‘Portrait girl’ now needs her own publicist
Toddler awestruck by Michelle Obama portrait becomes online sensation
Jessica Curry is still processing. The mom of two, whose daughter Parker became an online sensation after a photo of the toddler — awestruck by Michelle Obama’s portrait — went very, very viral, has spent the past two weeks juggling juice boxes and giant expectations. “When I go into my phone and I look at pictures of Michelle Obama carrying my little girl around on her hip as if she were her own, I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ ” Curry, 29, said during a recent phone interview.
Since Parker’s photo began orbiting the social-media globe on March 1, mother and daughter have spent 45 minutes with the former first lady in her downtown D.C. office, appeared on CNN and flew to Los Angeles on Wednesday to chat with viral-kid-whisperer Ellen DeGeneres. And there’s that word again —
viral. It sounds ominous and clinical, like something catchy, something you protect your kids from as Curry did for the early part of Parker’s young life.
In those pre-toddler years, Curry — a stay-at-home mom in Washington who writes a parenting blog called Happy Mama Happy Babies — didn’t post any photos of her daughter’s face online. So what was her gut reaction to the photo with thousands upon thousands of likes from strangers? To be honest, she was bothered.
“We’re talking about a picture of my daughter who’s just 2,” recalled Curry, whose soft Sunday-school-teacher voice belies her fierceness. “So when I see this picture floating around with my kid, I’m like, ‘Whoa. This is a lot.’ ”
A lot — that’s a common refrain for Curry these days. The media attention? A lot. The emotions? A lot. The pressure? A lot.
Just over 24 hours after the museum visit, the photo began raking up more shares and likes and hearts. Curry decided to reach out to a friend who works in public relations. She told the mom of two not to worry. That this would all probably blow over in a day or two. No need to panic. Life would be back to normal soon.
“I was like, ‘OK, if you say so.’ Tomorrow we can go back to our regular scheduled programming,” Curry said. Then Obama’s office called.
In the meantime, Curry connected with Ben Hines, the man who snapped Parker’s photo. He sent Curry a heartfelt explanation/apology via Facebook. He hadn’t meant to invade the Currys’ privacy.
That same day, the media requests rolled in. “Not like one or two,” Curry said, “but 10 or 15.” A candid moment caught on someone else’s camera sudden- ly thrusting your tiny human under a potentially harsh spotlight that’s nearly impossible to control? Most parents don’t plan for that. Curry certainly didn’t, but now that it’s here, the self-described “millennial mama” is trying to wade through the surreal to get to something concrete.
Curry could take notes from other parents who’ve gone before her and Parker, who has been dubbed “Portrait Girl.” Remember Robert E. Kelly? No? How about “BBC Dad”? Exactly. Kelly and clan unwittingly struck internet gold last year when his then-4-year-old daughter, Marion, and 9month-old son, James, crashed an interview that dad, a foreign affairs expert, was conducting with the BBC.
The Kellys, completely uninterested in fame, were overwhelmed by the avalanche of attention threatening to bury them hours after that clip went viral. So they turned off their phones.
“It was just insane,” recalled Kelly in a phone interview from South Korea. Media requests were coming from Israel and Brazil. DeGeneres’s team left multiple messages. Reporters were showing up at Kelly’s job, at his parents’ house in Ohio, at his aunt and uncle’s in New York.
After some discussion, Kelly and his wife, Jung-a Kim, made the decision to do a grand total of three media appearances: an interview with the BBC, the scene of the crime; one with the Wall Street Journal, because Kelly had a friend there; and one news conference for the Korean outlets at Pusan National University in South Korea, where Kelly works.
Although the moment might seem unreal, the potential to make money certainly isn’t. Several families have banked on the kind of viral fame that the Kellys shunned. Take the McClures, a family of five from New Jersey whose 4-year-old twins, Alexis and Ava, have more than 800,000 YouTube subscribers and 1.3 million Instagram followers. All that influence came from a video that mom Ami shot of the twins getting angry at dad Justin for eating all their snacks. Other videos, which the family says they were documenting just for fun, followed suit.
“We’re doing well,” Justin said of the family’s financial situation.
Forbes Magazine named the McClure twins among its Top Influencers of 2017. They recently closed a deal with Walmart. Now Justin, a filmmaker and photographer, works on the family brand full time. Ami, a comptroller on maternity leave after the birth of their son, Jersey, is considering leaving her job as well. They won’t talk specific numbers, but on the low end, when the family began monetizing their channel with ads and branded content, the McClures pulled in $15,000 (U.S.) a month.
Though for the most part they steer clear of negative comments on their social media posts, they have an answer to the “What kind of nightmare stage parent makes money off their kids?” question.
“I get to spend all my time with my family making highquality memories,” Justin said. “So enjoy your day job.”
Engagement, branding, influence are all vocab words in households such as the McClures. But there is one that’s banned: fame. “We don’t even use that word,” Ami said.
If any financial boost comes from Parker’s online fame, the family would be open to it, Curry said, “for the sole purpose of securing Parker’s financial future.”
While Curry and her fiancé never planned to have Parker and her 1-year-old sister, Ava, in “any spotlight of any kind,” the fact remains that the kids are cute. Parker is bubbly, being trumpeted online as an IRL embodiment of black girl magic. So yes, the kid has a publicist now, Aba Kwawu, a woman of colour and mom of two who Curry contacted after being overwhelmed by “the unbelievable amount of attention.”
For now, Curry chooses to see all of this as “a blessing, an honour.”
“At the end of the day, if she is inspiring people, I am glad to share her,” Curry said. “She amazes me and inspires me every day, and who am I to keep that from other people?”
In the meantime, there is one benefit that Curry discovered while diving down the rabbit hole of the internet, usually a no-no in these situations. “When you become a mom, especially a first-time mom, there is a lot of self-doubt, like: ‘Uh, am I doing this right? I hope I’m doing this right,’ ” she recalled, getting choked up all over again. So the messages she’s received from strangers praising Parker (“She’s amazing!”) and cheering on her parenting (“Keep it up!”) have been particularly affirming.
“To have people who don’t know me … compliment me on something I take very seriously,” Curry said through tears, “it’s just very touching.”
“At the end of the day, if she is inspiring people, I am glad to share her.” JESSICA CURRY PARKER’S MOM