“When we walked into the mall, my girl had her purse, her fancy shoes and her pretty dress on. ‘Don’t forget my sunglasses! Oh I gotta take my baby doll in with us!’ So we did.”
Brittney says her daughter is “all diva, all the time.”
Brittney Johnson
“She made conversation with the guy at Starbucks—even after I tried convincing her it is not called Starburst and they do not have candy. We had dinner where she told the lady ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘I just love your hair!’.. She high fived the attendant on her way off of the carousel and gave her two extra tokens to a little girl waiting on the side.
We walked into Target and she helped me pick out a few swimsuits. We picked out 11. Yeah. ELEVEN. Walked into the dressing room and she sat down her baby and started unhooking the swimsuits from the hangers and yelling ‘I can see your butt!’ for the whole dressing room to hear.”
Brittney says she tried on each of the suits, and snapped photos in all of them to get her friends’ opinions, because “girls are wired weird and that’s just what we do.”
With each swimwear photo, Brittney took mental notes—different things she didn’t like about her body, until one particular photo stopped her dead in her tracks.
In the corner of the photo is Brittney’s daughter. Her dress is pulled down to her waist, and she’s pulled one of the many bikini tops Brittney was trying on over her head.
“I stopped for a second to see what she would say and when she turned to the mirror. She said ‘Wow, I just love cheetah print! I think I look beautiful! Do you think I look beautiful too?!’ When it hit me that she only says what she hears. What she sees.”
Brittney Johnson
Brittney continues:
“I tell her that she is beautiful every single day. She is kind walking through the mall, because I tell her she is kind everywhere else. She is polite at the order counter because she hears me when I’m polite to strangers everywhere. She gives compliments to people she doesn’t know because she loves how it feels when she hears them. And when we are in a dressing room, with swimsuits, of all God forsaken things, there is a split moment when I have the power to say ‘wow I have really gotten fat this year’ OR ‘wow I love this coral color on me!’ And those are the words burned into my daughter’s brain.”
Brittney Johnson
How’s that for a healthy dose of perspective?
“When it comes to manners, be an example. When it comes to kindness, be an example.
And when it comes to body image, be an example. I am not a size zero. I never will be. I have big thighs and a huge rump and for some reason the middle of my body gets more tan than the rest? But this body made a whole other body. I am strong. I am able. And I am happy. I don’t have to be beautiful like you, because I am beautiful like me. And as my daughter gets older, and she faces judgement and criticism, I will always remind her that the girls who look the prettiest in a two piece, or a body suit, or a freaking Snuggie, are the ones who are happy.”
A-Men sister!
Brittney Johnson
Brittney says all that really matters is that her daughter looks at herself everyday and thinks, “Oh wow! I think I look beautiful!” Because EVERY girl deserves to feel and think that about themselves.