Audrey Hepburn spent her adolescence working as a professional ballerina to secretly raise money for the Dutch resistance.
Once she became a film star she used her celebrity to raise money for her many philanthropic causes. She became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and travelled to more than 20 countries to meet children who struggled to survive and reported what she saw to governments and world leaders to enact change. She was remarkable example of humanity, generosity and strength but history mostly chooses to remember her as pretty.
And that’s often the way it goes; a woman’s lifetime of extraordinary accomplishments condensed into one defining quality… her looks.
It is for this reason that the recent photo series by artist Kate T. Parker is so refreshing.
The American mother didn’t have an agenda when she began taking pictures of her daughters – she simply wanted to capture them as they are in everyday life. But as she moved through her process she noticed her photo habit had organically grown into something more significant.
“I suddenly realised, wow, all of my strongest images are of my girls just being themselves — their freckled, emotional, sometimes dirty, messy selves,” the Atlanta-based photographer told TODAY.com.
Her epiphany resulted in a stunning photo series titled Tough is the New Pretty.
“It is a series of photographs showing my two young girls, as well as their friends, just as they are — loud, athletic, fearless, messy, joyous, frustrated,” Kate tells The Weekly online.
Kate, who works as a commercial photographer, says that she is all too aware of the pressure women – especially young girls – feel to “look a certain way, act in certain manner” but she’s keen to show people through her photographs that there is value in being different to what’s expected – to be “authentic”.
“I wanted to celebrate these girls as they are, not how females are expected to be. I wanted to celebrate them, just as they are, and show them that is enough.”
Kate says she has one important for her daughters Ella, age 9, and Alice, age 6:
“Being pretty or perfect is not important. Being who they are is.”
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