This week we’re back with a special Infant Session blog. This Barbie is __June_-!
Little June was just 10 months young when her medical/ hospital working Masters-degreed mom requested a summer Barbie Infant (Mini) Session-! Little Barbie June’s Session wasn’t in June, but she was visiting the Midwest back in July when the Barbie movie was released in theatres, so her mom thought it was the perfect time for little June bug to have a fun little sunset Barbie Session in Michigan about a week after the movie premiered in theatres-! The request for a Barbie theme-d box wasn’t made until mere minutes before, so Jenny did her best with finding and cutting up a box and Jason did his best collab-ing with Jenny on a Photoshopping of better coloring & wording onto June’s Barbie box. We think the actual manual labor work at our female-owned full-time LLC business was well-worth it!
Above: Baby June Barbie’s journey of breaking out of her confining Barbie box-! Women really can ((& should)) fight the sexist powers that be-!
By now (less than half a year later) little June is now over a year old and got some great gifts for her 1st Birthday! June loves being around people (and sobs if she’s left out just feet away from everyone) and cherishes spending time with her 3 aunties, her 4 grandparents, her 2 big doggies, her parents, her older brother, and her 2 girl cousins out West in the desert!
June had many adventures in the summer including meeting & petting her aunt’s awesome, friendly big dogs (also mutt rescues just like one of her big doggies at home- the doggy of hers was initially found wandering a desert in Mexico with a dog gang)-! June also loved hanging out at Michigan beaches to getting used to humidity & grass (traumatic for her brother when he was a baby, but fine by her) to floating happily in warm fresh water lakes!
June went on slow boat rides and got to sit in the shallow parts of a lake in Michigan, then also visited her grandpa’s old business to meet a bunch of nice ladies! (She thought it was so cool that the owner there now is a woman)! June’s daddy & mommy also did a triathlon when they were here in the Midwest, so her auntie & uncle even spent one morning teaching she and her brother about Godzilla & OG 80s and 90s music videos (and music on a giant playpad foot piano their auntie got- just like the kind their mommy used to play on at FAO Schwarz in Chicago)-!
June has been pretty well-traveled at so young having taken car rides up to fun, beautiful mountainous places as well as Hawaii, so with all of the travel and always 3 to 6 people and 2 big doggies in her house, June prefers chaotic, people-filled travels.
June at this point had just seen her Midwest auntie & uncle 2.5 months earlier when they came out to see her in the desert for over a week, so she had fun visiting with them again for over a month in summer! She took her first steps around them sometime between April & July, so this girl is off & running now!
June’s auntie had bought these zinnias for the family/ June’s grandma over the years (the regular as flower starts/ the tiedyed ones as seeds), so June’s grandma wanted photos of little granddaughter June with said flowers on their 4th year blooming-! ((Little family member Walker helped plant this year’s seeds, so shout out to that little green thumb-!))
Even though we discontinued offering in-studio (and generally the majority of all) Infant Sessions & Senior Portrait Sessions a few years ago with the rise of the Pandemic (for anyone we hadn’t ever photographed before- for the safety of kids), we have still continued to photograph kids while masked & unmasked only outdoors for a non-profit for DCS adoptable kids here in Indiana for the past 2+ years.
We most often photograph adoptable kids between ages 8 and 17, though we’ve photographed & interviewed the rogue baby & 2 year olds with their siblings as well. The foster system has taken hit after hit over the past 3.5 years what with parents losing their jobs or homes during the Pandemic, child abuse going up during the stay-at-home orders, family illness taking out parents during the Pandemic, the recession that began in Feb 2022, and now the massive amounts of inflation this year. We hope that we’re making a dent in the system, but can’t be sure as we are only the photographers and don’t run the non-profit. We do know that the older kids are in dire need of foster parents and ultimately Permanent Homes // “Forever” parents as one kid early-on put it, so it’s up to regular citizens/ folks to foster and adopt in these trying times. We’ve seen a couple kids get adopted recently even before we could head out to photograph them, so there’s hope yet for the kids who feel abandoned-!
Back to these kids: Little June can be seen here with her brother learning how to drum on the box that we used as her “Barbie box.” Her older brother was a bit jealous of June getting to have her own special box…
…so he hopped in for a second! As a newly-turned-two year young he didn’t quite fit. We had a bigger wooden white box for him, but it was time for their story time/ bed time, so mom took them off to their grandpa and beds.
Some Outtakes:
Barbie June reflecting many of our (the USA citizens’) opinions of the United States federal government// presidential options so far in autumn 2023 ((frustrated// disappointed)).
Barbie June reflecting womens’ opinions of being trapped in a Barbie Box// under the glass ceiling of sexism in 2023. Yay, Patriarchy!
Maybe baby June can try to be the 1st female President of the United States, but we think that maybe a feminist female United States president should happen sooner than 34 years from now (and could have happened 3 years ago… or ya know, 7 years ago when that last woman/ former Secretary of State (at the White House) actually WON THE POPULAR VOTE OF THE UNITED STATES’ CITIZENS for President of the United States. Happy Holidays, all!