“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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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 said.
“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?’”
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“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!”
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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.”
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“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.”
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“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. ”
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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!
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