Viral photos show girls they can like both sparkles and sports

SALT LAKE CITY — Sugar, spice, and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of. Right?

An Alabama photographer has gone viral showing that side of her daughter — plus the other side.

Heather Mitchell is that photographer. She was enjoying a day at the softball field where her 8-year-old daughter, Paislee, was at softball practice late last month, where she was having a conversation with another mom about how she wished her daughter learned to love to play softball because she was so athletic.

“[She’s] not athletic, she’s a girly girl,” Mitchell said the other mother responded, which surprised her. She told CBS News that later that night, the comment kept her up.

“I was thinking, why does she have to choose between being girly and athletic,” she said. “Why can’t she just be both without the judgment of it?”

So the next day she took her daughter into her photography studio and shot these photos showing off both sides of her personality. Paislee dressed in softball cleats and a pink “princess” dress.

She posted the photos with a quote from Babe Ruth and went on with her day, but was quickly overwhelmed by the response.

“It was crazy,” Mitchell told CBS. “We had just tons of friends, teammates asking them to do that for their little girls.”

She said that she was immediately booked out for sessions and loved to get to see these little girls come into her studio and pick out a pretty dress and lace up some dirty cleats.

“I hope that it makes everyone think what we teach the girls,” she said. “Growing up my parents told me I could be anything I wanted to be. And I didn’t realize that other people weren’t told that.”

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