the Billboard 200. One song, Buttons, was a YouTube hit, and she gained valuable exposure when an earlier song, Breathe Me, soundtracked the closing minutes of the final episode of the TV series, Six Feet Under.

Another key moment was the video for her 2014 song, Chandelier, from her breakthrough album, 1000 Forms of Fear. The song received multiple Grammy nominations and the video (which has had 1.72 billion views on YouTube) featured a stunning interpretive dance by Maddie Ziegler, an 11-year-old dancer whom Sia had spotted on a US reality TV show. Ziegler, in a leotard and blonde Cleopatra wig, became an internet sensation. She appeared in further Sia videos, which enhanced her reputation further still.

Sia herself has written hits for Rihanna, Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Adele - all women who embrace the spotlight much more than the Australian auteur. As Sia once quipped about her penchant for disguises and hiding her face, she wants to avoid public recognition so that she can shop in the discount outlet Target - or pee “on the side of the road”. This week, however, she got serious, and played paparazzi at their own game when it came to privacy.