Huntsville photographer’s new project boosting self-esteem of her tween subjects

Kids are bombarded with media messages every day, some positive, many not. And for some they lead to body image issues.

When local photographer Heather Douglas embarked on a new project, she hoped to counter that influence on her young subjects but had no idea how successful she’d be.

On a beautiful, warm, January day, Douglas decided to take her nine-year-old daughter Tilly outside for a photo shoot to test a style she’d been thinking about for some time.

She was stunned by the result. “When I downloaded them, I thought, ‘these are amazing.’ And when I asked my daughter, she said it made her feel really good.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by the other tween girls Douglas has photographed. “The girls love it, they feel good and we have fun with it. We might do a little bit of mascara and lip gloss, but only if they want it, and the rest is lighting and clothing – I make it something different and special.”

Eleven-year-old Rowan Petterson was a bit nervous about her photo shoot, mostly about what the pictures might look like. “I was feeling nervous that some of the things wouldn’t match my hair and eyes,” she said. “But they were really nice and she touched them up to make them brighter. I didn’t know she could do that much stuff with the computer.”

When Rowan took the photos to school, she said her teacher thought she might be a model. “I can’t wait for maybe a different time when I can do it again, maybe when I’m older.”

Rowan Petterson

Rowan’s mom, Michelle, has noticed an uplift in Rowan’s confidence since the photo shoot. “She is the sweetest, kindest child, and she always works hard to make other people happy, but she compares herself to her younger sister all the time. That day I saw a glimmer of a kid I hadn’t seen before. She just had this different presence and this smile – it gave her this confidence and this boost of self-esteem that she carried around with her even after she took off the pretty clothes. She felt amazing and it was fun for her to have all the attention just on her. And afterward she was fascinated by what (Heather) could do with Photoshop.”

It’s the result Douglas was hoping for. “Girls see images in magazines and this helps to take the mystery out of it. Everyone that I’ve photographed have been normal, local little girls. When you take a bit of effort and make it a bit different, it becomes something magical and it shows them that they might not look like that every day but they can if they want to. And that the people in the magazine might look a certain way but they don’t look like that every day either. So now they don’t think, ‘I’m never going to look like that, that person’s perfect.’”

Douglas also has plans for a similar style for boys. “It’s more about bringing their personality into it than putting on the pretty clothes. But they have the same (media) influences, although they don’t seem to react to it in the same way.”

One of the things Douglas loves about these shoots is that it captures tweens just before they begin to look more like adults, and hopefully before they start to become too self-conscious about their appearance.

“Kids at that age are so fun to photograph – they are beautiful but they are changing and I think we need to do something special for them. You need to work with them to build up their self-esteem.”

It seems to be working. Rowan, in particular, wants others to feel the same way. “I’d like to take pictures of other people, too. I think it would make them happy. They’ll see that they don’t have to wear make up to be beautiful.”

View more photos from the project on the Heather Douglas Photography Facebook page.