Tired Of Society Forcing Girls To Choose Between Being Sporty Or Girly, Mom Creates A Photoshoot To Combine Both
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“Are you a sporty girl, or a girly girl?” “Tara is always playing soccer, she’s such a tomboy…” “Erica doesn’t do sports, she’s too much of a princess for that.” We’ve all heard conversations like these, putting little girls firmly into boxes before they’ve even had a chance to find out for themselves what kind of person they are. Who’s to say that girls can’t be anything and everything that they want to be?
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Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
Alabama-based photographer and mom Heather Mitchell had a lightbulb moment recently while chatting to another mom at her daughter’s softball practice. “My youngest daughter is 8 and she is trying softball this year for the first time,” Heather told Bored Panda.
“We were at practice a few weeks ago and I was talking with the other moms. I was saying that I hoped Paislee learned to love the game because she was athletic. One of the moms told me that she was not athletic that she was a girly girl. I couldn’t sleep that night. All I could think was, ‘why does she have to choose?’”
Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
“I played every sport my school offered and wore lipstick to every game,” Heather continued. “So the next day, we went to the studio and created her shot. I seriously only spent about three minutes shooting because I knew exactly what I wanted.”
“I posted them to my personal Facebook and had tons of requests so we added two days to our schedule and they sold out in one hour. So I added two more days and they sold out too. These photos were my daughter and some of the girls from the first day of shoots. I have three more days next month!”
Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
The resulting shoots have since gone viral, being shared almost 200,000 times, as the world has discovered that these girls can truly “do it all.”
Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
“Our daughters do not have to choose,” Heather said. “My parents taught me that I could be anything I wanted growing up. I didn’t realize until I was much older that everyone is not that blessed.”
Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
“It is important for girls to know that there is no box. They can be girly and athletic. Artsy and smart. Whatever they dream, they can achieve. ”
Image credits: HMP Couture Imagery
What do you think? Did you have to ‘choose’ when you were a child? Do we subconscious put our kids in unnecessary boxes sometimes? Let us know in the comments!
Image credits: Kancis Collins Smith
Here’s what people had to say about the meaningful photoshoot
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I was born in 1956. Girls usually wore dresses. My dad was a bulldozer operator and on some weekends he would take me with him. One of my best memories is riding up on that catterpillar with him, plowing through walls of brush dressed in a cute little sun dress and frilly white socks. I came home filthy and so happy. I wanted to do what he did, be a "cat skinner" so when I got older he said he would contact the union and see if I could get into a school. He died not long after that. My sister had terminal cancer at the time so I never followed up. My dad was born in 1910, old school. But he never put limits on us. Pretty progressive for his age. He and my mom raised 3 girls and 1 boy, I came along in their 40s. I still love to watch bulldozers work.
you could always totally rock it out and go get your licence now! :D :D (And yes, your dad was very cool indeed.)
I was talking to an old lady walking past a construction site recently who said she was 89 and wished the opportunities to get into construction were around in her day. I felt so sad for her because today it's not weird at all to see a girl in construction.
6th comment down by Sara Corcoran (the girls should smile) is tone deaf and completely misses the point. The girls all have their game faces on. The one smile we can see in this post looks natural and in keeping with the shoot. Any pretty-princess smile would negate the effect Heather was going for.
I think it's an allusion to this dispute around Captain Marvel film. There was one man who said the main actress would be prettier if she would smiling more. He was smashed in comments and now "she should smiling" is kind of irony-based meme. So, nothing wrong with this comment.
I remember the comment and Brie Larson's response to it. Irony and sarcasm may not translate well to text, but Sara Corcoran's comment reads as serious. She may be from an older generation that thinks all girls NEED to smile in photos. Made me think of my mother, tbh.
I'll nitpick a tiny bit - the sarcastic smile meme existed way before Captain Marvel. But the troll attacks on CM probably boosted its popularity. Also it wasn't just one guy telling the actress (Brie Larson) to smile either... it was a whole horde of misogynistic trolls who basically started a big smear campaign against the movie & the actress for purely illogical and mostly sexist reasons. Thankfully the majority of fans called bs and continued to support her though. The actress responded to the "smile" comments in quite a cool way: she just shared photoshopped pictures of Iron Man, Cap.America and Dr.Strange smiling ear-to-ear on their respective posters. Gets the point across perfectly (never heard of anyone telling a male superhero to smile... imagine Batman grinning throughout his movies) and looked hilarious. :D
I agree. A girl or woman is not obliged to smile unless she want to herself. Nobody makes that kind of demand on a boy, but they on the other hand are not obliged to not cry if they want to. I don't feel like smiling at times, and there are people who don't think twice to tell me, old lady, that I need to smile more!! F* you, I smile when I want to, all girls and women should only smile when they feel like it!
why does *any* child have to choose?
I have never heard anyone say that girls should not do sports. Maybe that was a common attitude until the 1960s or so. Not nowadays. It's a strawman argument that makes for a nice photo shoot.
Never? For example in my school girls couldnt join the football team, as it was only for boys and they wouldnt open a mixed/femenine team.
That's merely an anecdotal evidence: just because you've never heard anyone say it, doesn't mean nobody ever says it. The poster never said "people don't like girls playing sports", they just point out that people categorize girls as "tomboys" and "girly girls" and when you do something that doesn't fit that specific label, it's supposedly a big deal. "Wow, the tomboy sports girl wore a pink dress!!!" etc. Also, if a "girly girl" wants to play football, you bet there'll be at least one classmate who'll mock her and say she's not cut out for it.
Although I have mixed feelings about parents using their children this way and putting their photos all over the internet.
I was born in 1956. Girls usually wore dresses. My dad was a bulldozer operator and on some weekends he would take me with him. One of my best memories is riding up on that catterpillar with him, plowing through walls of brush dressed in a cute little sun dress and frilly white socks. I came home filthy and so happy. I wanted to do what he did, be a "cat skinner" so when I got older he said he would contact the union and see if I could get into a school. He died not long after that. My sister had terminal cancer at the time so I never followed up. My dad was born in 1910, old school. But he never put limits on us. Pretty progressive for his age. He and my mom raised 3 girls and 1 boy, I came along in their 40s. I still love to watch bulldozers work.
you could always totally rock it out and go get your licence now! :D :D (And yes, your dad was very cool indeed.)
I was talking to an old lady walking past a construction site recently who said she was 89 and wished the opportunities to get into construction were around in her day. I felt so sad for her because today it's not weird at all to see a girl in construction.
6th comment down by Sara Corcoran (the girls should smile) is tone deaf and completely misses the point. The girls all have their game faces on. The one smile we can see in this post looks natural and in keeping with the shoot. Any pretty-princess smile would negate the effect Heather was going for.
I think it's an allusion to this dispute around Captain Marvel film. There was one man who said the main actress would be prettier if she would smiling more. He was smashed in comments and now "she should smiling" is kind of irony-based meme. So, nothing wrong with this comment.
I remember the comment and Brie Larson's response to it. Irony and sarcasm may not translate well to text, but Sara Corcoran's comment reads as serious. She may be from an older generation that thinks all girls NEED to smile in photos. Made me think of my mother, tbh.
I'll nitpick a tiny bit - the sarcastic smile meme existed way before Captain Marvel. But the troll attacks on CM probably boosted its popularity. Also it wasn't just one guy telling the actress (Brie Larson) to smile either... it was a whole horde of misogynistic trolls who basically started a big smear campaign against the movie & the actress for purely illogical and mostly sexist reasons. Thankfully the majority of fans called bs and continued to support her though. The actress responded to the "smile" comments in quite a cool way: she just shared photoshopped pictures of Iron Man, Cap.America and Dr.Strange smiling ear-to-ear on their respective posters. Gets the point across perfectly (never heard of anyone telling a male superhero to smile... imagine Batman grinning throughout his movies) and looked hilarious. :D
I agree. A girl or woman is not obliged to smile unless she want to herself. Nobody makes that kind of demand on a boy, but they on the other hand are not obliged to not cry if they want to. I don't feel like smiling at times, and there are people who don't think twice to tell me, old lady, that I need to smile more!! F* you, I smile when I want to, all girls and women should only smile when they feel like it!
why does *any* child have to choose?
I have never heard anyone say that girls should not do sports. Maybe that was a common attitude until the 1960s or so. Not nowadays. It's a strawman argument that makes for a nice photo shoot.
Never? For example in my school girls couldnt join the football team, as it was only for boys and they wouldnt open a mixed/femenine team.
That's merely an anecdotal evidence: just because you've never heard anyone say it, doesn't mean nobody ever says it. The poster never said "people don't like girls playing sports", they just point out that people categorize girls as "tomboys" and "girly girls" and when you do something that doesn't fit that specific label, it's supposedly a big deal. "Wow, the tomboy sports girl wore a pink dress!!!" etc. Also, if a "girly girl" wants to play football, you bet there'll be at least one classmate who'll mock her and say she's not cut out for it.
Although I have mixed feelings about parents using their children this way and putting their photos all over the internet.